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THE WORST

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 19
Date: November 20, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This doesn't even worth a star.Just like lemans 24 hr. a game developer trying to hustle a quick buck. Don't touch this.

Andre

waste of time

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 13
Date: June 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

just to keep this short. poor physics, bad tracks, no realism.

Pretty poor game for a PS2

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 9
Date: August 30, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game and shortly afterwards sold it. Don't waste your time buying it. I'd wait for Collin McRae 3 or something else. The graphics are very poor for PS2. Detail is low, car detail is horrible, as is the scenery and off road textures.

The car's handle OK but not as realistic as Collin McRae 2 on the PS1. I was most disapointed by the steering wheel support. It works, but it doesn't take advantage of the force feedback. It just vibrates with no apparent notion of the car dynamics - also, you keep having to use the PS2 controller to navigate the menu options. I hope the other upcoming rally games have better feedback in this respect.

I expected A LOT more

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: April 18, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I'm very disapointed. Sure the graphics are amazing, but there's just too much low points in this game to get a decent score.
1. You can drive as reckless as you want. Your car will be fine for the next stage.

2. Setup of the car is way to basic. We're all used to the CMR series, Rally Masters and Rally Championship, where setup is essential.

3. It's just way to easy to complete. Drive the Accent or the Octavia for a half-decent challenge.

4. They have everyone listed, except Colin McRae. Why is he listed as "Ford Driver" and doesn't score any points?? Unfair I tell ya!!

I can't wait for CMR3.

Lackluster, Poor Physics, Pace Notes often useless

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: August 17, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I really *love* Rally and rally games, but I'm quite disappointed with World Rally Championship. Don't let the nice graphics fool you, this game has poor overall production values. It's not challenging, has sub-par driving physics and is lacking both realism and depth. Combine this with the very, very long load times and non intuitive menus and you have one stinker of a game.

Within 1/2 hour of playing this game on normal mode, I was winning everything. A bit longer and I was easily beating the game on the most difficult mode.

Rally driving is all about pace notes, it's the one thing that needs to be right for any rally game. However in this game, the pace notes are often read so late that the corner appears before the note is read. There's also no provision for controlling the speed at which pace notes are read. Professional rally drivers often have notes read to them 4 or more corners ahead of where they are at the time. In this game, some notes are either mumbled badly or simply dead wrong. Either way the game forces you into corners while giving you no idea what is on the other side. I can only think this was done by design in order to make the game somewhat challenging...

A WRC Rally runs over 3 days, with 6 or more stages a day. This game has only 5 stages in total for each round of the championship. An average rally stage is about 10 to 15 miles in length, sometimes much longer. The stages in this game average 3 to 5 miles in length, with the longest being a 6 mile stage. These stages are so short as to be totally unrealistic.

The cars in this game are horribly simple to drive and fail sharply in realism. For instance, in real-world tarmac rallies, the brakes are the most important component. Often having to be water cooled as they're used so frequently. Yet one can manage to drive many tarmac stages in this game with only barely touching the brakes. Certain stages could probably be won in this game without touching them at all. This is unrealistic in the extreme and makes the game very unchallenging. In fact, the driving physics in Gran Turismo 3 and Grand Theft Auto 3 are much better than those in this game. The short rally portion of GT3 features a far better "rally driving" experience that the one available in this game.

The game has little depth. One of the main issues in rallying is that the drivers often have to repair their own cars when flat tires and such happen. And rally drivers often have to conserve their cars and tires so failures will not happen. This game simply glosses over all those issues, drive as hard as you like, run over stones, the car will live. In all but the most extreme head-on collisions the car will remain totally undamaged. I've flipped a car a half a dozen times in expert mode and no damage resulted. In an actual rally, major repairs can only be done at certain times. This game mysteriously repairs your car to full functionality after every stage.

In addition, there is no way to get a detailed overview map of all the stages before a rally, just a basic map of the stage you are about to attack. The car set up is very limiting with only 3 different tire, brake and transmission settings. Most of the time a choice other than the default will result in far worse times. Not that it really matters, as the driving physics likely aren't good enough to take advantage of subtle tweaks available in other titles.

Various gripes: The production values of this game are quite low and are clearly evident from the plain white outside cover. The video clips are of a very low resolution and were obviously just ripped from the 2000 WRC television coverage. The game forces you to enter a replay mode after completion of every stage, there is no way to disable automatic replays (although they can be aborted). During the replay, music plays in the background but only 5 songs are available. But for each stage a single song will play over and over, there is no provision for selecting which track you would prefer to hear.

The load times in this game are nearly unbearable and poorly thought out. Unlike better games, WRC doesn't load and automatically pause you, you have to stick around while the game is loading or you'll definitely loose the stage. Because once this game's horribly long loading is done, it automatically launches you right into the stage.

The menu system takes a long time to load as well, and surprise, it's poorly thought out. There is *no* way to quickly move along through the stages of a rally. To continue from one stage of the same rally to the next, you have to hit the continue button 8 times, and wait for a few loads in the middle of those. After many screens are is passed, there's no going back. This also counts for things like secret codes that are given after winning a rally. If you hit the continue button (as you'll soon automatically do all the time just to get through all those screens), you'll have to win the whole rally again in order to see the code.

Concluding, this is obviously just a cheap license title of the WRC trademark. It has poor menus, long load times, horrible driving physics and is a thoroughly lackluster effort. However, if you really love rally and can find this game at a bargain or rental (as I did), give it a shot. It does have nice graphics, (although not as nice as GT3). Otherwise I'd wait for V-Rally or Colin McRae to arrive on PS2.

I can't wait for V-Rally 3 and Colin Mcrae 3

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: April 14, 2002
Author: Amazon User

...It's not a bad game.In fact it's incredibly fast and handles the way a good rally game should. I just have a few personal problems with this game.

First of all,there is no service area like in Colin Mcrae or V-Rally.You can totaly trash your car and it will be fine for the next stage.Ridiculous.

Secondly,the normal difficulty is too easy.The only trouble I had was in the first rally when I kept picking the wrong controller set up,or had it on manual transmission or thought I should change the type of tires on the car.Actually The Network Q rally was a challenge as well.The only way to get the proffesional difficulty is to become the WRC champion.Not that hard to do,but you have to finnish all 14 rallies to do so.I wanted a harder setting after the fourth rally.

Next,Although you can change some settings on your car,the computer allready sets it up for you at the begining of every stage.The only thing I played around with was the gear ratio.

Also,for a game that is officially licensed it would of been nice if the rallies shared something in common with there real life locations.For instance,they show several watersplashes in the intro for Argentina and there weren't any in the game.They mention the ballbearing like gravel in Australia and it drove like gravel anywhere else.In Colin Mcrae2 the Australia stages are really hard because you can't get a good grip of the road.It would of been nice to see the bridge in Catalyuna as well.

Speaking of the individual rallies in general,there seem to be too much driving up hill.This isn't a hill climbing game.

The level designers also liked to put jumps(or yumps) just before a major turn.This was a good trick at first but quickly lost it's appeal.

I lost count of what number this is suppose to be but trust me I'm not done yet.

Oh yes the load times.Bring your laundry to the room your PS2 is.I have had a lot of time to sort my socks and get everything on hangers while I'm waiting for the game to load.A magazine or comic is also handy.I tried reading some of The Two Towers while waiting but there wasn't enough time.

The co-driver's calls are also at times off.A hairpin on one stage is just a "5" on another.Sometimes he is even way too late on his call.Luckily there is a map you can take a quick peek at if you need to.

If you plan on playing this with friends ,forget it.The two player mode is done by split screen.You still are not technicly on the stage at the same time but yet you are stuck doing it at the same time.It's retarded.Colin Mcrae2 had up to 8 players each taking turns at the stages.It might take awhile to play but at least it was playable.

I just unlocked the professional mode and am currently doing the championship while driving a Hyundai.So far I'm earning top 3 finishes,unlike the easy mode where i could drive off a cliff and still win.The proffesional mode so far seem more competitive.There was no fun in knowing I was going to win all the time on the easy mode.

Hopefully most of this will be fixed before the next version of this game comes out.Only problem is ,by then Colin Mcrae 3 and V-Rally 3 should be out and the previous versions of those two games are allready better in so many ways than WRC,except graphically and the lack of the official WRC license.(The intro's for the rallies are cool.)

Despite all of the bad stuff I had to say,(there was a lot wasn't there),I still have to give this game 3 stars.Rally fans are going to buy this game regardless what anybody says,I just wanted to warn them that it wasn't as perfect as some people may of told them.For those who are not rally fans I'm sure someone has a nascar game for you somewhere,but please give this game (and sport)a try,you might be surprised.

HORRIBLE experience

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 6 / 13
Date: May 07, 2002
Author: Amazon User

First of all, I watch a lot of WRC racing, I'm a big fan. The game has its high-points: realistic sound, official licensing, and plenty of tracks. But the cars handle COMPLETELY unrealistically. To give you an idea, I brought the car to a complete stop, but my car still mysteriously floated a few inches in whichever direction. Even on asphalt! The car powerslides with the gentlest turn of the wheel! I'm not just a bad driver (No one in my neighborhood can beat me at the Gran Turismo series), the cars just handle horribly. While the cars sounded GREAT (I could hear the signature Peugeot exhaust note), the skidding sounded just harsh and awful, nothing like real skidmarks, and it made the entire driving experience painful. This game has its high points, but its lows drop below sea level, and I'm regretting having bought this game.

WRC Review

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: March 23, 2003
Author: Amazon User

First of all, I feel I paid just the right price for this game; I was able to purchase WRC for only $19.99. My main comparison of this game is with GT3, which, while it doesn't have much for rally races, it far surpasses WRC on realism, both car handling and exterior detail as well as track detail are much better on GT3. GT3 in my own opinion is the most realistic and best racing game there is, now in all fairness WRC was very easy to get started in a career and the dificulty of this game is quite easy. The vehicle handling is very hard to get used to, especially after playing such a realistic game as GT3. Now granted, GT3 lacks cockpit views and pilots. I however really enjoyed the opening movies to each track and location display of where the courses are in each country. I also like the fact that there were quite a few different courses. Although I was disappointed to find that the Baja was not on the list. All in all I feel that $20 was just the right price.

Fun... but way too easy

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: April 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Finally the satisfaction of driving a WRC car. Graphics and framerate are great. But the game falls short on realism (it's an arcade game rather than a simulation) and it is way too easy... Replay value is low, so rent it unless you are a huge WRC fan!

Great RALLY GAME but still not perfect!!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: April 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game is fantastic as far as all the tracks, sound effect, and driving the cars itself; just an amazing game. Then again, this game is still not perfect overall. To tell you the truth, I like COLIN MCRAE II (CM2) for PSone system. The game is tough and lots of tracks. The game becomes harder as you go pro with CM2 game. With this WRC the numberof tracks are the same with NORMAL and PRO version. They're all the same tracks as well, no different. It's just when you go pro you just have to be a bit faster than anybody else. I think you can do it. I earn my PRO title after 2 days of playing this game.

As far as technical stuff, CM2 is really harder. You just have to know the tracks you're dealing with. Unlike the WRC, the tire will be adjusted according to the tracks you're playing now. If it's gravel, WRC only gives you two options; wet or dry. NO MUD or anything like that.....

What really hates me about this WRC game is the LOADING TIME. It takes really long, longer than Gran Turismo 3. I don't know why.

Sorry if I have to compare with CM2. But CM2 really has a great game play rather than WRC. It looks like WRC just like to give you a feel of what it takes to be a world rally driver in an easy to play game. I'm not saying it's gonna be easy for everybody. But if you're good at driving in GT3, I'm sure you're good at this one too.

This game also has EXCELENT graphics, driving views, and awesome replay. Just like you see it on SPEED-TV (speedvision) channel. You're gonna love this game.....

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