A deep, exciting and action filled rally experience for both veterans and beginners.

WRC: Rally Evolved is the fifth game in the World Rally Championship series for the PlayStation 2. This is an exclusive and official game of the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile) World Rally Championship. It features licensed rally cars together with their associated names such as Sébastien Loeb, Toni Gardemeister and Petter Solberg, along with the courses from the World Rally Championship.

The Game

Rally racing in this game is fast, (relatively) realistic and exciting. The game has an emphasis on unexpected events that may occur during a rally race, so there are new challenges in every race. For example, there may be animals crossing the road, or falling rocks from a nearby cliff. Due to this feature you’ll never know what’s to come and you need to be prepared for surprises at all times – you’ll occasionally even encounter competitors who have wrecked their cars at the side of the track.

Content

You start the game with access to six cars in the WRC mode and six cars in the Super 1600 championship along with a few of the more exotic cars to use in the other game modes. You get to drive cars like Renault Clio, Suzuki Swift, Peugeot 206, Citroën Xsara, Mitsubishi Lancer, Audi Sport Quattro S1 and Subaru Impreza to name a few.
Extra cars can be unlocked by fulfilling certain conditions, like winning a certain amount of races or winning a certain rally. When these criteria have been met, you’ll be awarded with unlocking points that can be used to buy locked content from the unlock menu. There are sixteen unlockable cars, 31 unlockable stages (or variations there of) and other extras in the form of art galleries of concept art and car designs etc.

The game is quite well fed with features, game modes and unlockable content to keep any rally enthusiast happy for a long time. The game has a set of tracks from each of the sixteen different countries represented in the WRC so there’s definitely also some nice scenery and mileage to see here. The tracks are generally well designed with good variation of fast and technical segments. The game also has online multiplayer with up to sixteen players. The following game modes are available in WRC: Rally Evolved:

• Quick Race is a single race on a random track with a random car. This is the closest to arcade racing as you get with this game.
• Championship is the campaign mode where you race against the world elite. This can be played with up to four players locally and you take turns playing races.
• Single Rally lets you play a single rally where you race a set of tracks in a country and try to beat the best times. This can also be played with up to four players as the Championship mode.
• Single Stage is quite self-explanatory. It is where you race on a single stage. It has support for up to four players also.
• Rally Cross is where you get to drive extreme racing cars, unlocked concept cars along with the standard cars and race against three AI controlled drivers on an enclosed track doing laps. There are sixteen different tracks to race on – one from each country represented in the WRC.
• Historic Challenge is an unlockable game mode where you try to beat eighteen different challenges with various vintage rally cars.
• Lastly there’s the Test Track where you can test a track with your current car set up and fine tune your car settings accordingly.

On top of these game modes lies a quite generous wealth of options that can be altered like driving aids, camera adjustments, replay save function and UI settings, together with numerous settings that can be adjusted on the car itself.

The Championship and Single Rally modes are the main focus of the game and that’s where you get to select which real world driver you want to race as. Between races in a Championship campaign you’ll get to see the current state of your car – in other words the eventual damages you have sustained. You can then select what maintenance you want to undergo before the next subsequent race begins. The game is quite detailed about what part of your car has taken damage. This requires you to make tactical choices when applying repairs but more importantly – it encourage you to not take unnecessary risks. Crashes are quite devastating for your career, even though the cars can take a lot more damage than real cars can.

As mentioned above there is local multiplayer support in some of the game modes, but there is no split screen support. Instead up to four players can take turns racing the track against the clock and compete on the time tables. This may not excite you as much as a real-time head-to-head rally battle in split screen would do, but let’s keep in mind that WRC is based on a real rally competition.
The game features time record tables of best achieved times for each race where you can enter your initials (rather than just saving it with the name of your profile), which allows for some local time attack competition.

Controls

WRC: Rally Evolved has very enjoyable controls. You can play it with a regular Dual Shock 2 controller or a compatible racing wheel peripheral. If you have the option to play with a racing wheel, it is advisable in this game, although the regular controller is quite enjoyable in its own way. The game is such a pleasure to play regardless, much thanks to its many adjustable options and customization. You’ll instantly feel when you lose traction, and that is a very satisfying sensation. It’s also easy to imagine the roadability and bedding thanks to the sounds, vibration, behavior and movement of the car. It will take some time to get used to the controls, but once you do, you’ll start to notice that the amount of control you actually have over the car is astonishing. Each and every one of your slightest moves will have their appropriate consequences and it really makes driving in this game exciting like in no other game. You’ll feel extra good about yourself when you manage a sharp turn without slowing down much. This is where WRC : Rally Evolved really shines.

Even though the game tends to lean towards realistic controls and customization, it’s not strictly a hardcore simulator. It has a perfect mix of fair and fun controls with real depth.
The handling of the car is of course also affected by weather conditions, road type, car settings such as gear ratio, springs, dampers, ride height and so on. The car settings can be adjusted so you’re encouraged to do some experimenting in the Test Track mode.
As you improve your driving skill you might want to turn off the various driving aids and automatic transmissions. This will boost your performance notably if you can handle it, but it will also require another level of skill and practice.

What can break the illusion of realism and realistic controls are the crashes that can occur. It’s quite easy to recover even from the deadliest crashes, although the time you lose will likely ruin chance of winning the race. Damage to the car will affect its functionality (sometimes severely), but this tends to be kept on a playable level, rather than a realistic one.
Obviously you can’t go very far from the road, as the camera will then fade out and re-position your car back on the road. If you happen to find yourself in a tricky position out-of-bounds you can invoke this automated re-positioning by holding the select button.

Graphics

The graphics are very well done – this is what photo realism looks like on the Playstation 2. It is crisp and clear, and more importantly it runs at a very steady and high frame rate. The developers have added some very nice details in the stages such as birds that can be spotted in the scenery and the general level design has lots of variation. It mimics realism quite well for a PlayStation 2 game. There are nice and believable weather and dirt effects. Sure, there are some blurry textures here and there, and the lighting looks strange sometimes but overall the game looks very appealing and offers lots of unique scenery to see.
You can switch between different camera views as you play – an external camera, a hood-view, or a behind-the-wheel view. The camera also utilizes a special shaky distortion effect to further increase the illusion of high-speed racing which looks and feels great!

Sound

The sound is likewise enjoyable. The engines sound great – you can hear the engine roar at high revs, the co-driver’s comments and instructions are very appropriate most of the time, and the music in the menus has a load of attitude. When driving on gravel you’ll hear the characteristic sound of rock fragments and pebbles spray the under frame of the car, and similarly will you hear the slippery mud splash around you when driving in puddles. Occasionally when passing crowds of people you’ll hear the audience whistle, blow their horns and cheer you on which is a nice touch.

Summary

WRC: Rally Evolved is a rally racing game that simply looks and plays beautifully. The random events that can occur during races really add a unique and dynamic characteristic to the game. You’ll be surprised to hear your co-driver suddenly yells “Look out!” and discover that some reindeer are crossing the road ahead. The weather effects also add a lot of mood and atmosphere to the experience.
WRC: Rally Evolved is a racing game suited well for both experts and beginners much thanks to the optional driving aids, and the game features a lot of content and depth that could easily amount for countless game hours. If you are the slightest interested in video game rally racers you should get this – you won’t be disappointed!

Developed By: Evolution Studios
Published By: Sony Computer Entertainment
Version Reviewed: PlayStation 2
Genre: Racing / Rally / Simulator
Players: 1-16
Released: 2005-10-28