The only proper rally racing series around for modern consoles. If you want traditional rally racing on modern console this series is your best option by far. The Dirt games focus on Xrally, rally cross and similar stuff. Yes Codemasters do prettier games, blah blah blah. But Milestone at least makes an effort to stay true to the legacy of rally racing games and try to make their games as sim-like as possible, unlike Codemasters who have gone the arcade direction with their Dirt series. With their WRC games Milestone tries to meet the needs of traditional rally racing enthusiasts. So if you miss the old rally games of WRC (Evolution Studios), Colin McRae and Richard Burns, and you want something somewhat similar for a modern console then you should give these WRC games a chance. WRC 2 improves on everything from the first game, graphics, handling, gameplay structure, etc. WRC 2 is fast, intense, challenging and fun. In fact the only thing I truly miss from the old WRC games on PS2 are the weather effects (rain, snow, etc). That would have made WRC 2 even more immersive. However this WRC series by Milestone remains the best option for traditional rally racing.

Firstly this game is best played with a wheel, I used a Fanatec GT2. The feedback is fantastic is this game, each surface is modelled in a different way and once you master dirt, then snow, then fast open stages on tarmac, then a ****'s is refreshingly challenging. The difficulty curve in the career mode is perfect, and at 50% through I'm starting to really feel the pressure to perform. It's not a total sim ala Richard Burns Rally (although there is a PC mod which fixes this), but it is a good trade off and very similar to the original Colin Mcrae games. Landing the perfect slides, scandanavian flicks and jumps is incredibly rewarding..especially when the pressure of attaining that first place remains elusive. Graphics are a mixed bag, but on the whole I like the most of the large number of stages. There are enough tracks here to fill several Dirt 3 games, really putting Codemasters lack of content to shame. The menus and dub step unfortunately heavily distract from the wonderful ingame experience. I noted a few minor bugs with menu presses not registering, ocassional frame rate issues, and green cars as textures **** nothing game breaking. If you like REAL car driving games and rally, it's must buy.

I did manage to have fun driving through the career mode and managing my racing team, although it does get repetitive towards the end. My biggest issue is that I could not do this without driving assists, despite playing other driving games with very realistic settings. The game doesn't do a very good job of conveying speed and traction to the driver, lack of force feedback support had probably a lot to do with it.