The officially licensed World Rally Championship games have always been second best to whichever competitor is about at the time, there’s no two ways about it. They’ve often lacked the finesse and technical precision that has made DiRT Rally the undisputed champion of rally games in 2016. In a somewhat surprising discovery though, WRC 6 has improved tenfold upon the rushed foundation that was WRC 5 and could actually be a worthy competitor to Codemasters’ superb rally sim.

Kylotonn Games have made it clear they’ve listened to community feedback this time around. One of the major changes is that the roads and courses are now considerably narrower to be more challenging and realistic, making it feel a lot more intense to play. The enclosed surroundings give a real sense of speed and adrenaline, while the tight corners and tricky bends add to the concept of danger. It’s always better to take corners too slowly, as taking them too quick with the idea of bouncing back off the wall means the car gets damaged very quickly.

Mainly in the career mode, damage limitation is absolutely vital to succeeding. You have a maximum of 45 minutes each day during each rally to tend to your cars repairs, so you need to prioritise the most important aspects if your car is too damaged to repair everything. Repairing between each race isn’t possible either; you can only repair at the start of each day, so it encourages you to not be too rash on the first race of each day in case you damage your car so much its affected performance wise for the later races that day. It’s a clever way of implementing the penalty of damaging the car too much, just like in real life where it quite literally endangers the driver’s life and costs money to repair the vehicle.