RETRO – Milestone made their game adaptation of the WRC season for 2011 as well – it is a step forward compared to their first title, but it’s still having problems. It’s not knocking the 3rd game out of its throne, but at least it’s an improvement over the first one.

The career mode starts the same way as seen in the first game. You get to drive the Citroën DS3 WRC on the first track, which is actually a new addition to the series: it is one of the SSS stages, the one in Germany, to be exact. You get to drive two laps on both lanes on the circuit, usually switching the lanes via a bridge. Whoever crosses the finish line after the second lap wins.

Road to WRC

After that, you have to start from the bottom, but now, there are nine seasons instead of ten. You will be tight on money, if you want to keep the best possible management and mechanic team to work for you. You have to pay their wages from your own pocket, that money earned on the rallies will go for this too. This is possibly the biggest addition to the game: you have to hire a maximum amount of four mechanics and managers. Everyone will have three stats that you have to consider. Mechanics’ ability allow you to tune up to four items on your cars (more on that later), and managers’ PR will allow you to negotiate with higer leveled sponsors.

Let’s talk about the managers first. Ability, Development and Research. Research will open up higher levels of tuning, development speeds up the creation of the upgrade I think, and the ability opens more slots for you to tune your cars. The higher your reputation (earned by your results), the better mechanics will be available to you. The best ones will be around lvl 60 of reputation, but from that point, your rep level will go bonkers, and more on this later as well.

Managers: PR, Negotiation and Efficiency. PR opens better sponsors, negotiation fastens the time to get access to the sponsorships and efficiency opens more sponsorship negotiations simultaneously, just like with the mechanics and the upgrade slots. You will need the sponsors, because by the end of the game, you will easily cash out 300+K credits for the next season. If you replace some of your crew members, you only have to pay the wage only for the remainder of the season.

So, sponsors – using some of them will result in showing siilhouettes of some fans at certain levels’ sections. If you perform a given task (like doing a 35+ meter jump at the yellow house in Finland), you will be rewarded with either new liveries or colors for your car to use. I didn’t really go into these: by the time I went 100% in Road to WRC, I had like 50 liveries out of 60 and 38 colors out of 40.

The sponsors do have tasks for you to complete, like getting X amount of green sectors on stages, not going down to yellow or orange on your body (it’s hard to not do that), or performing the rally in a given time. The higher the sponsor’s level is, the more credits and reputation you can get… and the tasks are harder to complete as well. Sometimes, you should consider going for a lower level sponsor to have a bigger chance to get some cash. Just don’t end up having a white car – one time my game glitched out the car mid-championship. The menus can also get stuck. WTF?

Tuning

Another new addition compared to the first WRC game: you can tune your cars. Suspension, engine, gearbox, brakes and aerodynamics. It’s cheap – you will spend 2000 credits at worst for one upgrade. The categories of the cars all have different tuning levels. An R2 car will have just one level for each upgradable segment, but a WRC car will have three levels of upgrades – that is the maximum -, but the higher levels will need more time to develop with lower level mechanics. Same goes for getting the sponsors. Never leave a chance behind to upgrade your cars: it’s cheap!

A different coat of paint

13 rallies, each having six – or 7 – stages. You can halve these yet again because of reverse stages. You can also take 9 rallies immediately out of the 13. 4 rallies left: the New Zealand rally got replaced by the Australia one, and we also lost the Japan, Bulgaria and Turkey rallies too. These got replaced by the Greece, Sardinia and Argentina levels. These new levels also have those distinct T-junctions, but they are not that obvious as before. Some levels got shorter – one German starting point got pushed forward, so you don’t have to spend a minute around in a park anymore there -, but the levels are still the same as seen in the first game. Sure, they got a new coat of paint, but the levels are STILL the same. It’s not a big upgrade. Sure, there are the SSS levels, but not all countries have them, but I admit it: they are a welcome addition. Also, there’s the Berlin city levels – ever wanted to drive past the Brandenburg gate? Go ahead!

Still outdated here and there

On the audiovisual front, WRC2 is still weak. You can still see trackside objects pop up out of nowhere, which shouldn’t really be this obvious. The graphics are still weak, and I know it’s not the same genre, but compared to the visuals of DiRT 3, WRC2 has a long way to come. The audio is also below average, in fact, it’s even a step down from the first game! The co-driver doesn’t have any comments before and after stages, taking away this nice touch, which had given a breath of real life to the first WRC game. At least the co-driver bugs are still present: a crash is still followed by 5-6 seconds of silence. Cars still sound like drones, when I drive a robust Peugeot 205 Turbo 16, I expect it to have an aggressive engine, but no. Cars lack power on the sound front, and speaking of cars: finally! We get to see Group B cars in the career mode!… but damn, it’s lacking the fast, furious – and sadly, dangerous – Audi Quattro. Where the hell is that car? Sure, there’s the Ford RS200, or say, the Renault 5 Turbo, but it lacks one of the iconic cars of that era! At least the 2011 season cars are all put together nicely: the Ford Fiesta RS WRC is now accompanied by the new Citroën DS3 WRC…

Lacks motivation

I won the WRC, and then I got the message saying I’m the world champion and „I knew you would do it”. Yeah, then it was followed by the two „extra” seasons, where the game started chucking reputation at me like there’s no tomorrow. One event gave me 20K points, effectively bumping me up by 18-19 levels, reaching 100 by the last season’s middle part. There’s no reason to play till the end: no CGI, no staff roll, nothing, not even a congratulations for maxing the game out. At least WRC3 fixed this unmotivated career mode too…

You have to keep an eye out for money, because at the end of two seasons, I wasn’t able to pay all my employees despite winning everything. In fact, by 100%-ing the game, I still wasn’t able to get every car purchased, and to be honest, I didn’t feel like doing this either.

Although the game improved (I think the physics got better), and your car does get worn down if crashing, the game is still far from WRC3 – although that game a bit DiRT-y, it didn’t feel like a chore to play it though. WRC2 is a respectable effort (online is still good with its 16-player mode), but I’d rather recommend the third game. I hope WRC 5 – made by a new dev team – will be decent…

-V-

Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: Milestone S.r.l

Genres: auto szimulátor

Release date: October 25th, 2011,