World Rally Championship 4 review

Here in its fourth iteration, World Rally Championship 4 reaches its finest hour. Evo Studios clearly has a real grasp of the PlayStation 2 hardware and seems capable of squeezing more performance out of the machine than any other developer of rally games. But let's start at the beginning.

WRC4 is the official game of the 2004 World Rally Championship. In practice that means all the real cars, drivers and events of the 2004 season. If you really want to drive that Peugeot 307 WRC then this is the only place to do so. While other rally games lazily provide only a selection of the events in the real championship, WRC4 gives you the whole set of 16 events, from the season opener in Monaco to the final event in Australia.

Globe Trotting

Having seemingly nailed the graphics in the last game, Evos set about providing a much broader gaming experience in this latest WRC game. The traditional championship remains, taking in the 16 World Rally locations. But there's much more on offer, including test tracks (such as Grizedale Forest), super special stage championship, extreme and 1600 championships and a whole series of career based tasks.

The system of rewards has undergone something of a revamp too. Success in events now gives the player points to spend on unlocking new cars, upgrading the WRC models and unlocking stages for use in Time Trial mode. It's a neat system that allows players to open up the parts of the game they want rather than relying on what the developer feels they might want. Yet I can't help but think some of the prices are steep – especially for the harder stages. It actually costs more points to unlock the tougher stages than it does to unlock the fastest cars in the game.

Hard to Handle?

All these options and unlocked elements would all be for naught if the action out on the road didn't cut the mustard. Thankfully the game provides one of the best PS2 racing experiences around. The handling model is convincing without being too intensive to handle with the relatively poor analog sticks provided on the DualShock 2 pad.

Using a force feedback wheel shows the depth in the physics model. It's not Grand Prix Legends, but for a console game it walks that fine line between being fun and behaving in a convincing manner.

The handling model just feels right, plenty of depth but not so tough a beginner can't feel at home with the controls after a short time. The real battle comes with the stages and not the cars. And some of the stages are real hellish car breakers, especially the masochistic Cyprus Rally. They are also the best rally stages you will see in a console game. There's a genuine organic feel about them – so while you may see better textures or lighting effect in other games, particularly on Xbox, there isn't a rally game that captures so well the overall feel of an authentic rally stage.

The Open Road

It's something that has to be seen to fully understand. Buildings look like they are part of the scenery, trees are firmly planted in the ground, roads actually cut into the hillside rather than just appearing to be pasted over the top.

What's more, the stages capture the essence of the rally events they set out to portray. For example, the Finland stages feature long sections of very fast gravel roads, interspersed with dangerous dips and jumps.

No other console rally franchise has managed to capture wide open scenery in this way rather than a succession of narrow walled-in stages with the illusion of freedom. Here in WRC4 there's a genuine feeling of travelling through the countryside from one place to another, rather than following a fake twisty route around one fixed location.

Death Wish

It's not all perfect though. If the player leaves the road then they are soon reset onto the track. I'm not keen on this approach. If I drove off a cliff I would expect my car to be seriously damaged, wouldn't you? But the car will be reset before it has chance to hit the bottom.

This means that the player will find himself/herself penalised for minor accidents such as clipping trees, while major disasters reset the car before any damage is done. Perhaps in WRC5 we should be given the choice of no car reset, or damage that is automatically added to the car should a major mistake be made. When I drive like an idiot, sadly an all too common occurence, I expect to be punished for it.

But that's no big issue, I find it more worrying that my co-driver has an insane death wish. I can just about cope with the simplicity of the co-driver calls, mostly due to lacking distances between the corners and other stage features. But what annoys me is that the co-driver wants me dead, often calling corners too late to actually do anything about them. This happens quite a lot when approaching blind 90 degree junctions and results in either going the wrong way or a short flight from a cliff. Spotting the roadside corner markings helps solve this problem to some extent, but I'd really like a co-driver who isn't in such a hurry to die.

Crash Bang Wallop

I really do like the way the cars pick up damage in the game. It's all too easy to destroy a radiator and spend the rest of the stage watching steam pour out from under the bonnet. Damage effects handling without being over harsh.

The graphical representation of the damage doesn't work as well, with body panels not really showing the level of destruction one's mistakes have wrought on the poor vehicle – but at least these effects are felt when driving. Damage can be repaired between stages, but if running out of time the next stage has to be run without everything being fixed – leading ultimately to other problems later in the event. It's a nice touch that complicates matters when driving in the harsher events.

The graphics are super, with car models finally seeming as solid in WRC4 as they have recently in rival rally games. The stages are the game's best feature, while the Monaco and Australia stages aren't as interesting as those in WRC3, the rest of the game features amazing runs through dramatic scenery. WRC4 features some of the best textures you'll see on PlayStation 2. The view distance is amazing, and the vistas on offer are often jaw dropping. Lighting, particle and weather effects are very well handled, particularly when driving through a water splash, and there's a very realistic yet usable in-car view that looks especially good when battered by rain.

150 Straight, Over Finish

The replays show off the game in dramatic form, with a good choice of camera angles. The ability to save replays is welcome but it's a shame there's no chance to lock camera angles as in the first WRC game, and there seems to be less use made of the helicopter view.

The overall presentation of the game is high, with a lot of real WRC video making its way into menus and the car repair section. It's strange then, that WRC4 doesn't feature the individual national rally movies that have been part of the game since the series began.

But these are minor niggles. With extensive online modes, great handling and the best stages on any console rally game; you really can't go wrong with WRC4. Yes, at times it's a little tough and unforgiving, but don't worry, those AI drivers can retire too. For fans of console rally games there is no finer version of the sport available – if it's an authentic yet accessible World Rally experience you're after, this is the place to come.