Game link: http://www.wrcpowerslide.com/
Steam link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/256350/
| this is not WRC Powerslide footage |
With WRC Powerslide, Milestone has completely gotten away from proper rallying. Instead, Powerslide is a WRC karting game. While I’ve been looking for the proper WRC series to embrace being a proper rally sim, Powerslide proves that you don’t actually know what you want from gaming until you get it.
While WRC proper has you racing your rally car by yourself on a stage to set the fastest cumulative time over a series of special stages in a rally, WRC Powerslide has four cars racing the same special stage at the same time to be the first across the line.
You don’t have to play this as a karting game, though. There’s an option to turn off collisions and powerups which effectively makes it four ghost cars racing to be the first to the line. Unfortunately, Milestone combined activation of collisions and powerups to one line. It would have been nice to turn off just powerups to make Powerslide a WRC rally cross game.
In my experience, that option is necessary because the computer always seems to get you in the final tenth of a stage. It’s inevitable that you’ll get hit with a lightning bolt or hail storm while on the point with the finish in sight and have nothing to answer back with. Maybe I just have bad luck but the AI tend to lead only first 10% and last 10% of any race thanks to the powerups.
One good thing about Powerslide is that the game has some fantastic catchup logic (at least, in the single player mode). No matter how far behind or ahead you are at any point of the race (barring the very end), everyone is bunched up within a couple of seconds at the finish line. It makes for some exciting racing and a few stages where I’ve won with a recorded margin of victory of 0.00 and 0.01 seconds.
There’s only really two game modes in WRC Powerslide. There’s multiplayer which is just online multiplayer. And there’s single player which involves winning races in each category to unlock races and cars. However, you must win the specific race to unlock the next race. For example, if the requirement to unlock the next race is to win the preceding stage in a Class 3 car, winning in a WRC car doesn’t work. That unlocks a car but not the event. It’s a great game for completionists but progression is a massive pain if you just want to race. Considering that there’s only one event open when you first boot up the game and you have to win with that one specific class, the progression system is almost demoralizing.
Its not all positives for Powerslide. The worst problem, by a wide margin, is the camera. The camera is positioned at a high angle behind you car but isn’t fixed directly behind the car. It’s a little off the side but isn’t at a set angle. It moves about slightly as you navigate the stages almost like a camera on a chasing helicopter. While it’s still better than the helicopter camera in Real World Racing, it’s very disorienting at first though it does get slightly better as you get used to it. You can’t get used to having your view obstructed by the environment as a result of the camera. I can only assume this is done in a way to limit what the game has to render to ease the hardware load on the engine considering four cars are on screen at all times.
There are some issues that keep it from being among the best karting games you’ll play but that $10 price point means that you’re assured bang for your buck. If Codemasters ever makes F1 Race Stars 2, they need to take some notes from WRC Powerslide. This is easily the best WRC game to come out for the last five years..I would give this game a score 7 out of 10.
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