If you are American, you probably don't know much about rallying, which basically has AWD compact vehicles doing F1 speeds on dirt tracks through a forest, desert, and so on. You may have seen rallycross, which is basically the short-track version of rallying, at X-Games. Here, we'll talk about the various games of this sub-genre of driving games, and a battle for its soul.
The rally games generally fall into three categories: arcade, semi-pro, and pro, depending on the driving model fidelity. Sega Rally is arcade all the way, Dirt series is semi-pro, and Dirt Rally 2.0 is pro, for example. But even within these games, you have the ones that adhere to a license, such as those with WRC license, and those who don't. The licensing got more complicated when RallyCross became an official event and had to be licensed separately.
The professional races for rallying are WRC (world rally championship), and ERC (European Rally Championship). WRC has licensed an official game since 2001. From 2001 to 2005, Evolution Studios (UK) had them for PS2 only, and later, PSP. (Evolution was later merged into Codemasters)
The license ended in 2005 and was picked up again in 2009 by Black Bean Games (IT), who contracted Milestone (IT) to make the actual game, and they were published between 2010 and 2013, named WRC: FIA World Rally Championship, then WRC2, WRC3, and WRC4.
(Sidenote: Milestone was well known for driving games, having started as Graffiti doing Screamer, then shifted to Milestone, and did almost exclusively driving games with occasional exceptions. They also did Sebastien Loeb Rally EVO, various motorcycle games in both road and mud racing such as MotoGP, Ride series, and various motocross games, and Gravel, which is a multi-discipline off-road racing game. )
The license shifted to Bigben Interaction (FR) who contracted Kylotonn (FR) to make the official game, from 2015 until 2022, named WRC5 to WRC11.
(Sidenote: Kylotonn was not particularly known for driving games before the WRC5 series, having only doing "Motorcycle Club" before. They also did V-Rally 4, which is not bad.)
There were, however, many rally sims before the official WRC games came along. One of the most recognized was Colin McRae Rally for the PS and PC from Codemasters, based on the 1998 WRC season, and even before that, Screamer Rally (by Milestone!) and Sega Rally (arcade). Colin McRae Rally (CMR) went on to CMR2, CMR3, CMR4, and CMR2005. However, WRC decided to license their own game starting in 2001, and CMR has no WRC license since CMR4. CMR2 was so good, it was re-released in 2013/2014 for iOS, Android, and even Windows and OS X. Codemasters then rebranded the series as Colin McRae: Dirt in 2007.
Colin McRae, unfortunately, died in a helicopter crash in 2007, the day after Dirt was launched in Europe. Codemasters chose to stop advertising in Europe and removed his name from future releases, though Dirt 2 was already announced. Dirt 3 and on has no Colin McRae name attached. Codemasters went on to released Dirt: Showdown, Dirt 4, and Dirt 5, while spun off Dirt into Dirt Rally hardcore sim series, and later, Dirt Rally 2.0, which would have a Colin McRae tribute pack released.
There are also various independent rally games that are still talked about today, like Richard Burns Rally (something STILL being modded today even though it was released in 2004), Xpand Rally, and many many more.
Rallycross was a rather recent addition. While it was officially invented in 1967, FIA did not recognize it as an official motorsport category until 2014 with formal rules and regulations. And impressively, Codemaster's Dirt Rally (released in 2015) was licensed as an official FIA RX game. In 2020, during the COVID pandemic, Dirt Rally 2.0 was used as an official World RX eSport.
Yes, that was somewhat long-winded, but we have to cover all the players. So basically, what we have here are two camps: Codemasters (Dirt Rally series), and Kylotonn (WRC series), and a bunch of smaller players over the years, trying to fight for the soul of the rally games in general.
And it appears that Codemasters is winning, as it was announced in 2020, that Codemaster has gained the official use of WRC license... and will be publishing WRC licensed games... in 2023. (Interestingly, Take Two was about to buy Codemasters, then Electronic Arts showed up with a bigger wallet... at about 1.2 BILLION bucks)
I have played WRC4 through 7 and was not too impressed with the effort. The driving model just feels a bit off compared to Dirt Rally, much less Dirt Rally 2.0. And driving model didn't feel any difference between the different versions of the games. It seems WRC8 and WRC9 may have improved driving models though. On the other hand, Dirt 5 is back to fun, not simulation.
So the battle continues. Will there be a surprise contender later? We shall see! We've seen
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