World Rally Championship 7 Review

Overview

World Rally Championship 7 is a racing game based on the 2017 season, developed by Kylotonn (formerly 4X Studios) and published by Bigben interactive for Xbox one and PC. The game has improved in some aspects, however there are some features that still need to improve, we will talk about this later on, my first impression is positive and there is a little surprise for you guys, it is the first WRC game to feature Porshe 911 car!!

First WRC game to feature Porshe 911 car!!

Price: $49.99

Size: 18.36 GB

Age Rating: Everyone

Release Date: Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Gameplay

The principal menu is pretty simple as always offering the usual “solo” mode were you can play either quick game, career, custom championship or driving test; and the muliplayer mode were you will be able to measure your abilities with other gamers.

The career mode preserves the same standard as other WRC games were the game tests the player and adjusts itself in order of the performance. At the beginning the player can choose between 3 contracts, one for players that are good at preserving the car in good conditions, another for players that are good at being fast and the last is an intermidiate point between those two. Progressing in the career will led to new contracts, new cars and higher difficulty. Nothing new on  this aspect, the game preserves it’s classic modes, from my point of view thats good if you play it for the first time as it gives you the opportunity to gradually adapt to the driving and increase the difficulty.

The custom championship offers the possibility to create your own tournament, choosing any rallie, any of the stages, and personalising the weather conditions for each of them, but if you only have a moment why not try a quick career? Will only take you a few minutes…

With 13 rallies and 52 special stages and the actual teams of the 2017 season, World rally championship has really taken advantage of the FIA license by faithfully reproducing each stage, each car and every single curve, making you travel to different places in the world to race against your competitors. The number of teams increases to 55 thanks to the addition of the WRC2and WRC Junior categories. I have to highlight the Epic stages that can last up to 15 minutes, this is really a challenge for the gamer’s resistance and takes the game to another level.

The driving has improved a lot, I find it easier to control the car, however this feels like it is less of a simulator and more kind of arcade game, the weather conditions really makes the difference when racing, the type of terrain you are on also plays a crucial role when it comes to reach the end with little damage to the car. Most of the stages are played individually and you have to complete the stage in a certain amount of time to win it but there are also some stages were you play directly against a second competitor in a two way closed circuit. So far so good, however when it comes to personalise the difficulty of the game there is an annoying fact, if you choose “difficult” mode you can easily take an advantage of 10 seconds to the next competitor whilst if you choose a higher difficulty it makes it impossible to win, the other teams can easily take an advantage of 20 seconds even if you have no bulky mistakes.

Feels like it is less of a simulator and more kind of arcade game

 

Graphics and Sound

The graphics are not bad, but they could improve a little bit, the car and the stage itself is very good represented however the textures are sometimes fuzzy. The weather conditions makes it feel real, this adds a point to the graphics. The sound is good enough, sometimes the co-pilot gives the advice to late but in general the sound is good, you can choose any language and the roar of the car changes from one vehicle to another like it should be however they are not getting the truly power of a racing car as if you were watching a rally on your tv screen.

 

Summary

WRC 7 has brought us a new game for the saga that is very recommendable if you love racing games, it is a very known brand that offers the possibility to live each year’s championship, making it a game that recycles itself by adding the new stages, cars, teams and features that comes up every year, but that is what happens with sports games, they try to make it as real as posible so that’s why they tend to stick to what happens in the actual season. In my opinion they could try to fix the graphics and physics just a bit because for example the behaviour of the car, when getting out of the track or having collisions, is not very good…

 

Verdict