My first encounter with the WRC series was last year. I’d gotten WRC 6 for free in Games with Gold and decided to try my hand at my first racing sim. Unfortunately, I was less than enthused by what I had played. The control of the car felt off, I didn’t understand the callouts, and I personally thought that the game left people like me behind. Luckily, KT Racing’s latest entry into the series offers a better-streamlined experience for both seasoned veterans and newbie drivers. WRC 9 has turned my experience around completely.

Story

You won’t see cheesy character depictions or a larger than life story taking place in WRC 9. I’d even say that there isn’t one at all. What you do get is a large number of different ways for you to take control of your racing team. You’re the boss, you call the shots. It’s up to you to build up your career from scratch and to keep it going even during your off-seasons. All the tools to get your team working and growing are at your disposal through the game’s systems. It doesn’t matter how hard your team works at the end of the day though because it’s up to you to win the races and keep the lights on.

Gameplay

The game starts by having you run a couple of tests to see how you handle the game’s mechanics. From there, you’re able to adjust the difficulty and begin your racing career. I appreciated this being implemented in the game from the start. Like I said above, I wasn’t much a fan of the series due to my rough time with the 6th entry’s lack of help given to the player. It does a fantastic job of having help options on the screen at all times too.

WRC 9 is a racing sim with an extraordinary amount of depth within it. This is a title that has been meticulously created to bring you a true rally simulation. Cars are weighty to give you some challenge in perfecting your control over each vehicle you get behind the wheel of. Crashing and bashing into obstacles won’t just damage the cosmetic aspects of your racer but the internals necessary to getting through each course and avoiding a DNF (did not finish). The game is really harsh from the beginning with no signs of letting up on you. It isn’t a Need For Speed game in the fact that if you miss a turn you can still come back. If you mess up in this game, you might as well start the event over.

My knowledge of what rallying is was scarce before my time with the game. It seemed interesting to me that racers have a co-drivers in the car with them calling out pace notes. Being that there’s no map like in other racing games, you’re really depending on your co-driver to deliver the best directions possible. At first, it was confusing figuring out what their callouts meant. Aside from the obvious ones like left and right directions of course. But as I played I became so familiar with the callouts that I didn’t even need to look at the top of the screen to see the notes. I would just trust that my co-driver had me covered when I heard them say them.

Every country available to race in has its own tracks and courses that are realistically brought to life as you’d see them in person. Not only are they distinctive in their atmosphere and track style, but they also come with their own set of weather conditions true to their ecosystems. Like with any racing game in recent years, weather patterns will impact the way you tackle an event. Your co-driver will also call out the obstacles ahead caused by weather.

The game gives you as a player many different parts of the car to mess around with and tweak to your desire. The biggest one is the choice of changing your tires to best fit the type of road you’ll be driving on. There’s a plethora of them to improve your grip on any type of road no matter the circumstances. The tire selection is really intuitive with the information it gives you. Most games just tell you which tire works best with a given road but this tells you why specifically it works and how long the tread will last.

Events in career mode vary depending on the week. The schedule is broken into a season with each activity you choose to take place in a week’s time slot. You can enter in rallies, historic races, hazardous races, training, resting your team, and so on. The rallies are the bread and butter of the career aspect and take a lot of patience and due diligence from you. You’ll get 4 races in total with a break after the first set of them. During this break, you’ll have a limited amount of time to make preparations and repairs to your vehicle before the last 50% of the rally.

Doing this properly couldn't be stressed enough. There was a rally where I didn’t have enough time to correctly repair my car and it cost me dearly. The next race was set at night in a pitch-black forest. I hadn’t been able to see the track ahead of me and my only guide was the pace notes from my co-driver. I thought it was a glitch at first and tried restarting the race over and over. Eventually, I realized that my headlights had been completely busted out. I had to pull myself out of the event and take the loss. It’s things like this that make the experiences in this game so unique to it.

You’ll also be in charge of managing crucial members of your team. Each one has a major job in making you, your car, and the rest of the team moving like a well-oiled machine. One of the most important members other than the mechanics is the meteorologists. They help point out the weather conditions when it comes to how you should adjust your car before the event. Without them, you’ll go in blind and will wind up underperforming.

It’s important to take care of them too. Their fatigue will wear them down and eventually, they’ll have to take a break for a bit. Putting them on reserve or taking team rest days helps everyone’s moral and keeps the team working together. You’re also able to hire replacements to fill in when they have to take a chill pill. As you play and improve your reputation you’ll be able to uncover opportunities to hire rare occupations.

Besides the story mode, there’s a lot to look at and get into. There are weekly challenges to take part in, online multiplayer, Club mode, and more. Club mode is new and was specially created for this game. It allows you to set up a crew made up of other online players. Once created, you then get to challenge other teams in community-created events. Unfortunately, it’s not available as of writing this review but it is something that KT Racing has been buzzing about.

Performance-wise, the game is superb. I never had issues with framerate drops or anything of the sort. Load times aren’t too long and I never experienced issues that impacted my races at all.. Even though the graphics may be lacking at times, the game itself runs like a dream.

Visuals

I’d say that the visuals are the project’s weakest element it has to offer. It’s not to say that they’re bad at all though. Most times they are overwhelmingly ambient and made me feel like I was really in other countries. I would urge players to reserve their expectations and realize that they’re going to be seeing lesser graphics than what they might be used to in games like the Forza series. They get the job done but just aren’t a next-level ingredient in the recipe.

The graphics are at their strongest when you’re dealing with elemental weather and night time courses. The gloomy or snowy races were always great to look at and take in. When I’d be driving at night I’d get a rush just trying to keep my wheels spinning. There’s something truly exhilarating about driving at high speeds through mountainous narrow roads with your headlights being the only real thing to get you down to the finish line.

Audio

I’d say that my favorite aspect of the game is its sound design. Every car has its own distinct engine sound and rumble. It gets even better once you get going on the tracks and hear the different types of roads you’re driving on and the engine sounds working in unison. As your car gets more and more damage dealt to it, its damage is evident in how it starts to sound. Your car could go from a brute low-humming monster at the beginning of the race to a weakly squealing wreck once you make your way across to the end. It’s the attention to detail in sound that makes this such a realistic experience overall.

Replayability

Racing fans will find a ton of reasons to come back to the game over and over. Between its single-player career, events, daily challenges, clubs mode, and multiplayer options there is no reason why anyone should feel that there isn’t enough to find excitement in. The developers have designed this game to stay around for a couple of years. This is cemented in by the fact that there’ll be continuous updates with free content included. This is the right way to do games as a service.

What It Could Have Done Better

The environments at times can look both fantastic and dated. I’m not sure why this is the case though. It’s usually the up-close details of characters and the environments that look the worst. Trees would just disappear into tiny pieces as I hit them and came off laughable. Why even have them get destroyed if it looks so lacking? The reflections off of water and windows too have issues displaying properly. It’s actually very noticeable so I’m puzzled by why this wasn’t touched up before release.

Verdict

It’s hard to overlook the depth of realism that’s been painstakingly crafted in WRC 9. This is more than just a racing game, it’s a look into how racing and its industry work from the inside. By making it a more accessible experience for new players, this allows anyone to become a fan of rally car racing. If you’re looking to try something new when it comes to racing titles, this one offers something worth-while.