WRC 9 FIA World Rally Championship

[Grogan]

I've been wanting more racing games, I've started enjoying driving games again. I seem to have been fucked out of most of the racing games I own.

I installed Dirt 4 and played that for a bit. That's a good Vulkan native Linux port from Feral and it still works well. However, limited and somewhat boring tracks.

So then I thought I'd like to see my Dakar 18 game again, I never did get very far. It's pretty hard core long distance rally racing through mostly desert terrain. It doesn't run anymore, it just crashes during the first logo screen at launch (and the most recent posts at protondb confirm that, though it's still at gold because the vast majority are old entries lol).

Ahh, I own some good racing games with EA. I install my Need for Speed Hot Pursuit (not the remaster) and it installs and runs, but sends my display out of bounds. That's pretty much kiss of death. Fine, my Burnout Paradise game would scratch the itch, it's dizzying fast urban driving. I own that game, it's in my Library, but EA says "Download canceled because you don't own it. Visit the store to purchase it" sort of thing. What?

Anyway, enough about all that. I went to Steam and searched for Racing Games and started going through them. DIRT 5, nope... that's been EA'd (and has that horrid anticheat). Crew 2 looked promising, but nope... it's Ubisoft and I don't want their client shitware.

So I come across WRC 9 and it looks just like what I'm after. It's a 2021 game, before that franchise got acquired by EA and toutes assloads of tracks and modes etc. I look at the price and it's... $3.00 (90% off until March 11)! No DRM hassles or asshole game clients (well, other than Steam)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1267 ... mpionship/

I spent an extra $12 to "Include all DLC" (mostly extra cars and I think one new location).

It defaults to DirectX 11, but has DirectX 12 setting. I changed it to 12, might as well. The graphics aren't fabulous by 2026 standards, but are pretty good with everything set to Very High.

So first it brings you to some tutorial type gameplay. It's probably skippable, but I followed through, it's just to get you used to the controls and stuff. It was a bit difficult to control, but the point was that it was testing my settings to see what I can handle. It recommended some settings, but I ignored them after and set them to the easiest possible (e.g. TCL traction control enabled and stuff) and it's damn nice driving, with way, way more interesting locations with different map areas to choose from than the Dirt games.

It has a Quick Race mode where you can choose any location, any stage, and any vehicle for people like me that don't want to jump through hoops. I played a winding mountain map in Monte Carlo, A Kenya map and Finland so far.

You can cycle through different camera views, first person, first person with steering wheel and windshield etc. Third person where you're a bit behind the car is the easiest on my nervous system.

Finland

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Kenya (almost wiped out going too fast trying to take a screenshot lol)

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[Zema Bus]

I'll check it out, hard to go wrong at that price

[Grogan]

There are some pretty tough tracks, I manage to finish 20th place! (out of 20 lol). Actually once, on the Sweden map I got 16th place (woofuckinghoo). It's not about that for me though. There's a difficulty setting for that too, a percentage slider for opponents' time but I don't need to win.

The thing is, even when I think I'm doing well, I'm getting time tacked on for penalties. For example if you cut out part of the road by going off it, or cutting a curve there's like a +30 second penalty tacked on. If you roll it or something and have to press Y to respawn, it's like 49 seconds. Congratulations, you lose the race

It's only single player stuff that works though, the servers are shut down. I think the company is being acquired and they may come back, but I don't like that shit anyway. There's an annoyance though, after finishing every race there's a connection error for leaderboards that has to be OK'd and canceled.

This is very cool driving through interesting terrain.

[Zema Bus]

I used to have a lot of fun playing Indianapolis 500 back in the late 90's, it was a DOS game. At the time I didn't realize it was released in 1989. Eventually during a game session I'd turn around and drive the wrong way, I'd cause some horrendous pileups lol!

Here's a site where you can play it in a browser. Funny, I remember it looking better than that Either that's just because my standards have changed since then or there was an updated version in the 90's that I played. Also this one lacks the sound of the cars, I remember that well, it was part of the experience. And I used to play it with external perspective, I don't remember how to switch to that.

[Grogan]

That's about as bad as video game graphics get. That's so bad it doesn't even register as a racing game, it's just pixelated garbage (especially full screen)

I've noticed that phenomenon, when you see an old game you used to like, it always looks better in your mind, how you remember it. I wonder how I could have ever played that poo

P.S. I made the mistake of turning my speakers on. The audio is just beeps and boops and various distortions of those sounds

[Grogan]

I did eventually get tired of coming in last place in every race, because of the penalties. I'm just trying not to wipe out, never mind trying to cheat the track. To me, such rules sound counter intuitive for the kinds of roads/trails you drive on in rally races... isn't the point to take the road as fast as you can, using every advantage? But what do I know, I dislike/know nothing about sports.

So 60% difficulty for the thing that computes the AI player scores. Not that you see them in the game, it's just timed rally races. (Though there's a "ghost" (yellow 3D outline of a car) that can appear, after you've been playing for a while. It matches your playing style. It looks stupid, and is a distraction so I turned it off)

This is Donald style winning. Buy the golf course and have everyone else let you win

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[Zema Bus]

There was another game I used to play for hours and hours back in the 90's called Descent. It was only the shareware version, I would have loved to have had the full game but I didn't have money then. Then sometime in the early 2000's I finally got my hands on the full game when my brother-in-law gave me a copy. So I started playing it. I quickly got bored with the archaic graphics and never went back. I couldn't believe I used to practically live in that game. It'd probably look even worse if I looked at it again today, about 20 years after the last time I saw it.

That reminds me of when we used to play Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, I was having trouble with the corners and kept crashing and falling behind, and then I'd run into debris you and Troy left in your wake lol! It was still a lot of fun though.

[Grogan]

That's available on Steam, Descent along with Descent II and Descent 3. There's a native linux port and everything

There was another game somewhat like that, in 1996'ish. Microsoft Hellbender (Terminal Reality was the studio). It was a great game, but died after win9x.

Need For Speed Hot Pursuit is a great highway driving game, but it's b0rked for me. The Remaster would work, but I don't have access to that since I canceled the EA sub. That time we played multiplayer absolutely fried my nervous system, that was too much intense concentration (and I was playing it first person).

[Grogan]

Oh shit, there's a "WRC Generations" and "WRC 10 FIA World Rally Championship" still from the same dev and publisher, before Codemasters and EA got the "WRC" license. That's probably the one I should have bought.

Oh well, what's another $11. This one comes with any DLC already I think. I found out about it in a steam forum thread, someone was asking if WRC 9 was worth it if they already have WRC Generations.

So I bought a bundle for $17, WRC Generations (even newer than 10), WRC 10 and a game called Rims, no not those kind of rims, a motorcycle racing game

[Grogan]

Well... the Rims motorcycle game looks great, but my controller won't work in it. Not even with Steam Input enabled (that's detrimental for my controller, which doesn't need it... kernel driver). It's a common complaint, Windows users too. So fuck that one, I'm not playing a motorcycle racing game with the keyboard.

[Grogan]

I installed WRC Generations next, and first thing I noticed was that they forcibly enabled Steam Input ("set by developer"). I thought maybe they programmed it like that now or something, but no... it didn't work. So I quit and forcibly disabled Steam Input for the game and when I re-launched again, the Xbox 360 (original wired) controller works as expected. I have Steam Input disabled by default, so "default setting" is disabled unless overridden by a game.

It's nice, it has some of the same maps remastered and new ones, with the net effect being more maps.

Here's a new Italy one:

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[Zema Bus]

Looks good

[Grogan]

That was actually a poor example, that Italy map. Those buildings look cheap (looks better in the distance as you are whizzing along etc.) There's better graphics than that, with the winter mountain maps probably being the most spectatular.

I'm going to be deciding which one I'm going to keep installed. Probably WRC Generations as it has the nicest graphics (and seems smooth), has all of the maps that WRC 10 has and more and other shit I'm not interested in. (I only like Quick Play)

Here's one thing though, WRC 9 is the only one that's still fully functional for AI scoring in single player, the newer two fail to show anything other than YOUR finish time, with the servers gone. I don't care about that so much, I'd rather have nicer maps

There don't seem to be any penalties in Quick Play (never tried campaign or anything) at least. I'll have to note some of my own scores to have something to work for though (if not beat, at least be close to my best scores lol). The old fashioned way, by writing it down, since I have NO stats without a server connection. This is the problem with tying online to even single player games, the games are broken when you decide not to support them anymore. (Cunts)