WRC: Rally Evolved (PS2)

Excuse me for the rather sketchy footage of WRC: Rally Evolved, at the time of this video's publishing, I'm still in the process of discovering the joys of 720p uploads and getting the feel for this game after possibly three or four years of leaving it to collect dust. Stay with me here lol.

Rally Evolved is the fifth WRC game on PS2 and the last. It's quite a system swansong for the folks at Evolution Studios who have since moved on to the equally celebrated Motorstorm series on Playstation 3.

Besides being possibly the best looking racer outside of Gran Tursimo 4 and having the most polished handling for a rally game next to Colin Mcrae, Rally Evolved introduced a rather crazy element to the genre that I haven't seen since in track invasions. What this means is that animals, people and road accidents themselves can prop up during the race as they do occassionally in the real thing and it makes an already intense race, all the more real and numbers based.

Rally Evolved is a damn tough game too, or atleast can be without any racing aides. I've shouted and screamed many times at this one, especially while building this video for Youtube. It's very hard to do a race clean without any hiccups and WRC Rally Evolved's unforgiving controls and physics make it all the more brutal as you reach the last corner of a track.

Dare I say this is a purists only game. As a casual fan of racing, and particularly rally games, I'm probably just not so very good at this but in an age dominated by accessible racers, this is the least inviting but the most satisfying and rewarding of them all.