It’s been a few years siunce the last WRC game I played; the rather good WRC Rally Evolved on PS2, Sony’s last pop at a rally game before they let the licence go. So in zoom Milestone, makers of the SBK and Superstars V8 racing games.

Rally handling is a very different thing from Superbikes and touring cars so I approached WRC with some caution—this turned out to be a wise idea as the steering, initially at least, seemed horribly nervous to me. The steering in Rally games has to react quickly due to the nature of the sport, but WRC’s seems overly sensitive, twitchy even, and I found myself doing a lot of over-correcting and zig-zagging at first. There’s no adjustment to the sensitivity and I had fewer problems when using a steering wheel, but that won’t be an option for many so I went back to the joypad, and you do get used to it, just I got used to Forza 3’s edgy steering. Once you do get your head around it, the game really starts to work; the cars feel like they have some genuine weight (unlike DiRT) and powersliding around hairpins and handbrake turns at junctions soon start to feel natural and realistic. I don’t think the engine samples are the throatiest around at the moment but the various types of car sound sufficiently different. They also genuinely exhibit different handling characteristics, and the different road surfaces have lots of bumps, humps and hollows to test your reactions. WRC has two in-car views; one with the driver’s arms and steering wheel in view and one like you have your nose pressed up against the windscreen; a bonnet cam and two behind-the-car chase views, so everyone should find one they like. I wasn’t really expecting the game to handle this well, but it really does seem to vary between the classes, it’s also really noticeable how crash damage affects the handling, and so do road conditions. There is however no rain effect which I found surprising, although there’s a good wet road effect (like it’s just rained) and some good muddy stages in Japan and the Wales to sink your tyres into.

I should say that the 13 different rally locations certainly manage a different feel despite the less than impressive visuals, and mostly capture the essence of the country they’re supposed to be in, although I’m not sure why nearly every stage seems to have a fleet of Land Rovers parked at either the start or the end of the stage. I know it’s a pet hate with many rally game lovers so I should probably also mention that the stages have an extremely narrow overall driving corridor, and like the older Colin McRae games it will “reset” you far too readily, sometimes when you stray as little as 30ft from the centre of the track; you’ll often drift a bit wide, be heading back on track and be reset to the middle of the track, which is obviously annoying, and makes the game feel old and restricted.

As you progress through the levels you unlock faster classes of car, starting with the J-WRC cars (Citroën C2 R2, Citroën C2 S1600, Ford Fiesta R2, Honda Civic R3, Renault Clio R3, Suzuki Swift Sport R2, Suzuki Swift Super1600) you progress through the production class P-WRC (Subaru Impreza WRX STi N4, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX and the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X). The new S-WRC class on which WRC cars will be based next year is included (Fiat Abarth Grande Punto S2000, Ford Fiesta S2000, Peugeot 207 S2000, 2010 Škoda Fabia S2000) and finally you’ll get to drive this year’s WRC cars as driven by the real drivers (Citroën C4 WRC, Ford Focus RS WRC 09, Ford Focus RS WRC 08, Subaru Impreza WRC 07.) It takes a great deal of driving to unlock these so Milestone wisely allow you to use any of them in Special Stage, Rally Weekend or Championship modes right out of the box. If the WRC cars aren’t fast enough for you there are also 6 of those psychotically overpowered ‘80s Group B cars available as premium DLC (Audi Quattro S2, Peugeot 205 T16, Lancia Delta S4, Ford RS200, Citroen BX4 TC and the Renault R5.)

For some reason Milestone decided to give the co-drivers “personality” so rather than just read the pace notes they make comments throughout a stage, geeing you up or telling you to slow down, or that you’re driving like an old granny. Personally I don’t like it when developers do this, everyone knows a co-driver with a big mouth would last about 2 minutes in the real rally world, so why do rally games have to keep featuring the acerbic wit of these fleshy sat navs? The co-driver in WRC says things like “watch out, champion coming through” (do they think a co-driver would really say that?) and “keep driving like this and we’ll be in a good position to win the championship” 2 stages into a 13 rally championship! These and other pearls of wisdom like “I can’t even see the race leaders from here” are presumably supposed to gee you up, but just sound daft and childish… If this weren’t bad enough he also has a rather annoying habit of getting everything completely wrong and says things like “they’re increasing their lead on us" or “come on, is this the fastest you can go”? when you have all green sectors—this is naturally distracting the first time he does this as from the sector graphic you appear to be in the lead, and are. He also screams like a little girl at the slightest crash, which could have you looking for the "mute idiot" button. It was when looking for this I found that you can change to a lady co-driver, who ironically behaves like less of a girl and is altogether less annoying. Unfortunately outside of the career mode old pansy-twatmouth is a fixture though, and can’t be replaced. After sticking you with a painful companion, thoughtfully Milestone give you the option to alter the timing of pace note calls, a wise decision as some seem arrive a bit late on the default setting, and although I didn’t get to try them, would undoubtedly be way too slow for the Group B cars. Most importantly the pace notes seem to be mostly good, although some seem to have been spliced in at a later date because the co-driver’s voice sounds different, which is a bit sloppy.