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Iain Noble reviews
Sony
- Price: £39.99
- Players: 1-2
It’s all about driving a high powered rally car very quickly along a variety of realistic stages in rally events held all over the world. If this is what gets your pulse pounding then this is the game for you. If you don’t like driving games then is has nothing to offer.
It is a lonely life being a rally driver and just as in the real thing you spend all your time alone on each stage competing against the times of the other drivers. Unlike the Colin’s rallying titles you don’t go against a field of other drivers.
There is a ‘damage’ feature that will hamper your driving efforts if your maltreat your car. However I found it very difficult to get this to kick in. You really have to make some spectacular errors in going off course to get damage to your vehicle.
World Rally Championship is fun but it is also far too easy. I am terrible at driving games but found no real challenge in the game until the very end of a championship on Normal Difficulty level. The novice level is not worth bothering about. It only took a couple of hours of play to complete a championship on Normal. I am hoping that the Professional Level that this unlocks will provide a longer period of play.
The controls are ‘standard’ for driving games and take no time to master.
It is possible to alter the settings for the cars but as these are much more limited than those for GT3 and as the defaults are the best for each type of stage t hardly seems worth bothering to include this feature.
One very irritating habit is for the game to ‘lose’ the analog setting between each stage so that unless you remember to turn it on again you can find yourself tearing away from the start unable to control your car! Also the load times for the stages are very long.
The sound is good with each car having its own distinctive sound. The music is standard for a driving game and I wonder if ‘Garbage’ are going to specialise in this type of work?
The graphics are not up to Gran Turismo 3 standard but do the job. It is something of a challenge to make a rally course interesting (after a while one gravel track looks very much like another) but they manage to covey the illusion of being in a realistic setting in an identifiable country for each event.
Unlike previous rally games it really feels as if the cars are in contact with the course and the vibration feature plays a big part in this.
It is a shame that for a game that lets you choose to play as one of the real-life rally heroes and features ‘in car’ views, that all the drivers and co-drivers look exactly the same.
The cars are distinctive and handle very much like their real-life counterparts with significant differences in their performance.
As for replayability, I can’t see it taking any competent player long to complete a championship on all the difficulty levels. After that it depends on how keen you are on racing each other in multiplayer or to see if you can improve your times in a time trial.
To buy or to rent? – I would advise renting the game first of all and seeing if you can complete it in a few days. After that if you still think its worth going on with your rally career then consider a purchase.
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
PLAYABILITY
ORIGINALITY
ENJOYMENT
OVERALL 
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.