In WRC: FIA World Rally Championship, there are several game modes: Road to the WRC, Rally Academy, Single Race, Single Rally, Championship and Time Attack. Additionally, there's Hot Seat and Online variations of Single Race, Single Rally and Championship modes.
The course design is based on 13 real world locations, so there's plenty of variety and a real difference in car handling among road surfaces (gravel, asphalt, snow, dirt, sand etc.), especially when the tracks have a variety of surfaces in a single race. Each country has six stages, but there's a lot of reused sections between them, plus the reversed versions. Your co-driver will make audible calls to tell you of upcoming corners and hazards, which will also be displayed on the screen.
Before the race begins, you can adjust the set-up of your car. There are many preset options, ideal for all kinds of road conditions, and an appropriate one will be selected as default. I didn't feel the need to change it, because it wasn't clear what the current road surface consisted of to make an informed decision.
As in most driving games, racing with care is the key to success. A lapse in concentration will cause you to lose seconds due to the impact, then having to recover and accelerate away. Additionally, car damage hinders your car's performance, so expect to struggle to hit top speeds when your engine is damaged, or find your steering pulls to the side when the steering or wheels are damaged. There's no rewind feature like as seen in modern games like Forza or Dirt 2, so you either have to accept your mistake or restart the race. There's a few difficulty options to tweak at anytime from the settings menu such as breaking assist, stability assist, vehicle damage and AI ability.
When your car picks up damage, the car model will reflect it. The car will become dented, covered in dirt and bumpers may hang loose. You also have a representation on your HUD, showing the damage by use of colour from green to red. Your co-driver will also chip in comments when specific parts of your car take significant damage, so you should always be aware of the condition of your car.
If you stray too far off the track, your car is reset. This feature seems very inconsistent so sometimes it's highly favourable (on occasions, it can even save you from crashing), but other times it leaves you stuck.
The graphics in the game are okay, but the biggest gripe is the noticeable texture pop-up. Foliage and road surfaces can become more detailed as you drive which can be a bit distracting. There are five camera settings including a few inside the car.
There are no staggered starts, so the game feels like a series of time-trials; racing only against set times. Personally, I don't mind that style of racing, but it may not appeal to everyone.
The Rally Academy tutorial mode gives you short sections with a suggested racing line to inform you of the technique to approaching corners, braking and acceleration.
In the Road to WRC, you play a series of tiered events, which start with slower cars and progress to faster vehicles. Completing a percentage of the objectives on a tier will unlock the next one, however, the three objectives you are given on each event aren't necessarily just to win. Sometimes you may get a target like to achieve a certain number of 'green' sections, surpass a certain number of points, to finish ahead of a certain driver, or to finish in the top three. Completing these objectives will also reward you with cash and unlock liveries, paint colours, and sponsors. After choosing your livery, you can then choose the main colour and two secondary colours. Sponsors add to the aesthetics but also provide a cash bonus when completing objectives. The sponsor names are for fictional companies and can only be placed on two predetermined parts of the car. You have some customisation options for your co-driver such as their name, gender and nationality. Only the gender matters though, since it will change your co-drivers voice. Each event can be retried as many times as you like. You can choose to restart the specific race mid-race, or even after you pass the finish line so you can check your results, then choose to either replay or proceed. The game utilises auto-saving after every completed race so you can take breaks from the long rally events. The events themselves can be set in one or more countries and there can be one or more races within this. Time records from one stage is carried over to the next, and by comparing to the AI drivers, the one racer who has the best times in the end is declared the winner. If there are more than one country, each driver is awarded points for that country, and the process repeats. At the end of the rally, the driver with the most points wins the entire rally. Between races, you get 60 fictional minutes in which you can perform repairs to your car. The time to repair each component depends on what the component is, and the severity of the damage received. This can mean you start the next race with a damaged car. At the start of the next country, you get a fresh car.
In Single Race, you can race on any of the 78 courses in any car of your choice. Single Rally is a series of two to six races in a single country of your choice. The same rules seen in Road to WRC apply; the points and repair system. Championship mode is the races that cover more than one country. You can choose to play the official WRC rally event (where you go through all the countries!) or create your own event. Time Attack mode allows you to race any individual stage which is very much like single race, although you can race against your ghost and learn from your previous attempts.
WRC does seem a bit dated by today's standards since it suffers from long loading times and annoying texture pop-up. I also felt that some tracks were used a bit too often, whereas others were rarely used in the main game mode. The same can be said about the use of cars; you spend most of your career using the lower performance ones and barely any time in the higher class cars. This lead to the game feeling a bit repetitive. Overall, WRC is an enjoyable racing game and there's enough content to keep you entertained for many hours. There's plenty of areas to improve though, so hopefully they have added more to the sequels.