WRC 7 Review

Developer: Kylotonn Games

Publisher: Bigben Interactive

Release Date: September 26, 2017

Platforms: Xbox One (reviewed), PS4, PC

Kicking Tires

If Rally Racing was a person, my guess is it would be the less-intimidating, possibly second child, member of the family. Drifting around corners,  launching off jumps, and baaarely staying on course makes for an almost-arcade-y style of racing. The great thing about WRC 7 is it caters to those looking for a comfort-food type of experience with some generous driver assists and gentle difficulty settings. Unfortunately, even with a full Career mode and multiplayer suite, the experience doesn’t expound much upon the basic A to B races.

One Track Grind

Rally racers aren’t typically for the every-gamer. It’s a bit of an Inception situation – a niche within a niche (within a niche). Luckily WRC 7 begins with an easy-to-finish but tough-to-master track that evaluates your rally racing prowess. It doubles as a quick way to get you racing right away and a game-setting calibration tool. With ostensibly no barriers to entry, WRC 7 welcomed me with open arms and I enthusiastically jumped into the solo Career by signing a contract with the promise of achieving the fastest race time – no matter the damage. Let’s face it – there was no way I’m finishing these races without a scratch. Right or wrong, my racing team entrusted their car and reputation on my abilities and instantly, I felt like I couldn’t let them down. It’s a pretty basic happy face/sad face relationship but I genuinely felt rewarded to see that frown turn upside-down. For a while.

WRC 7 captures the excitement of the risk-reward present in accelerating or braking through every turn, every jump, and every inch of every track. Heeding your co-pilots warnings requires a no-distractions approach and developing your own approach to every gentle or hairpin turn. And when everything clicks, it’s an authentic experience. I felt like a rally champion.

Race by race, my skills improved alongside my enjoyment and appreciation for the game. The tracks are satisfyingly varied in length, weather, difficulty, and surface type. The various permutations and combinations of these features results in a plethora of locations but the track you see at the start line is as it will be at the end. In other words, no dynamic weather. Really, there’s not much to be said in terms of dynamic gameplay at all. Racing feels fine and there is a genuine sense of speed and grip. But co-pilot callouts, while helpful, sound robotic and canned. Crowds feel uninspired and there isn’t anything in the way of commentary to hype success or dwell on failure. It’s just you, the closed-circuit road, and some finish-line results to review.

In between races, you can scramble the repair team to focus on body, engine, and other wear-and-tear eroding your car throughout the series. On the lower difficulties, there are nearly no repercussions but this decision making becomes more challenging as you drive from Amateur to Hardcore. It’s a hint of simulation without the burden or requirement of being a car geek to tackle it competently.

But there’s not much more to it than that. Gamers without allegiances to FIA Drivers or Teams won’t find any particularly intriguing reasons to develop them here. The gameplay is about as close to “for anyone” as it gets for a rally racer but the stars of the show – and more specifically, the license – are sadly undersold. Cars feel far too similar to each other and I could find no discernible differences racing on one team to the next. There is certainly an open opportunity for future entries in the series to iterate upon the progression model and gameplay loop to keep players coming back. I found the variety of tracks and their unpredictable challenges to be the best aspects of WRC 7 but on a more superficial level, it ultimately lacks the personality and presentation of competing rally racing series. Fans will enjoy racing through all 13 official events in the 2017 season and while these offer excellent tracks for racing, outsiders have little else to grasp on to. It would be like  playing through Tiger Woods PGA Tour and only having the Season Mode to play. The gameplay is fun, the courses well-represented, but a solo experience with AI results tallied at the end wasn’t enough to keep me interested for long.

Final Verdict

Pardon the pun but after such a strong and welcoming start, WRC 7 runs out of gas a little prematurely. A wide variety of tracks present a vast supply of challenging content but unfortunately, they are all wrapped in the same package. Racing solo, against the clock, even across the Career and Championship modes gets old fairly quickly. And it’s a shame, really. WRC 7 is a solid racer and a fun, welcoming experience. There simply isn’t enough here to recommend it to anyone who isn’t obsessed with FIA World Rally Championship.