It’s not too taxing, even without the driving assists, but it’s fun to drive. They definitely feel faster, especially on the narrowest and most perilous stages, and there’s a good sense of grip and weight, as well as a tangible difference in friction levels across the range of surface types. It’s still a homogenised field of small Euro hatchbacks, but they’re the best-looking WRC cars in many years and developer Kylotonn’s adept stage design places these exciting, revamped models in a terrific testing environment. The result is cars that are lighter, more powerful, and fitted with wider and more aggressive aerodynamics, and that’s all accurately reflected here. Like this year’s F1 season, the real-life 2017 World Rally Championship has seen a number of changes to car regulations. The cars are fine, though, with sharper liveries and clad in the 2017’s season new bodywork. The perfect solution here is probably a mix of the two approaches – a couple of hand-built staples to tackle on return visits to the same rally, broken up by fresh auto-generated stages to change things up each year throughout your driver’s career. WRC 7’s stages may have more character and individuality than Dirt 4’s procedurally generated ones, but the latter are in endless supply.
There’s no sense the rain has any real, physical properties as it hits the windscreen it’s a really basic, superficial effect that looks about 15 years out of date. Time-of-day lighting is generally very good, too, though the wet weather effects are still quite poor compared to the competition. “The stages are the best looking part of the WRC 7 package, well-lit and packed with a very generous level of detail. It starts to lose its shine after a full season, and I find I’m no longer tuning into the pace notes because I’m remembering sections of road wholesale from half a dozen previous attempts. In career mode they’ll begin to be repeated during your very first visit, albeit under different lighting or weather conditions. Of course, the price we pay for these bespoke, hand-built stages is the fact that there are a limited number of them – just four for each country, total. At the end of an Epic Stage I always feel as if I’ve ended up far, far from where I started.
These stages often feel like three stages in one as the environment shifts around us, with entire towns giving way to rolling countryside, and vice versa. Beyond the 1:1 stages (like the Panzerplatte from the Rally of Germany) these 15- to 20-minute long Epic Stages are the closest the series has come to replicating real rallying as a true test of endurance. The stage selection for 2017 has been bolstered by the inclusion of an extra-long course for each country.
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