If you played WRC 5, you’ll notice that the roads in the sequel are now a lot thinner. One of the main complaints was that the stages were too wide and forgiving and they needed to replicate the real thing more, so they’ve taken the community feedback aboard and made the necessary amendments. Alongside making the roads tighter, they’re also now bumpier and more realistic, to give the proper sensation of gravel or dirt rather than each course looking like some bumpy terrain, but feeling like tarmac. In turn, this increases the sensation of danger, since driving a rally car in real life can be a very dangerous endeavour.

One key aspect the guys from Kylotonn insisted came first was the feeling of fun; it is a video game after all, despite how hard it tries to simulate the real thing. To satisfy this, they realised that local multiplayer is a huge sell for racing games so split screen is back once more. There’s also new additions they’re calling special stages, which take place in fancier locations like stadiums and downtown cities, making it easier to follow and nicer to watch and understand for spectators or newcomers to rallying.

For those who take their virtual rallying very seriously, Kylotonn are looking to support eSports even more this time around. There will be a huge tournament and final during the Welsh rally at the end of the month, with the winner driving away in a real Hyundai i20 car – not quite a Subaru Impreza rally car but impressive nonetheless. Players who can’t make it to the event but still fancy themselves a competent driver will be able to compete in weekly challenges and leaderboards. Expect different modifiers and restrictions, such as no damage to the cars, no mods installed, only a certain class of vehicle, etc.

A vital addition to WRC 6 has been the improvement on the damage system. The physics have been improved so the car can roll on its side, flip over completely; it reacts much more realistically to the terrain and if you crash, don’t expect to simply ping back off the side. Each area of the vehicle can be affected individually, so if you keep spinning out on right hand corners and careering into a wall, expect the right side of your car to feel a lot worse for wear than the left. The single player career mode has a morale system too, so if the team spirit is low and the car has been damaged considerably, your team will take longer to mend your vehicle.

You start out as a WRC3 driver; essentially the ‘junior’ level of rallying, with 2WD cars. You can accept contracts with various objectives to do with individual races or the season as a whole. It was one of the most popular modes in WRC 5 so they’ve looked to build upon it and provide a much more in depth take on what it’s like to be a professional rally driver. As you succeed at the lower divisions, you can eventually progress through to the WRC2 stage of vehicles and finally the most famous WRC class which both consist of 4WD vehicles. Don’t worry if you’re not too good at the game though – you’ll still be given contract offers as they want everyone to have fun and not be too punishing. Across the three divisions though, there are 52 different teams so you’ll often be spoilt for choice.

Sebastien Chardonnet, the 2013 WRC3 champion has been a technical advisor on WRC 6 for most of development and assisted with a lot of aspects such as making sure the degree for each corner was correct. For example, changing a Right-2 to a Right-3 if need be. He also made sure that each corner of a specific type was the same on another stage, so a Left-4 in one of the stages in Wales was the same as a Left-4 in Finland, and not a Left-3 or a Left-5. There’s 50 stages in total and each one has its own charm and identity. It’s very obvious for example when you’re in Spain compared to Sardinia; each and every race looks fantastic. You can read our full interview with Sebastien here.

Personally, I’m by no means a rallying expert – the last game I can recall playing was DiRT 2 but never for an extended period, it was a game I played for a few hours to pass the time every now and then. While DiRT is more like an arcade rally game, I got to grips with the basics of WRC 6 fairly quickly. I was by no means good at the game, but I was able to take corners on a lot of the simpler stages and compete with the AI times on the middling difficulties. So the entry level of skill is by no means too high, but the game is very unforgiving with corners. I found the best approach was to take corners slower than necessary, as spinning out is very easy to do if you’re too rash and simply put your foot down too hard. After I replayed a specific stage a few times, I found myself learning exactly when I could accelerate a little harder and when to break and before I knew it, I felt somewhat decent at the game. Not quite good enough to do the real thing, but for a rally noob it was relatively easy to settle into.

For the hardcore rally enthusiasts, there is virtual reality support on PC but nothing for the PS4 yet. Alongside the PS4 Pro, it and PSVR were announced too late into development to provide instantaneous support but Kylotonn are considering adding support for both after the Christmas period, but no guarantees. Either way, it’s safe to say the rally genre has come a long way since the days of old. WRC 6 releases on Friday 7^th October on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.