With a racing sim wheel.... it had alot of potential but feels dumbed down and rather empty. It can get boring quick.
Support for wheels in this game is kind of odd. Firstly the demo doesn't support wheels at all, but the full game does. BUT, as far as Logitech wheels go, you won't be able to use it properly unless you get into your profiler and make a WRC profile. For me the pedals simply wouldn't work unless the profile was created.
As for how it feels with the wheel. No clutch, no H-shifter. It's all paddles and force feedback seems pretty much non existent unless you crash. Perhaps if I had turned up the FFB in my profiler to the max setting I would have gotten something out of it, but you'll find out why I didn't bother by the end of this. Suffice it to say, this game isn't going to make you feel like you're getting your money's worth out of that expensive wheel controller you have plugged in.
But to focus on some good points for a moment.
Starting the game up, it's kind of standard as far as Black Bean games go... if you've played their SBK games before you'll know what it's like going through the menu setups. It's straightforward and easy to navigate.
EVERYTHING is unlocked.... with the exception of the Advanced section in the Driving School. That means you can jump right into whatever class, car, race, and weather you want. Go for a single run, go for a casual championship outside of the traditionally considered singleplayer campaign "career mode".
It's nice to have find a racing game that doesn't force you to grind through a career mode to have access to what you're really after... cars and tracks.
There's a pretty decent selection of rally courses from around the world.
And the sound design has some rather good points. Drive through a patch of water and you'll hear a choppy splash of water which sounds... cheap and crap. But when you damage your car you hear some great sounds. Changing gears with certain damage and you hear this awful grinding shift... it's a nice touch that should be a standard in racing games. Though I have to wonder how my copilot can tell me the radiator is damaged, which results in the transmission grinding like crap.
... And that's where the good side ends.
You'll notice not every rally car is in this game. Ford, Citreon, Suzuki, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Lancia. Maybe Renault... I can't remember, now that I've uninstalled it. No Audi, BMW, Toyota... it just seemed odd to me that it would lack the presence of Audi of all brands in what is supposed to be an official rally championship game.
Graphics.. Dirt 1 is alot prettier. There's no massive bloom effects. It's not ugly or even unacceptable (in some ways I liked it), but it does feel dated if you're a graphics kind of person. Personally I didn't care. I found the distance blur effect to be perhaps a TOUCH stronger than it should have been.. but yeah... everyone is going to compare this to the Dirt games, and Dirt 1 looks way better so don't even think of comparing it to Dirt 2 visuals.
Gameplay? Now here is the real problem. Handling with a wheel is decent but... everyone with a half a brain knows the Dirt is an arcade game, it's not a hardcore sim like Richard Burn's Rally.... and neither is WRC. It's not a sim. It looks like it could be from the visuals but it's definitely an arcade racer. Problem is it's kind of more arcadey in handling than Dirt. With a wheel in Dirt and all assists of it takes alittle getting used to but end up feeling like you're being challenged on some level. WRC in professional mode with all assists off... still feels too easy.
The fact that you feel like you're not using much skill combined with the way it barely responds through the wheel.... you just don't feel compelled to care about the race you're in.
And I don't mind that it's a solo racing style like proper rally races. You race against the clock, there aren't any psychotic AI drivers bumping you off the road, it's meant to come down to pure skill.
But in an odd way it feels lonely because you really feel like you're going through an empty experience purely because of the handling. I didn't try it online because of that basic handling... it just killed the appeal for me. I didn't even bother trying to adjust the setup on the car I was driving because I just didn't care anymore.
Had this been treated as a serious sim with serious sim physics, this would have been an awesome rally racer to have. But if you've played Dirt, you'll find this a boring downgrade. The only real benefit you'd find in this is that everything is available after install and the menus are quick and easy to bounce through.
Having said all that... it's not a horrible game, it's not a bad game. It's actually a good game... but the standards the are out there for the PC with Dirt, Richard Burn's Rally and some of the mods for rFactor... unfortunately it's just not good enough.
While the taste factor is a matter of opinion, and this will be alot of fun for some people, maybe for the ultra hardcore rally fan... but I can confidently say that if you have a wheel and have at least 1 proper sim installed on your system... there's a 99.9% chance you'll find this as boring to play as I did. You won't hate it, you just won't care.