I can also confirm that there's some stutters in the game, specifically when doing a 'new' action in a race (first time you splash water, first time you spring up dust on a stage etc).

I really like the feature in Dirt 2.0 of driving up to the Marshall at the end of the stage, just gives that realistic feel so you cant just fang it over the line sideways into a cut scene

I’m absolutely in love with this game. I was not expecting it to be this good. Aside from the stuttering issues I think they hit it out of the park.

I can confirm on series x that there is occasionally a short lockup during a stage. It’s not too often tho. It’s also odd that you can adjust steering sensitivity but not throttle or brake

I'm a bit surprised that the game doesn't look better than Wrc generation i was expecting a stepup in graphics department and not only the codemaster physics

was waiting on you review before i preordered.

Far more promising and in-depth than expected. How encouraging!

Definitely keeping an eye on this one. Always love codemasters rally games although I found that Dirt rallye 1 and 2.0 were very hard sometimes. Probably a skill issue but something to keep in mind if its your first rally game.

Excellent review

Unreal Engine traversal stutter strikes again! I was concerned about this being an issue when it was announced that the game would be using Unreal Engine. This also doesn't bode well for the PCVR mode that's supposed to be coming. I wish they would have actually redone the physics instead of transplanting over the artificial handling model of Dirt Rally 2.0. The game still doesn't have a real tire model and it still seems to do that thing where the car just pivots around a center point instead of actually rotating the way a car would. This is why the rear wheels are always sliding and why the asphalt handling always feels so floaty.

Great review. Thanks!

Simucube 2 Pro is instantly recgonized, really awesome. Set everything to 40% initally beside Engine and Crash, good point to start off.

I drove a few stages last night and although I'm happy with the content, career mode and sexy car builder, I feel a bit sad that this game is too forgiving. For instance, I missed a corner onto a bridge in Indonesia, and before I even got to witness a devastating crash, the game had already respawned me back on track with a minor time penalty. So no damage at all. Similarly, cars are much more stable off-track and are almost impossible to damage terminally compared to DR2.0, even with the realistic damage setting turned on. I understand that this makes this game more approachable for new players and less frustrating, but that also lowers the risk/reward satisfaction for me.

I have a pre-order of the game on PS5 coming this Friday. Can't wait!

Great review, too bad that they suffer from similar optimization issues like Forza.

A bit torn about the handling. I don't need a hardcore sim, but I am picky about the overall feel and the movement of the cars. I know there are small improvements to the tarmac, which is nice.. ish. Maybe with even more improvements down the road (lol). However, from what I can tell, the cars still accelerates a little too quick on the loose stuff. There needs to be more wheelspin and struggle to get off the line on some surfaces. :D If they adress these things further, I'll be grabbing it for sure. As it is now though, on top of performance issues that doesn't bode well for my rig, and the G27 being on its last legs -- I'll wait with the purchase. Thanks for a nice and concise review.

If it would have a VR mode I would get it.. for now sticking to GT7 only.

Really looking forward to this. Even tho i have a GT DD Pro i alway played Dirt Rally 2.0 with the dualshock 4. Maybe this will work better with my wheel. But like the reviewer said - the constantration required using a controller is intense. That's what i love about the previous Dirt Rally games. Blink and you crash.

I’m having trouble with the wheel calibration process. I can’t tell if I’m doing it right and my wheel doesn’t match the position of the wheel on screen in the cockpit view. Thrustmaster T300 on PS5

Been playing the game on ps5 all day and can’t get enough of it honestly. Major jump from dirt 2 in my opinion. The graphics and sounds are stunning and while there I found one spot so far that is a consistent stutter the rest has performed very well. The sounds for me are the very best thing the game offers. Some are identical to real life, particularly the rally 1 cars. Tarmac, at least for me is much better than dirt rally 2 also.

I’ve played dirty rally, dirt 4, dirt rally 2.0, all with the exact same setup (Logitech G929 w shifter and handbrake) and this to me is EASILY the best everything has felt yet, especially right “out of the box”. Since it’s so near to early release there were no settings on the internet yet to replicate and adjust (still learning a lot and require other players settings then my adjustments to feel comfortable). With that said, I’ve had similar co-driver and performance issues you mentioned. On PC with i7 8700k, 3060 Super, and on an SSD was sub-bar but consistent FPS on “medium” settings achievable (yes I know my setup isn’t anything to write home about, but it gets it done and it’s mainly for context for others)

One question: is there a single rally mode? I own and still play Wrc 9 and it's very irritating that I'm forced to drive only on single stages and not the entire event.

Top review!

Still going to get it. At least it's not $70.

How can they not make the onlookers turn their heads to follow cars that drive past them ? I mean c'mon, it's 2023, that's got to be an easy one right!

TY for review.

Will be buying this on PS5, I do play most 3rd party games on my 2080ti or 4090 PC (wifes and mine). But these FPS performance of new games is bad imo. No wheel atm am looking for a high-end one to make a special rig for in our game room. This game looks like fun! Always loved DIRT3 back in the days. Never played the more realistic ones newer DIRT games I didn't like as much including Dirt5. Anyhow nice vid!

Codemasters? They got acquired by EA and I'm not sure how many games they've done so far under them, but their rally games used to be amazing. This one? It starts off there's this disembodied manager on the telephone just telling you what to do over a static tutorial screen. Then this song is always playing in the menu with the chorus "the love is goooone.... the love is gooone" and the game itself is soulless. It's like a cry for help or something, I don't know how all the reviews didn't pick up on this.

Woke up for this, not disappointed

Im on PS5 and live in the U.S. is this game live to play? Or still only pre order? I dont wanna spend 50 to wait today or a later date. The price is good considering the so-so reviews.

Is this a live service game, like Rally2.0 was, or can i play it wothout an internet connection....

Hi, does this game launch through the EA launcher? In other words if I buy the game on Steam and play it, will it open the EA launcher and then launch the game? Or is it like DIRT Rally 2.0 where it launches directly through steam?

Small question: When you say all gamepads are supported, does that include the PlayStation DualSense on PC? And if so, does that also mean we get the full feature set of the dualsense on PC in this game?

Nice Review, and in most aspects I feel like you in WRC 23. For me, absolute great are the gravel physics of the, for excample, old Group B RWD cars, that I drove 90% of my time in the sim. Couldn’t get enough from driving them! But you have to get deep into the gravel physic’s, never mind which car you want to drive. They are brilliant, I am sure most people who said that the gravel physic’s are wheird, ugly, Arcady and so on, and you could find a lot of them, aren’t going deep enough to them or aren’t be able to get so deep as needed, for sure not deep enough, to feel the fine details, fir excample the brilliant weight transfer, and the overall feel especially at the limits. For me these (gravel physics) are the greatest physics I have ever experienced in my over 20years of doing Ralley sims, and I play every title, at least for a few ours, others over 500ours, that comes out to pc. The gravel stages, for excample Kenia, Pacifico, Ociano, Greece, Finnland, Mexico, Sardegna, Estonia and Chile are soooo different in every kind and aspect, all of these have an absolute different feel, different Grip level, different lay out and are all a very big challenge to drive at least if you will bev fast there to come to the limits of stage/car combination. And for me they are also the most realistic ones I drove so far. Also the FFB on gravel is the best one I could experience in an Ralley title so far if you go deep with all their settings to set it as you need and like it, which takes me over 2 ours, but then the FFB is pure perfect with a lot of fine information and all information you need to be fast👍👌… On the other side Tarmac: The tarmac physics are not the best ones, way to grippy with rail feeling and so on… The stage design of a few tarmac stages for excample Croatia are soo boring, the stages there are so wide with thousands of same curves everywhere the same grip level and the same tarmac structure, absolute smooth tarmac as black ice, no bumps or things like that. Sooo boring… KI is also very broken, but carrier isn’t the most important thing for me. To be honest never testet carrier after over 30ours in the game… The actual performance is also a big problem cause of the stutters, but only one per stage for me, when I drove it second time I mostly don’t have any one. On Monte the game crashed a few times, that is a no go for any game!!! On the other side it runs fine with an very old PC with an vintage I 7700k (which is two generations under the minimum specs!) in combination with an new great RTX 4080 I have round 80FPS most settings on ultra on 3440*1440. If there are performance problems for you, set off mirrors (you don’t need them in Ralley) and set the reflections to the lowest(you wouldn’t see an difference while driving) and for sure, you will have at least round 20fps more with only by changing these two settings. Overall: For me it is the best (GRAVEL!!!) Ralley game ever released on PC. I am really in love with it and I am shure I will play it over 1000ours👍👌😍- on gravel !!! Please try it yourself! It is amazing!! All reviews are going from hate to glory…. You have to test it on your own… These are my 2 Cent to an Sim, I have ever waited for. Now Codis, please try to make an really nice tarmac Ralley Sim for us… (sorry for my ugly English - I am from Germany…)

Im loving it right now

How is it to play with controller? Need to know beafore i buy.

Could the stuttering be related to the fact that there seems to be no shader compiliation before getting into gameplay for the first time?

the game forgets my handbrake (via Bodnar Board) after shutdown. Need to recalibrate it on start up.

I got it early and enjoying it but I am disappointment they did not include the super stages. I like the handling of the cars in this game because I feel that generations handling was stiff. I got the PS5 version but I can't really say anything about stuttering or clips because I don't catch them. The stages are great so far and love the fact that its not online only like the career mode in Dirt 2.0 thank you for not doing that Code Masters.

what is the longest non dakar rally race?

Good review from someone whoa actually knows about rallying and its aspects

I left a like just for the timestamps.

What is the best wheel for wa wrc on ps5 under €400

is this game always online for career mode ? didnt buy the new forza for that exact reason i want to play my game when my internet dies (does often enough where im at)

f1 needs this kind of car customization

I can't wait to try it tonight. I play 5mn before heading to work, and i must Say it look goood.

Does anyone know where to find the 5hour trial on EA Play? I checked this morning and could not find anything on the Playstation store or under EA trials!?

played it for 2 hours today was fun but yea game does stutter even on a 4090 from time to time... hope they focus on vr and performance asap.

Good and fair review I think. I will say that when you can get the game working better, the handling does feel like an excellent step up. (I liked DR2.0 but I always felt like I was fighting the car to move it around, and it could be hard work even to play an hour at a time. With this game feel is more direct and the car is more placeable/predictable, which is great :) )

my i ask what is the OST 11:35?

Feel for you with the PC version. I play all my games on PC, apart from driving games. This looks excellent on the PS5. Easily one of the best looking driving games on the platform. Slight pop in now and again.

I will probably wait until there are performance optimizations and VR added before I pick it up. I am excited to get behind the wheel for it though.

The most important thing to me in a racing game, especially in rally games is this: does the car really feel like a huge metal structure with wheels? Can you feel it's weight while driving? Because most racing games either make it look like the car is flying with no friction, or they stick it on the ground so much that you can't even properly slide. How is this game at that? I used to play WRC3 and that one was handling it well

What is the best wheel for ps5 under €400

I play this game on PS5, after latest update nothing to complain, noticed nothing off, seems stable now.

On PS5 the graphics are buggy, the screen breaks and we often can see horizontal lines.... This never happened with other games. 🙄😢

I've only played it for 30 minutes, can't wait to get back home to play more. What I noticed so far was indeed the stability issues. Playing on medium settings I got 50/60FPS which is not an issue perse if the constant frame drops didn't occur. Also pop ins and blurry textures while driving cockpit really ruin the immersion. Not being able to see a clear image 4 feet from your hood doesn't help.

Why can’t you hear any gravel in the wheel arches etc?

Another promising looking game that needs more time what a surprise.

When is VR support being added?

Would be nice to have the pace notes to be read out even earlier that the highest setting. Also, anyone have any good FFB settings for a CSL DD? Not sure if it’s the game or my FFB settings needing more tweaking.

Played a little on series s earlier it was a 90% good experience handbrake seems like it needs pulling a fair time before it does anything and with my g920 it had a tiny bit of input lag

Very exciting. Though I dont have a PS5 :(

What is the damage model on the cars? Good bad ?

Can any1 name a game that runs right on unreal engine for console? From my experience every unreal game allways runs horrible on console... I'm sticking to dirt 2.0 and hope they will add more stuff to it as well sense they the same company's

As a casual controller player - is this game more friendly to huge screw ups? I want to be able to redo a whole race or championship if I total my car and can't afford to fix it. I don't want to ever have a damaged car in the garage. Hated that about Dirt Rally 2.0

It plays well on my legion 5 rtx 3070 on ultra , to make it look nore polished i put cinematic on anti-aliasing looks lush now track will take some gettinf used to

I just don’t get it. A rallygame releases without VR support in 2023. There won’t be any PSVR2 support at all. And, if ACC is anything to go by, Unreal does not play well with VR. It’s a miss as far as I - and likely anyone who played DR2 in VR - am concerned. Also a miss for the many people on more modest PC builds.

Can we play this game mulitplyer in split screen mode?

Oh... not another new release with performance issues.

Performance problems with UE4 isn't new. Hope UE5 can fix that eventually.

I woke up super early before I went to work to test the game... the game is absolutely BRILLIANT... however I am really diappointed with the performance... I have an RX6900XT... I should have NO PROBLEM running it 1440p ultra but the frame drops are insane and I'm unable to run it... I literally run it 1440p medium settings which is sad for a 700-800$ GPU that was the flagship of AMD last gen... I mean, if I can't run it 1440p ultra then good luck running the game at all with anything lower than a 6700XT or a 3070... Ok, to make myself clear, at 1440p medium I run the game at around 100-110 FPS but it drops SEVERELY at almost any moment... I never go under 60 but come on... 1440p medium settings with a 16GB VRAM monster??? Maybe it's the RAM that's the problem (I have 16GB and not 32GB DDR4, never had to upgrade so far) . I don't know... I'm very concerned... like, if someone wants to stream or record the gameplay, how shit would it run? Please let me know if there is a way to fix performance at least at 1440p... I think they have implemented ray tracing that you can't turn off or something... cause AMD sucks at ray tracing... I don't know... I'm really disappointed...

8:15 exactly me F**KING the co driver every time 😂😂 Oi cant you tell me a left 4 much earlier before I commit into that big jump?!?!?!? 😂😂

EA WRC is 9.5/10 on PS5. Sounds amazing, handling depends on how you drive race cars. And the physics throttle off and glide through corners.

Interested if the VR performance is okay, but given how ACC absolutely chugged in VR with Unreal, not too hopeful..

Thanks for confirming it still doesn't have individual tire/wheel physics and is just a slight improvement over the industry-standard hovercraft simulation approach used in DR 2.0 and every other console-based rally game. Too bad, as the rest of the game and content looks good, but with DR 2.0-level arcade physics, it won't actually be fun in an immersive manner for me.

Up in the a** of, Timo!

Damnit Im stuck at work while everyone gets to play

Does it have VR?

I would love to buy this but can't since my pc is too old and my sim setup is on my PS4

The physics model on these games is fundamentally broken because it does not simulate how rear wheels grip up on the road anywhere near properly. This is why your car went flying off the road on tarmac. I wish it wasn't such a bizarre physics model but because it's so busted I'm gonna wait to buy.

Super disappointing, could not get it running smoothly despite ultra low settings and dlss on an i7 and 2060. If its shaders loading in and theres no way to preload them thats just a ridiculous oversight. Refunded after testing every setting for just under a couple hours. Heartbreaking that there just cant seem to be a good official rally game made with current stages

Looking good, but I'll wait a few months until the game gets some patches and I have a better understanding of what these game passes are and also see what kind of support this game will get after launch before I commit to it.

I played it and idk if it was something related to performance but I was surprised I wasn't able to finish a single stage without spinning out into a wall or flying off a cliff, I know somebody is gonna come at me saying "skill issue" but hey I've been playing other rally games from Dirt and WRC series for a long time and I've not had any struggles, combined with the fact (at least on my xbox Series S) the graphics were a step down from older games. Im still willing to give it another go but as a first impression things didn't go well at all imo.

2:50 "When one door closes, another one opens... otherwise its a great car and can be yours for only $24999.99"

Can I still preorder this to play early?

Guys i changed my pad settings to acceleration right stick up and brake right stick down. But when i drive and just let go of the gas it starts to brake not all the time but sometimes. I checked the braking when letting off gas and thats set to 0. I did this so i could change gears to RT and LT. Please if anyone has any information to help me please let me know

If you have to play it on medium to get smooth gameplay, so be it. Maybe in a couple of years with a GPU upgrade you can play on max and it will look better. If they made the game with the 'medium' settings as the 'Ultra' settings people would say the graphics were 'ok' and that it was pretty well optimised. No one could play Crysis on Max when it came out. It was designed for future graphics cards.

They better sort that 'floaty' look out....I've pre ordered

Is this game out today?

Just played a bit of my early access I’m kind of confused why the bindings for wheel buttons are so limited. There is no bind in the game for pausing via your wheel… and you can’t rebind the keyboard pause to a secondary. I also feel that graphically it looks a bit muted compared to 2.0 and I am on Ultra settings.

After dirt rally VR I vowed never to start a rally game on a flat screen ever again. So when is the psvr2 upgrade coming?😂

Should have stuck with the Ego engine imo. The game is fun and it definitely feels hectic when you're going flat out, but the visual are lackluster and the performance is abysmal right now. Hopefully they can get it fixed, but im not holding my breath.

Paint on some cars, especially on replays, looks strange. Like the clear coat/ lacquer is not letting enough light pass though. Impreza blues looked better in Dirt 2.0 for example. Look too 'white' in this EA WRC.

Why do I feel like the graphic is somewhat of a downgrade?

I guess we should cut the codemasters some slack because running UE games are kinda frustrating to run compared to EGO.

This game is incredible

I think people should stop complaining considering dirt 5 is what the last rally game from codemasters looks like

Just waiting for VR.

I still play Colin MacRae Rally on Steam.