WRC8 WRC 8 The Game

[Paul Jeffrey]

Kylotonn Racing Games have confirmed this September will see the release of the next officially licensed World Rally Championship video game - WRC 8.

Imaginatively titled as always, the eighth instalment to the steadily improving WRC franchise of games is set to launch on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and PC this September, and promises to be an all round improvement on previous iterations of the long running franchise.

New for WRC 8 will be a revised physics system across the many varied different racing surfaces within the game, plus the inclusion of what looks to be an already very impressive looking dynamic weather system, presumably adding a feature to allow the 100+ official WRC stages to be experienced in a variety of different weather conditions.

Of the new dynamic weather, Bigben and Kylotonn had the following to say during a brief press release to accompany the brand new announcement trailer:

"A new dynamic weather system has been developed to add random elements to the driving experience, but also to increase realism in the game. Managing the weather is a real challenge for the drivers: modified grip, car settings adjustments, tyre selection optimization, weather team relationship to ensure the best tips and information on the latest conditions. More than mere visual effects, climatic conditions become crucial, especially in the management of your career"

Of course with the title coming out toward the end of the year, the new WRC 8 release will replicate the 2019 FIA World Rally Championship season, including the latest cars and drivers from the official teams' of the category. Featuring over 50 drivers, including the returning multiple champion Sébastien Loeb in his new Hyundai, 14 different events across over 100 individual stages, WRC 8 certainly lacks nothing in terms of scale.

Most importantly of all for sim racers looking to get their rally kicks, Kylotonn have promised that "WRC 8 will go above and beyond WRC 7, especially in the steering requirements and the realistic physics of the vehicles" - one of the weaker points from previous releases.

As well as the class leading WRC cars, the new game is also set to feature a selection of vehicles from the WRC 2 and Junior WRC categories, alongside a number of historic cars. Team management is also set to play a role in the expanded career mode, with the player able to improve their car by way of upgrades and team developments, of which more details are expected to be revealed in the near future.

Exciting times for fans of sideways action.

WRC 8 releases for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and Steam/PC September 2019.

Check out the upcoming WRC 8 sub forum here at RaceDepartment for the latest news, discussions and conversation prior to the big game reveal this September!

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[Paul Jeffrey]

The official World Rally Championship videogame from Kylotonn Racing and Bigben is available now - welcome to the world WRC 8.

Bigger, more ambitious and featuring a stronger lean towards simulation than ever before, WRC 8 is now available for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.

Featuring the 2019 FIA World Rally Championship cars, teams, drivers and events - WRC 8 comes with an impressive selection of content right from the initial launch - featuring no less then that 50 teams available to use on 14 events over 100 stages - the new game includes the official cars of the FIA WRC, WRC Junior categories and a range of key vehicles from the history of the sport.

Having already released for 'Deluxe' edition owners earlier this week, the new title is now available to the wider public across all platforms.

WRC 8 is available now.

For more WRC 8 news and discussion, head over to the WRC 8 sub forum and connect with fellow fans of the series.

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[Paul Jeffrey]

My apologies for the delays in posting news recently - laptop troubles..! Still slowly working through the issues and remaining hopeful of not needed to buy a new one!

 

[ShredatorFIN]

People seem to think it's pretty good. Billy Strange, GamerMuscle and Viperconcept, among others. Saying that the physics and FFB are much improved

Two downsides A) Epic fail store B) no VR

 

[falster]

Yep its a great game, a huge step up from 7, which i also quite enjoyed

i personally dont give a toss about epic store..... I buy what i want from where i want, and when.

Dont care about vr either. Not for me

But, people are entitled to their opinions.

Edit: hahah...ah, the pathetic, yet expected irony of the "little red cross" brigade, in a post ending with acceptance of the opinion of others...they still want to disagree and tell you what you like or want is wrong.........Mupjoes...

I really gotta stop coming here

 

[MarkR]

I picked WRC 8 up on Xbox One after a solid recommendation from a trusted friend coupled with the positive Eurogamer review by Martin Robinson, who is one of the rare mainstream gaming journalists who actually plays and has some skill at racing games https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-09-04-wrc-8-review-a-new-pretender-to-the-driving-crown

It's a high-quality rallying game but there are some issues:

+++ The career mode is excellent, challenging and enjoyable. The tutorial and way everything is explained, and fully voiced is superb (all skippable for the experienced), games like ACC career mode could learn an awful lot from this.
++ The graphics are excellent, they've really captured the feel of the different locations well. Night, weather and windscreen wiper effect (mud splatter on the screen looks real) are all good.
++ Setups have both easy and fully detailed options and they make a huge difference, love it.
++ The career AI cars are fast even on medium difficulty they take some beating. The times are consistent though so the game isn't adaptively cheating.
+ Wheel feedback is good, much better than WRC 7. I think many people would actually prefer the more detailed FFB in WRC 8 to the often divisive real wheel feel of Dirt 2.0.

Issues:

--- Several full Xbox One X closedown (full power off not crash to desktop) crashes that seem to be related to the tutorial voiceover kicking in at the start of events.
-- Controller default settings are twitchy and as good as unusable. Lowering the sensitivity is essential to get a decent gamepad experience.
-- Driving speed, the gameplay looks artificially fast to me. It's like watching real WRC footage at 1.5x real speed.
- Handling is much better than WRC 7 but I'm not convinced. TCS seems to be a massive cheat, it feels like the game takes over braking, throttle and much of car control with TCS on - like a sort of ghostly Stability Control system.

Overall WRC 8 is a huge step forward for the series, I'd recommend it to those who enjoy rallying games. The handling isn't as good as Dirt Rally or DR2.0 imo but it's good enough to enjoy. Career mode and the challenging AI make it worth playing if you enjoy the single-player experience.

 

[jimortality]

Has anyone got a key from a re-seller yet or are they waiting until the 18th/20th to force initial buyers to the Epic store?

I'm waiting, it's half price compared to epic.

 

[gamer19]

After another quick test (you may call it a lunch break test, thank god work is veeery close to my home) this time Monaco and Sweden - and I love it.
Would not put numbers to it for now, still too early but this one is the best they ever made. By far, no doubt.
Looks good, feels great, sounds good, and it's damn hard to be honest - with all assist off but feels rewarding once you nail it.
Can't say I'm among those who nail it, since I've been driving on just 4 stages and one free testing area but you know... I'm getting better and better. I guess you may say that.

Fiesta

This dude is crazy. My Fiesta doesn't go like this.
Neither real life or game.

 

[BrainsBush]

People seem to think it's pretty good. Billy Strange, GamerMuscle and Viperconcept, among others. Saying that the physics and FFB are much improved

Two downsides A) Epic fail store B) no VR

And no telemetry support .

Indeed physics/ffb are great. You actually feel the weight transfer through your wheel. hairpins are so joyful. Still using the default settings of my DD1 until I spot setup tips somehwere on the internet

 

[Case_]

I quite like the game (but I quite liked WRC7 already). It is an improvement over the previous one, thought in some ways not as big as I expected based on what others were saying about the game. I kinda feel like quite a few people think it's so much better than WRC7 simply because they didn't give WRC7 enough of a chance. I re-installed 7 to drive them literally back to back.

The FFB is somewhat improved over WRC7, but sadly, a lot of it is still basically just "canned" effects and vibration instead of actual physics-based FFB. There is some of the physics based FFB, but for example both suspension effects and track surface are just vibration-based effects, sadly, so DR2 still feel noticeably better, because even though people made a lot of noise about the DR2 FFB not having a lot of surface detail (because they were expecting the also fake surface rumble of DR1), what DR2 has is at least actually coming from the road surface, it's not just a canned rumble. But there's a fair amount of sliders to tweak in WRC8's FFB, so maybe you can get something that feels a lot better out of it if you take the time. But the default certainly feels kinda fake and underwhelming on my T300.

Car handling seems not so different from WRC7 to me, so fairly good, but with some things that feel kinda weird to me. But I need more time with the game to be able to judge this better.

Stages are as expected, good and varied, but also not real, unlike DR2. Only the super specials are real, for the regular stages, they just took some of the iconic spots from the real-life stages and connected them with a fantasy stage. But again, they're good and there's plenty of them, and some of them are pretty long as well.

Also, while there is finally seat and FOV adjustments, it suffers from the same thing as Dirt Rally 2, as in the range of those adjustments being fairly limited. And, in regards of FOV, as I've mentioned in another thread, it has the weirdest FOV setting I've ever seen - somehow the car itself is excluded from the FOV adjustment, so while the view out of the car changes appropriately when you adjust FOV, the cockpit and the rest of the car are shown with a fixed (and fairly wide) FOV, which feels *really* weird, and it also makes seat adjustments even harder to get right. No idea why they did it like this, again, never seen anything like this before.

But overall, DR2 is certainly better in most aspects for me.

 

[Ole Andreasen]

I get "available September 20." ????????

 

[shimon.ifraimov]

steam release is late 2020, guess ill wait...

 

[turbo86]

I like WRC 7 more. I tested the same car on the same stage on the same conditions and on the same setup (as similar as possible) and i hate 8. It just doesn't feel right. Cars are way too twitchy now, even with the most "mellow" setup, and react in extreme ways most of the time, especially when correcting oversteer or during transitions.
Grip is inconsistent at best. Either 100% or 0%. The only thing that has improved is the handbrake action. You can go around hairpins in a spectacular fashion, but that's about it.
Oh by the way, it's an RPG now did you know that? Yeah you can pick "Armor" from the list and with some kind of magic the car is harder to kill. Or you give your "crew" more "HP" so that it lasts longer. I mean...come on...seriously? It's ridiculously silly things like this that ruin racing games.
Graphics are the same if not worse. You can't tune bloom intensity anymore (unless i missed something), and you either have a glowing sky or nothing.
Oh and cockpit camera is a no go for me. Even on the lowest setting, it's still way too high. It's so high that i'm looking at the roof most of the time, unable to see the road ahead. Something's really wrong with that camera.

 

[gamer19]

Cars are way too twitchy now, even with the most "mellow" setup, and react in extreme ways most of the time, especially when correcting oversteer or during transitions...

Just set bigger rotation range for your wheel in Windows.

Cars are way too twitchy now, even with the most "mellow" setup, and react in extreme ways most of the time, especially when correcting oversteer or during transitions.
Grip is inconsistent at best. Either 100% or 0%...

Really ? Either 0 or 100 ?!?
I have stop reading right there.

 

[CDwyer]

I get "available September 20." ????????

Resellers such as CDKeys are saying Sept 20, but it is available on the epic store now.

 

[Elaphe]

Can anyone confirm if WRC 8 has analogue handbrake? And can we use multiple devices: steering wheel, pedals, shifters, button boxes, etc?

 

[Case_]

Can anyone confirm if WRC 8 has analogue handbrake? And can we use multiple devices: steering wheel, pedals, shifters, button boxes, etc?

The handbrake seems to support analog axis, though I can't confirm it (as I don't have analog handbrake).

And absolutely no issues with multiple devices this time. I'm using a T300 wheel with a Bodnar adapter connected G25 pedals and Bodnad connected G25 shifter, and all I had to do is go to the control setting and set the appropriate axis and buttons for my setup, the game recognized all inputs without a single hitch.

 

[ShredatorFIN]

Hmm, personally I wasn't impressed enough for 60€. Refunded.

Didn't think the FFB was that big improvement, over WRC7 (which I quite liked, while the FFB wasn't great). Quite dead in center. Maybe people didn't know how to setup WRC7 force feedback, this worked out of the box but it didn't impress me that much.

Dirt Rally 2.0 remains the superior for me it seems. So I kinda agree with @Martin Fiala Even when the DR2 tarmac physics are worse than WRC8. Matter of opinions/tastes. Or maybe I didn't fiddle with FFB settings enough, but the defaults at 540 DOR didn't improve over properly configured WRC7 much. I much prefer the Dirt Rally 2.0 FFB

Stages are also mostly same as WRC7 I believe.

Happy to say the refund worked, but have to also say the Epic Games UI and even the Refund system is incredible garbage compared to Steam. WRC8 wasn't even listed as the games you can refund (they have a crappy dropdown menu for that) but luckily it worked when I just explained it in the text field

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Happy to say the refund worked, but have to also say the Epic Games UI and even the Refund system is incredible garbage compared to Steam. WRC8 wasn't even listed as the games you can refund (they have a crappy dropdown menu for that) but luckily it worked when I just explained it in the text field

Yet, they aggressively bulldozer market with this poor excuse for a digital store.

 

[Wayne Hutchison]

Does it have proper triple screen support? And support for DD wheels?

 

[anton_Chez]

OSW, HE Pro's, shifter, handbrake here. Was able to bind everything even though it took some mucking around. One this for me is I cannot change the FFB settings, they don't save on menu exit. Annoying as turning Simucube force down only does so much to make the FFB usable and not feel like I'm turning a bus.