But beyond the PS5 specifics, what’s going on under the hood of WRC 9?Īs I stated last year, I play dozens of racing games every year, and I also drive these cars in real-life and nothing comes close to the level of complete and total immersion you will find in WRC 9, not just in the actual driving of the cars, but in every facet of what goes on behind the scenes of a professional race team. The PS5 version still offers support for up to 8 online racers (PS Plus required) and those who may have already gotten the game on PS4 can enjoy a free upgrade to the PS5. Menu navigation is fast and fluid and event and stage load times are just a couple of seconds. The PS5 version also benefits from the snappy load times on their internal SSD. The DualSense is still a close second to an actual wheel/pedal setup but Sony’s new pad is coming awfully close. Compared to playing with an Xbox controller on the PC I was shaving 10-30 seconds off my times. You can literally “feel” when your car is about to lose traction, and the new trigger design provides much more variable input for throttle and braking, allowing for cleaner driving and fewer mistakes. The haptic feedback in the triggers combined with the rumble of the pad and the extra-long travel distance of the L2/R2 buttons provide an uncanny connection with the road. Hearing gravel clinking off your undercarriage and the pop of your exhaust is pretty cool, but the real savior to the experience is the controls themselves. First, all of the road surface noise comes from the controller speaker which adds a bit more immersion to the soundscape. The DualSense controller is the real game-changer here, in many ways outperforming my racing wheel setup on my PC…almost…but it does come very close to replicating the precision a $400 racing accessory offers. Assuming you are driving from inside the car (and you better be if you are playing a sim like this) the sound of rain hitting the metal roof of the car inches above your head is perfectly recreated when using the headphones. Whether you play games with headphones or not, the 3D Pulse does an amazing job of immersing you in the aural aspects of racing, not only with the perfect mix of engines, road, and environmental effects, but also in their perfect placement within the 3D listening space. WRC 9 is further enhanced by two PS5 accessories one that everyone has, the DualSense controller, and the other being the 3D Pulse Headset. Running on top-end PC hardware, the game looked and performed amazingly, so I was excited to see how close the new PlayStation 5 could come in matching the experience.įirst off, let’s just say that the PS5 is a nearly identical match for the PC running on high settings with all the immersive lighting, dynamic weather, draw distances, and loads of texture detail both in the environments and the detailed car models that exhibit real-time damage, both in visuals and performance degradation. A few months ago I reviewed WRC 9 FIA World Rally Championship on the PC and found it a highly enjoyable and satisfying racing simulation that tackled the world of rally racing from both a driver and business management perspective.
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