WRC 10 Review

Over the last seven years, KT Racing has been slowly but surely perfecting the WRC game franchise. It’s a shame, then, that after WRC 10, it’s only got one more opportunity to build on incredibly solid foundations–not least because this year’s tenth offering sets an even higher bar for the rally racing genre.

In a year’s time, Codemasters–recently acquired by EA–will wrestle the franchise away from Kylotonn after its WRC 11 swansong. It’s a little unsurprising, though nonetheless disheartening; while Codemasters’ pedigree with DiRT, DiRT Rally, and the F1 series prove that the company is a safe pair of hands with racing games, KT Racing has proved that it thoroughly deserves to retain the WRC license.

WRC 10 represents much more than a milestone in the series: it’s a celebration of rallying itself, marking the upcoming 50th anniversary of the competition (which, weirdly, falls in WRC 11’s season). However, it took a little while to realize that WRC 10 was much more than a repainted version of its predecessor–something WRC 9 was more than a little guilty of.

All it took was a sublime drive around rain-soaked newcomer Estonia to completely fall in love with the franchise all over again–lingering warts and all. The handling, more than anything, is utterly superb, especially if you’re using a controller. WRC 10 has successfully eliminated the interminable trial and error of settings adjustments in WRC 8 (and to a lesser extent, WRC 9), making it more of a pick-up-and-play experience than ever before–something complemented by its impressive deployment of scaling difficulty. You can simply adjust the challenge as you go along, always pushing yourself as you get better acquainted with it.

Those dead zones have been tweaked; the handbrake is more responsive; executing a Scandi flick feels more majestic than ever. You can feel every change in each road surface, for better or worse; approaching a snow-topped Monte Carlo power stage with half-bare asphalt tires elicited fear I’ve not felt since playing Little Nightmares 2.

You feel more at one with your car than ever, whether you’re in a Junior WRC Ford Fiesta or a disgustingly overpowered Toyota Yaris. Every scrape, bump, loss of power, and transmission problem is both felt and heard; you’re not so much one with the car, but the car itself.

This immersiveness allows you to focus on the wider improvements to the game, which are almost immediately noticeable with tweaks to the UI and career mode–something literally copied and pasted between WRCs 8 and 9. Screen tearing is still present in densely populated stages like Chile, and long-distance rendering can still be a little messy, but the game feels beautiful–and is the first “true” Series X outing for the series, despite WRC 9’s promises. The menus have had a much-needed makeover, but the wheel hasn't exactly been reinvented. The career mode remains largely intact, mostly for the better–no one wants to relearn its approach to team management, lest they face the wrath of the overly condescending tutorial voiceover (which is thankfully skippable). However, WRC 10 still forces you to join either WRC3 or Junior WRC, rather than skip to the big leagues–something fans of the series will lament.

The new rallies–Estonia, Spain, and Croatia–are all welcome additions, especially Estonia, which might well be the best rallying I’ve ever experienced from the WRC franchise. Wales sadly remains, despite not being on the 2022 calendar. I actively picked teams to avoid landing that one on my calendar, because it still feels utterly impossible to navigate.

There’s also a livery editor... finally. It’s a bit annoying and finicky, but it’s a start. No racing game should be without one, and it’s just nice to see WRC 10 has added one–it might be a bit too late, but it’s still appreciated.

Providing more new meat on WRC’s bones is its anniversary mode, though this element of the game is a little disappointing, not least because it feels like a glorified time-trial experience. You just get a handful of “classic” stages that allow you to race a few legendary cars. Some, like the Lancia Delta, Toyota Corolla, or Renault Alpine, are predictable–but there are hugely notable omissions locked behind DLC, like the Subaru Impreza and Mitsubishi Lancer.

When these anniversary races are dropped into the career mode calendar, they’re quite the anomaly. WRC’s scaling difficulty setting, which seems more forgiving than ever before (if anything, you might find yourself pushing it above 100%), doesn’t appear to take anniversary races into account; I barely scraped 80% of some stages, until fluking a Lancia Delta stage with two seconds to go.

Luckily, it’s part of the fun, and the authenticity of these 80s and 90s events is made even tougher by the safety standards of the good old days when crash barriers were made of flesh and blood instead of wood and steel. Dancing between trackside fans in an Audi Quattro on an icy Monte Carlo hairpin delivers a thrill like no other, though you’ll occasionally go full Carmageddon and add a good 15 seconds of penalties–a light punishment, given the vehicular manslaughter you’ll wreak.

For all its strengths and franchise-building maneuvers, KT Racing continues to ignore a number of issues that have rankled players in the last few years–often tiny issues that hold it back from delivering full immersion, or just a bit more fun. The career mode still needs stripping down. There’s no need to pay for repairs via email, or plan your calendar every two-to-three weeks, or having to kowtow to identical objectives (I’m looking at you, “no hard tires for two rallies”). What’s more, morale is an in-game currency too far–it’s pointless, especially when it drops when you go for a manufacturer’s tryout with the same manufacturer you already race for. Your team also joins you when you move teams. Pointless.

While the new rallies shine, the reuse of former courses is starting to grow old. While it’s a big ask to demand all-new race tracks every year, it’s still a little disappointing to replay a WRC 9 course you know from memory or, even worse, drive through the same section three times in one rally. Dressing it up in darkness, or reversing the direction, doesn’t hide the obvious.

I also want to highlight the genuinely awful co-driver voiceover. While the voice acting itself is fine, the deployment is awful, and their input ranges from orgasmic to whiny. When you get even the slightest positive split time, they have a habit of barking “PERFECT!” or “AWESOME!” between guidance, but they also let out unconvincing, attention-seeking yelps when you crash, and regularly say glib, unrelated comments if you slightly misjudge a corner.

Nonetheless, for all its frustrations, KT Racing’s WRC franchise is one more year’s worth of finesse away from potential immortality. This entry is excellent, accessible, fun, and genuinely challenging–so long as you’re willing to challenge yourself.

By ironing out its UI, making career mode more accessible, and generally stripping back those unnecessary complexities surrounding an otherwise brilliant experience, KT Racing has every chance of making next year’s WRC 11 one of the very best racing games in the last ten years–a show-stopping swansong for a studio that’s clearly dedicated to constant improvement.

It just kinda sucks that Codemasters gets WRC in 2023, even though I love its work. Fingers crossed that KT Racing will deliver a beautiful finale, ahead of Codemasters’ seemingly inevitable, simulation-heavy transformation of the franchise into a licensed DiRT Rally 3.0.