Naturally, games like this live and die by how they actually play out on the road, and it’s here where WRC 9 remains a bit disappointing. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked) Naturally, if you aren’t interested in any of this backstage tomfoolery, there’s also a Season mode where you can simply take on the rallies without having to ever see the inside of an office. None of this is massively different from last year’s game, where the mode made its debut in this form, but we suppose if it ain’t broke and all that. The result can’t be denied, though: there are simply fewer locations in this new game, though this is somewhat compensated for by the addition of a load of extra stages in the Finland and Portugal rallies, meaning the total number of races is still higher (108 this time compared to 102 in last year’s game), even if the diversity in scenery has dropped a little.Īs in the previous game, there’s a fully-featured career mode, which lets you return back to your team’s office building and control various behind-the-scenes aspects, like planning your upcoming calendar, hiring and firing crew members (while keeping an eye on their total salary) and using the game’s enormous skill tree to develop the performance of both your car and crew. If you’re keeping count, this means there are fewer locations in WRC 9 than there were in WRC 8.Īgain, it could be argued that this is no fault of the development team: we’re sure licensing issues prevented them from keeping in a few of the other tracks, even just as an option to play them outside of the main season. What this means is that four rallies (Australia, Catalunya, Chile and Corsica) have been removed from the last game, and the three new rallies originally planned for this season (Japan, New Zealand and Kenya) have been included. Here, then, you instead get the normal 13-round season as it was originally listed by the WRC before it started. In real life, the 13-round season was suspended after three rounds, found itself stuck in limbo for six months, returned with a couple of previously unplanned rallies in Estonia and Monza (which therefore aren’t in this game), went on for a while longer, then was eventually cancelled after just 7 rounds. This year’s game is technically based on the 2020 Championship, but because of real-world, pandemic-related events that were no fault of the developers, it’s no longer accurate.
WRC 9 provides a video game representation of the official FIA World Rally Championship. Sadly, WRC 9 has failed to address these, leading us to believe that, at this point, this is probably the best Switch owners are going to get without some sort of upgraded hardware.įor those who missed out on last year's game. Unfortunately, while the WRC franchise has gained accolades on other systems, it’s struggled to find a foothold on the Switch due to a number of technical and practical issues – and last year’s effort was sadly lacking in a number of areas, particularly visually.
#WRC 9 VS WRC 8 DRIVER#
While the Colin McRae Rally series has over time evolved into Dirt – which tends to focus on more over-the-top racing (not that it’s on Switch anyway) – the official games of the World Rally Championship continue to stick with a completely straight-laced approach to a sport that was never about Dirt’s chaotic 12-car races and has always been about two people – a driver and their navigator – conquering the environment together. Over the past few years, the WRC series of rally games has gained a reputation for providing arguably the most accurate depiction of the sport.
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