WRC 9 FIA World Rally Championship Review – Rally Sim Improved

Developer Kylotonn has been hard at work refining their rally racer and have unleashed their latest title WRC 9 FIA World Rally Championship. Does it improve on WRC 8, or is this just a rehash from last year’s release?

Read on to find out

 

 

Developer Kylotonn (KT Racing) has been working on the WRC series since 2015 and last year’s release of WRC 8, following on the heels of some decent improvements in WRC 7, put their series at the head of the pack in the rally racing division of video games. Their last iteration of the series, WRC 9 FIA World Rally Championship, continues to build on that excellence by refining the physics and handling of the cars, while adding in some more beautiful locations to crash drive through.

New Locations From the Championship Calendar

WRC 9 FIA World Rally Championship brings with it three new locations: Japan, New Zealand and Kenya. Where Japan is lush and gorgeous, Kenya is downright gritty and dirty, unless it starts raining and everything turns to mud. One of our favorite features, albeit one of the hardest driving conditions, is driving through a torrential downpour, on what was once a dirt road, but is now a muddy mess with brown puddles of what used to be water. Racing through Kenya, in the mud and rain, is now our favorite race in the game. It can be insanely difficult, but is also insanely fun.

The Racing

It doesn’t matter how many new tracks or cars or racing teams you have in a game if the actual racing isn’t awesome. Kylotonn has been working on making the WRC series great for a while, and WRC 9 surprisingly improved the handling of a game that we thought was at the pinnacle already. We went back and played through several sections in WRC 8 and then repeated those in WRC 9, and found that things like weight transfer through corners, the feel of the suspension, and the overall handling of the car improved nicely with WRC 9. While we aren’t talking about huge improvements, there were noticeable differences that allowed us to perform better.

New to WRC 9 is a testing section where you can fine tune your car and then see how it handles before hitting a rally. These sections are one thing that the series has always been missing. You can set the weather conditions and time of day, and then choose the class of car you want to work on. Being able to adjust the different aspects of your suspension will allow the real gearheads the chance to fine tune their favorite car exactly how they want it, and then test it out in a variety of track surfaces and weather conditions in the test area.

Career Mode Returns

The career mode in WRC 9 seems identical to WRC 8, and that’s not a bad thing. The mode was great before, and if it aint broke, don’t fix it. You can choose to start out on the junior circuit or jump right into the fray with the big boys in the WRC Championship. You are better off starting out on the junior circuit as this gives you the chance to improve your R&D departments, and build your rapport with different brands and manufacturers.

Race Your Friends in Clubs Mode

New for WRC 9 is Clubs mode. A Club is a user created group that has a user designated calendar for events Here you can either create your own club or join a club someone else has created. Owners of a club can create events with any track from the game, and can specify time of day weather, type of car to use, or just let the driver decide which car. This is a great mode for groups of friends that want to see how they measure up against each other, and maybe get some bragging rights.

Developer Kylotonn did such a great job with WRC 8, that they didn’t have to do much to WRC 9 to keep up the good work. What they did do was refine the overall racing experience and add new tracks and content to warrant you going out and getting a copy of this new game.

Just when you think they can’t improve on greatness, they surprise you and do just that.

9


WRC 9 FIA World Rally Championship review code provided by publisher and reviewed on a PS4 Pro using Thrustmaster peripherals. For more information on scoring, please read What our review scores really mean.

Louis Edwards

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