EA WRC - New Dirt Rally Game
Discussion
First impressions -
It’s Dirt 2.0 but properly realised.
Obviously proper WRC presentation, cars and rallies is great.
Many many more stages, and they’re much longer.
Also, more forgiving - there’s less deliberate design to make you crash!
Handling feels good so far but I’ve only driven one car and a couple of rallies. I’ve been playing alot of Dirt in the run up to this and it does feel subtlety different.
Graphics are ok, not as big a leap from Dirt as I expected but the car models and lighting/shadows are definitely improved.
Playing on Xbox Series S with a Thrustmaster TMX wheel, so most budget set up possible!
It’s Dirt 2.0 but properly realised.
Obviously proper WRC presentation, cars and rallies is great.
Many many more stages, and they’re much longer.
Also, more forgiving - there’s less deliberate design to make you crash!
Handling feels good so far but I’ve only driven one car and a couple of rallies. I’ve been playing alot of Dirt in the run up to this and it does feel subtlety different.
Graphics are ok, not as big a leap from Dirt as I expected but the car models and lighting/shadows are definitely improved.
Playing on Xbox Series S with a Thrustmaster TMX wheel, so most budget set up possible!
I've probably spent about 40 hours playing the game so far and it keeps me coming back in exactly the same way DR 2.0 did.
I haven't got on all that well with career mode, the calendar screen can be confusing and the AI difficulty is all over the place. I've abandoned that for now until they can sort out a consistent difficulty across all the cars and locations.
It took a while to get my wheel/game FFB settings dialled in (Fanatec DD2) but, I think I'm pretty much there now and the game feels superb to drive. The last WRC game I bought was WRC8 I think and, the handling was just awful by comparison.
I actually fired up DR 2.0 at the weekend to do a back to back comparison. Tarmac is a no brainer, EA WRC is streets ahead. I prefer the snow handling of DR 2.0 a bit more I think but, gravel I have to give to EA WRC - which is praise indeed as I have many hundreds of hours in DR 2.0.
I do miss rallycross, both in terms of hotlapping and multiplayer - I'd love to see a rallycross DLC in future.
The moments are interesting and can be quite challenging in some cases. Racenet clubs are where it's at really, and there are loads of them. It's a good way to remind myself how slow I really am
I would definitely recommend this game to anyone with a wheel who enjoyed DR 2.0 - it's an evolution (with the exception of career mode, which needs a bit of work.)
I can't comment on the PS5 performance but, PC performance has been markedly improved by the last couple of updates. Game runs pretty smooth now although, I have to tone down the settings bit as my trusty 2080 RTX is starting to show it's age!)
I haven't got on all that well with career mode, the calendar screen can be confusing and the AI difficulty is all over the place. I've abandoned that for now until they can sort out a consistent difficulty across all the cars and locations.
It took a while to get my wheel/game FFB settings dialled in (Fanatec DD2) but, I think I'm pretty much there now and the game feels superb to drive. The last WRC game I bought was WRC8 I think and, the handling was just awful by comparison.
I actually fired up DR 2.0 at the weekend to do a back to back comparison. Tarmac is a no brainer, EA WRC is streets ahead. I prefer the snow handling of DR 2.0 a bit more I think but, gravel I have to give to EA WRC - which is praise indeed as I have many hundreds of hours in DR 2.0.
I do miss rallycross, both in terms of hotlapping and multiplayer - I'd love to see a rallycross DLC in future.
The moments are interesting and can be quite challenging in some cases. Racenet clubs are where it's at really, and there are loads of them. It's a good way to remind myself how slow I really am
I would definitely recommend this game to anyone with a wheel who enjoyed DR 2.0 - it's an evolution (with the exception of career mode, which needs a bit of work.)
I can't comment on the PS5 performance but, PC performance has been markedly improved by the last couple of updates. Game runs pretty smooth now although, I have to tone down the settings bit as my trusty 2080 RTX is starting to show it's age!)
flatlandsman said:
So be honest
is it just a giant patched Dirt 2.0?
Nope, it is a fully realised game.is it just a giant patched Dirt 2.0?
flatlandsman said:
Are there stages carried over? there are clearly cars carried over?
I haven't noticed any, I think all the stages are new. Many of them are way longer than anything you'll find in dirt rally (30km+)flatlandsman said:
does it feel the same>?
It feels similar but, mostly better.flatlandsman said:
Does it run perm online as codies used to infuriatingly?
It auto logs me in tomy EA account when I fire up the game but, there is an on screen option to skip the login if you want. Not sure if that restricts what content is available or not.Tried this last night with the EA trial access on Xbox pass.
Honestly - even with a decent rig I dont understand why its getting any air time. The graphics dont look great, I tried changing resolution but no matter what I did it keeps reverting to some weird native resolution.
The FFB is terrible and car feels disconnected from the snow. The game lags and stutters even with a 3080.
I dont want to spend hours fiddling to get it right, so basically uninstalled it after. It doesnt work with SIMHUB yet either so there was no ability to dial in some sensations to the rig rumble packs.
Maybe others feel its better but for me - unless I am doing something drastically wrong it just felt like a couple of generations back.
Honestly - even with a decent rig I dont understand why its getting any air time. The graphics dont look great, I tried changing resolution but no matter what I did it keeps reverting to some weird native resolution.
The FFB is terrible and car feels disconnected from the snow. The game lags and stutters even with a 3080.
I dont want to spend hours fiddling to get it right, so basically uninstalled it after. It doesnt work with SIMHUB yet either so there was no ability to dial in some sensations to the rig rumble packs.
Maybe others feel its better but for me - unless I am doing something drastically wrong it just felt like a couple of generations back.
halo34 said:
Tried this last night with the EA trial access on Xbox pass.
Honestly - even with a decent rig I dont understand why its getting any air time. The graphics dont look great, I tried changing resolution but no matter what I did it keeps reverting to some weird native resolution.
The FFB is terrible and car feels disconnected from the snow. The game lags and stutters even with a 3080.
I dont want to spend hours fiddling to get it right, so basically uninstalled it after. It doesnt work with SIMHUB yet either so there was no ability to dial in some sensations to the rig rumble packs.
Maybe others feel its better but for me - unless I am doing something drastically wrong it just felt like a couple of generations back.
I'm surprised you're having performance issues with a 3080, unless it has defaulted to ultra settings for everything. I'm running it at 1440p (on an RTX 2080) with DLSS and have it mostly on either high or medium (I think I have track set to ultra) and it runs pretty smooth for me. Looks great actually.Honestly - even with a decent rig I dont understand why its getting any air time. The graphics dont look great, I tried changing resolution but no matter what I did it keeps reverting to some weird native resolution.
The FFB is terrible and car feels disconnected from the snow. The game lags and stutters even with a 3080.
I dont want to spend hours fiddling to get it right, so basically uninstalled it after. It doesnt work with SIMHUB yet either so there was no ability to dial in some sensations to the rig rumble packs.
Maybe others feel its better but for me - unless I am doing something drastically wrong it just felt like a couple of generations back.
I can't comment on the FFB out of the box as I always have to fiddle about for ages to get it feeling good no matter what the sim (weirdly, I quite enjoy the process!).
I'm still having loads of fun with the game, so much so that I managed to break my sequential shifter, ordered a cheap replacement from china for £40 (which is actually brilliant it turns out) but, can't find a good way to mount my H-Pattern at the same time. Ended up ordering the Fanatec Shifter in their Black Friday sale (£100 off so, figured it'd be rude not to!) - so yeah, this game is becoming quite expensive for me!!
Speckle said:
I'm surprised you're having performance issues with a 3080, unless it has defaulted to ultra settings for everything. I'm running it at 1440p (on an RTX 2080) with DLSS and have it mostly on either high or medium (I think I have track set to ultra) and it runs pretty smooth for me. Looks great actually.
I can't comment on the FFB out of the box as I always have to fiddle about for ages to get it feeling good no matter what the sim (weirdly, I quite enjoy the process!).
I'm still having loads of fun with the game, so much so that I managed to break my sequential shifter, ordered a cheap replacement from china for £40 (which is actually brilliant it turns out) but, can't find a good way to mount my H-Pattern at the same time. Ended up ordering the Fanatec Shifter in their Black Friday sale (£100 off so, figured it'd be rude not to!) - so yeah, this game is becoming quite expensive for me!!
I think in part driven by the fact it wont change resolution for me. I uninstalled it - I didn't have time to muck about trying to get it to look half decent or set it all up. Did some Dirt2 in VR and was up and running in the time it took for a few mouse clicks.I can't comment on the FFB out of the box as I always have to fiddle about for ages to get it feeling good no matter what the sim (weirdly, I quite enjoy the process!).
I'm still having loads of fun with the game, so much so that I managed to break my sequential shifter, ordered a cheap replacement from china for £40 (which is actually brilliant it turns out) but, can't find a good way to mount my H-Pattern at the same time. Ended up ordering the Fanatec Shifter in their Black Friday sale (£100 off so, figured it'd be rude not to!) - so yeah, this game is becoming quite expensive for me!!
I dont have the patience these days with something that wont let me set it up quickly.
Spent a few more hours on this today, I’ve decided it’s bloody brilliant.
Graphics aren’t that impressive but they do enough to get a proper feel for the stages.
The handling is definitely improved over Dirt 2.0, and for me it’s so much more fun.
I’ve just done the Littichedda stage in Sardinia with a WRC2 car and it might be the most fun I’ve had on a driving game in years!
Graphics aren’t that impressive but they do enough to get a proper feel for the stages.
The handling is definitely improved over Dirt 2.0, and for me it’s so much more fun.
I’ve just done the Littichedda stage in Sardinia with a WRC2 car and it might be the most fun I’ve had on a driving game in years!
I'm still enjoying the clubs rallies and will probably start picking some short stages for some time trial efforts. The only thing that annoys me a little bit about clubs is the seasons. It breaks the immersion somewhat to run a gravel stage, only to run the same stage as a winter stage (which means snowy tarmac along the same route in places).
It seems to be gravel where the handling really shines for me, although I've not spent much time on snow yet. Tarmac is a bit hit & miss. I really like most of the Japan stages but, Corsica not so much. I don't really enjoy Monte Carlo, mainly due to tyres as there doesn't seem to be a winter tyre option for stages that are more than 50% ice and snow and ice just feels too.....icy!
I must admit I've sabotaged myself a bit over the weekend. I kept reading everywhere that RBR has better tarmac feel and physics than any rally title since and, curiosity got the better of me so, installed the RallySimFans modded version and spent hours, and I mean literally hours, getting the FFB set up. All I can say is....Wow! This 20 year old game (admittedly modded beyond all recognition) is the first time that I've actually felt like I was really driving an actual car through actual countryside! It feels almost perfect, the car feels properly connected to the road - all it's missing for me is a feeling of deceleration under braking. It's there but, feels far too understated given the speed of travel.
I'm also blown away by how good the game looks - I was expecting only 20 year old graphics. This is the stage that has gotten me hooked (Please note: THIS IS NOT ME, I CANNOT DRIVE THAT QUICKLY WITHOUT DRIVING INTO A TREE!!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te6zQoXJLPo&ab...
It has kind of ruined EA WRC tarmac stages now I've seen how well it can be done.
It seems to be gravel where the handling really shines for me, although I've not spent much time on snow yet. Tarmac is a bit hit & miss. I really like most of the Japan stages but, Corsica not so much. I don't really enjoy Monte Carlo, mainly due to tyres as there doesn't seem to be a winter tyre option for stages that are more than 50% ice and snow and ice just feels too.....icy!
I must admit I've sabotaged myself a bit over the weekend. I kept reading everywhere that RBR has better tarmac feel and physics than any rally title since and, curiosity got the better of me so, installed the RallySimFans modded version and spent hours, and I mean literally hours, getting the FFB set up. All I can say is....Wow! This 20 year old game (admittedly modded beyond all recognition) is the first time that I've actually felt like I was really driving an actual car through actual countryside! It feels almost perfect, the car feels properly connected to the road - all it's missing for me is a feeling of deceleration under braking. It's there but, feels far too understated given the speed of travel.
I'm also blown away by how good the game looks - I was expecting only 20 year old graphics. This is the stage that has gotten me hooked (Please note: THIS IS NOT ME, I CANNOT DRIVE THAT QUICKLY WITHOUT DRIVING INTO A TREE!!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te6zQoXJLPo&ab...
It has kind of ruined EA WRC tarmac stages now I've seen how well it can be done.
I've been playing this a fair amount recently and I think it's pretty damn great. Especially considering the fact it's cheap, for some reason.
The car selection is excellent and they all feel and sound really authentic. The only thing I can think of that it is missing (aside from some of the more obscure cars from the various eras) is the 2018-2021 WRC class. I'm not sure why they're not in, maybe they'll get added at some point.
The Rally1 cars are absolutely excellent. They all look superb and drive really nicely. I know they have less downforce than the previous generation of cars, not to mention being heavier, but they are so fast along the stages with the hybrid boost. Its tricky to use on controller, as you can easily waste it by feather the throttle in a corner, leaving you with no boost on corner exit, but when you do come out of a corner with the hybrid power, holy s
t, they really go. Extremely fun, but you can catch yourself out by arriving at the next corner traveling far faster than you expected.
Some of my other favourites include the FWD Kit Car class Seat Ibiza, the WRC Xsara and Cordoba. Sometimes I think it's fun just to drive a particular car over a good chunk of stages just to really study the car and get a feel for it.
The stages are now largely excellent too. There's a good mix of tarmac and dirt surfaces and the stages feel properly crafted, like you're driving through real places rather than a treadmill of corners with static backgrounds like the old Dirt games.
The tarmac handling isn't perfect, I think it offers more grip than real tarmac and some cars do feel like they can turn in faster than they could in real life and sometimes the cars can just lose grip and spin in a form of really exaggerated lift-off oversteer. You can dial this out to some extent by lowering the ride height and stiffening the suspension front and rear, but you can't get away from it entirely. With maximum lowering and stiffening, the Rally1 cars can corner like Le Mans prototypes if you're brave and trust the pace notes enough.
On the subject of pacenotes, they're decent but on the standard setting, i feel like they can be a bit slow. If you go through a compound of corners quickly, the reader can get caught out and you can find yourself at the entry point of a really tight corner just as the pace note is read, as the reader tries to keep up with all of the notes for the compound as fast as you're driving through them.
The career mode is ok but I felt like the crew and management side of things wasn't as good as it was previously. The crew side isn pretty shallow and the crew chief skills are pretty mundane compared to what they used to be, not to mention the training activity comes up so rarely that at the end of my third year in career mode, I still felt like my chief had hardly any trained skills, but also that his training, or lack thereof, had almost no impact on my success in the mode anyway.
Ultimately, I think it's a great rally game and that rally fans will love it, but also, it's probably not a game that would hold the attention of people who aren't rally fans, which is probably why it's so cheap. But if you are a rally fan and the idea of banging a Citroën Xsara WRC through the gears as you drive sideways past an active hydroelectric dam in Indonesia sounds appealing, you should definitely play this.
The car selection is excellent and they all feel and sound really authentic. The only thing I can think of that it is missing (aside from some of the more obscure cars from the various eras) is the 2018-2021 WRC class. I'm not sure why they're not in, maybe they'll get added at some point.
The Rally1 cars are absolutely excellent. They all look superb and drive really nicely. I know they have less downforce than the previous generation of cars, not to mention being heavier, but they are so fast along the stages with the hybrid boost. Its tricky to use on controller, as you can easily waste it by feather the throttle in a corner, leaving you with no boost on corner exit, but when you do come out of a corner with the hybrid power, holy s
t, they really go. Extremely fun, but you can catch yourself out by arriving at the next corner traveling far faster than you expected.Some of my other favourites include the FWD Kit Car class Seat Ibiza, the WRC Xsara and Cordoba. Sometimes I think it's fun just to drive a particular car over a good chunk of stages just to really study the car and get a feel for it.
The stages are now largely excellent too. There's a good mix of tarmac and dirt surfaces and the stages feel properly crafted, like you're driving through real places rather than a treadmill of corners with static backgrounds like the old Dirt games.
The tarmac handling isn't perfect, I think it offers more grip than real tarmac and some cars do feel like they can turn in faster than they could in real life and sometimes the cars can just lose grip and spin in a form of really exaggerated lift-off oversteer. You can dial this out to some extent by lowering the ride height and stiffening the suspension front and rear, but you can't get away from it entirely. With maximum lowering and stiffening, the Rally1 cars can corner like Le Mans prototypes if you're brave and trust the pace notes enough.
On the subject of pacenotes, they're decent but on the standard setting, i feel like they can be a bit slow. If you go through a compound of corners quickly, the reader can get caught out and you can find yourself at the entry point of a really tight corner just as the pace note is read, as the reader tries to keep up with all of the notes for the compound as fast as you're driving through them.
The career mode is ok but I felt like the crew and management side of things wasn't as good as it was previously. The crew side isn pretty shallow and the crew chief skills are pretty mundane compared to what they used to be, not to mention the training activity comes up so rarely that at the end of my third year in career mode, I still felt like my chief had hardly any trained skills, but also that his training, or lack thereof, had almost no impact on my success in the mode anyway.
Ultimately, I think it's a great rally game and that rally fans will love it, but also, it's probably not a game that would hold the attention of people who aren't rally fans, which is probably why it's so cheap. But if you are a rally fan and the idea of banging a Citroën Xsara WRC through the gears as you drive sideways past an active hydroelectric dam in Indonesia sounds appealing, you should definitely play this.
Mastodon2 said:
The stages are now largely excellent too. There's a good mix of tarmac and dirt surfaces and the stages feel properly crafted, like you're driving through real places rather than a treadmill of corners with static backgrounds like the old Dirt games.
I've particularly enjoyed the Rally Mediterraneo rallies. When you drive through some of these fictional mountainside towns, you really do feel like you're driving through a real place and with tight turns approaching in such rapid succession, you can barely make sense of the pacenotes! Feel great when you manage to weave though at speed whilst also keeping it clean. 
Quick update from me now that I've got this and put some time in to it.
A bit underwhelming really. Still got serious issues with screen tearing. Gameplay doesn't seem bad, but I an struggling to find a wheel setting I like. I'm only a few hours in so I'll stick with it, should have plenty of time over Christmas to get some more hours in.
Currently it feels like a game that's been released too soon without proper testing.
A bit underwhelming really. Still got serious issues with screen tearing. Gameplay doesn't seem bad, but I an struggling to find a wheel setting I like. I'm only a few hours in so I'll stick with it, should have plenty of time over Christmas to get some more hours in.
Currently it feels like a game that's been released too soon without proper testing.
Just got a copy. Wish it had been on sale.
This is the worst-looking modern top tier ish title I have ever seen.
It's like the whole thing is slightly out of focus and blown out.
I assumed Steam might have chopped my graphics off at the legs, but nope, it's all nearing Ultra.
The stages have a distinctly autogen ish look to them. I know they had to change the tech for the sake of length, but they also threw away any character and variety.
This is the worst-looking modern top tier ish title I have ever seen.
It's like the whole thing is slightly out of focus and blown out.
I assumed Steam might have chopped my graphics off at the legs, but nope, it's all nearing Ultra.
The stages have a distinctly autogen ish look to them. I know they had to change the tech for the sake of length, but they also threw away any character and variety.
Edited by bloomen on Monday 11th March 11:05
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