Electronic Arts is back with 25 years of rally-game heritage built into one game, and coming from someone who has been playing rally games for as long as I can remember, this is one you don’t want to miss. To see how far Rally has come in gaming is phenomenal, to say the least, and it’s a title you will want to sink your teeth right into.

MKAU was lucky enough to be invited to a preview event for this, and this was enough of a teaser for me to want to sink hours into this title as it follows the WRC – the World Rally Championship – and this is broken down into three categories, the WRC, WRC2, and Junior WRC, and this game includes all the drivers, teams, and liveries of the 2023 WRC Season.

The locations blew me away, having over 600 kilometres of asphalt, gravel, and snow to race across. Taking place around the world, there are 200 stages from 17 locations available at launch, so you’re spoiled for choice when it comes to finding somewhere to race. You could be racing anywhere from Monte Carlo to Kenya, or even Japan, and these stages can get a little tricky. After getting a little cocky, I prematurely ended a race upside down, costing me money in repairs, so one thing you need to remember is that the tracks are unforgiving, and depending on the weather, the seasons, or ever the time of day that you’re racing, they also feel very different.

Moments was a fun game mode to jump into, and it was something I was keen to see with the full release of the game. Moments puts you behind the wheel and into some iconic and historical moments during the real-world WRC. These are updated daily, so you’ll always have fresh moments to experience, spanning 50 years of the WRC history. Some cars are so quick that you struggle to handle them, and others feel like you could get out and run faster, but it was so much fun to play around during some iconic moments in history. Can you think of any moments you would love to relive in EA SPORTS WRC?

If you want to change things up a little, and you’d rather not see how quickly you can smash through a stage, or you’re not worried about being the fastest driver, then Regularity Rally is quite possibly the mode for you. It’s designed differently from stage rallies, and you are given specific challenges you need to follow, like keeping the vehicle under 120 km/h or making sure that you don’t leave the roadway as examples, adding a slightly different challenge and a little more competition to the title. It also seems to be a good way to learn the tracks at a slower pace, as you’re not needing to slide that hairpin corner at 100km/h or quicker.

You’re spoiled for choice when it comes to selecting vehicles, with the entire roster of WRC 2023 season cars included, plus another 68 of the most iconic rally cars spanning over 60 years of the sport, and as you can imagine the Subarus got an absolute hiding from me. There is something about those boxer motors opening right up on the straights that gets me going, but it was awesome to see 60 years of history built into a game, even if some of the older cars were slow.

I spent a fair chunk of time in the Rally School which is a great place for people new to rally games to learn the ropes, or even returning players, like myself, to brush up on their skills, and it helps out hugely in the long run. There are a bunch of pre-made lessons you can do to refine your skills, and like the Regularity Rally, there are guidelines you need to follow or you will fail the lesson

We come to the online section, and like most games, I feel like I can’t compete with some of the people playing. While you’re not all in a lobby together, in true rally form, you need to compete in times to get the stage finished, and if you make a good enough time, you are added to the club leaderboard. You can choose what club you want to compete in, which again, adds to that competitive side to the game, and it’s great if you are sick of smashing it out of the water against the AI.

For the racers out there who want to dive deeper into customization, you have the option of using “Builder Mode,” where you can choose everything down to the chassis layout, what mechanical parts you want to use, and what you want the body’s shell will look like. You have all the exterior customization parts, but you can also customize the interior, and once your vehicle is complete, you have the option of taking it out, testing it, and making adjustments where needed.

For the players who love making something unique, there is also an amazing livery editor, so you can really make your car stand out. Rally Pass works in a similar way to season passes for games like Battlefield, with a free version giving players additional customisation options, with a paid VIP version offering even more. Creating an iconic look was some good fun, and for those wondering, I’m still terrible at making liveries. I don’t see myself becoming a graphic designer anytime soon.

After spending some time in Career mode, I’ve concluded that owning and managing a rally team is not for me. I kept seeing the cool cars I wanted, and I wasn’t worried about paying staff or repair bills, so I kept buying cars, and then sitting there scratching my head wondering why I had no money to enter the races.

The career mode is great for the fact it puts you behind the desk, so you need to do things like manage your team and finances, possibly starting from Junior WRC, or jumping straight into the WRC, but if you’re bad with money, like me, I would recommend starting in Junior WRC and working your way up, avoiding spending all of your hard-earned cash on cars that you don’t need just because they look cool and you want them. It was cool that you could still jump in behind the wheel and race in the career mode, even though you were running the team.

I was smashing through the gears on the controller during this review, and the analogue inputs gave great response times. Even the vibrations made it feel real. You can also remap the controller to suit what is more comfortable for you.

There were a couple of times I wished I could get my old Logitech wheel to work for a little more control but I could not get it to work for some reason. It might be time to upgrade to something cooler, but this game would be awesome with a decent simulator rig that offers some nice feedback, although I’d probably hit more rocks and trees as well.

One of the biggest additions to the controls you will notice is the “Dynamic Handling System” which is a multi-surface handling model that makes everything and anything feel different, as I mentioned earlier. You need to keep your wits about you, or you will end up on your lid or sideways into a tree. You can dive into the settings for Dynamic Handling and adjust how realistic you want it to feel, and this will directly affect how the car handles.

There is something about hitting the limiter before the light turns green when all you can hear is that beautiful popping noise before launching into the stage, and the cars sound absolutely unreal. I found myself racing in the third-person view, which I’m not a fan of as I love cockpit view, but the sounds were so immersive that I wanted to hear everything as I smashed through the gears while trying to reach the end of the stage in record time. The audio team needs to give themselves a massive pat on the back. You could always hear your spotter clearly reading out the stage, and with how great the car sounds, each stage has you immersed, and the nice light music in the menu was a great finishing touch.

With the power of the Unreal Engine driving the game, they’ve been able to add an incredible level of detail, so WRC will be loved by anyone who loves rally games. From the character models to the environments and cars, everything was masterfully crafted and textured perfectly, leaving everything looking photo-realistic.

EA SPORTS WRC is a beautifully designed rally masterpiece that brings together everything you love about the sport and puts it into one title, and unlike other racing games, you really need to focus, otherwise, like me, you will end up on your lid.

Written by: Hayden Nelson