Alright
I actually pre-ordered! mainly because I was eagerly awaiting a go at this very promising title. Colin McRae Rally and V-Rally are just two great names in recent years from the rally stable as the sport has boomed in Europe.
And with an official license featuring the correct drivers, co-drivers, all seven cars and all 14 countries from the 2001 season, it's also bang up to date. SCEE, backing the game, has not let us down, either.
WRC is largely presentation-based. There are movies before the game, before a complete WRC season, and before each rally in the season, featuring 2000-2001 spec cars on the real-life rally events muching through dirt, snow, gravel, or asphalt.
These movies can get tedious for the less interested gamer but the important thing is that these provide a great insight into how radically different each rally can be. Cyprus and Greece offer rough gravel, Safari a vast landscape through African plains, Monte Carlo hard asphalt and so on. Some events can be quite disappointing compared to what is promised in the opening movies, however: for example, the game says Monte Carlo offers some interesting snow stages. That is true of the real-life event but in the game you're lucky to pass much snow at all.
The drivers are all real-life drivers in the right 2001 cars, and all the right names with the exception of Colin McRae whose game deal means he is replaced with a mysterious 'Ford Driver', but don't let this put you off. The pilot's performances echo those of the real-life events (for example, Burns dominates in Portugal and Makinen often takes the glory in Monte Carlo).
Actually taking these cars for a spin on the stages is the best part of the game. In complete contrast to Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec, the cars are limited to the seven currently vying for glory in the WRC but the number of stages is huge. Over 80 in fact, which means the focus is on battling against the road, saving your tyres, listening to your co-driver for hidden dangers around the corner. There isn't the thrill of thrashing past the final corner and taking victory but you have to pay your money and take your pick -- it's not as if GT3's AI is hugely groundbreaking anyway.
In another fight at GT3, the handling is arcade/simulation balanced. The driving experience is perfect and even for rally novices, the learning curve is nothing but smooth. Unlike GT3's wide circuits, WRC's are narrow but the car control means slicing through two trees at 180mph brings such a greater sense of reward than GT3's drive-down-the-straight-in-a-car-which-feels-like-a-lead-brick feeling.
Overall, there is little to fault in WRC. Certainly it's up there at the very top and the only challenge so far lies in one game...