... and now, for something completely different
EA Sports WRC. Being a racing nerd with a particular soft spot for rallying.
It's actually brilliant. Sadly the release was marred with a few performance issues (screen tearing) and a big blunder with one of the patches (which essentially corrupted your career mode save). So now the patch is patched and the game runs more smoothly.
Still, for me it's one of the most engaging racing games I've played in a long while, satisfying my craving for a good rally sim. Some of the stages are near perfect recreations of real-world ones, watching the actual Rally MonteCarlo this weekend just blew my mind (stages like St Leger-les-Melezes to La Batie Neuve, and Col de Turini were recreated down to the road signs). With seasonal variations on the courses (you can play MonteCarlo rally in the summer, among the green trees and no ice on the road). The feeling with the cars is awesome, and there's a very wide variety of rallying cars to play with (getting all the old rally categories, from the 70s Alpine, the 80s Group B cars, the 90-00s kit cars, and many more). Going to stick to this one for a long while.
. Gave up on my first playthrough not long after I bought it, due to some bad decision-making, but my second playthrough has been going on for over a month (probably would've got through quicker, but life = busy). I'm nearing the end, but wouldn't surprise me if I still have ages to go. Such a massive game. I'm almost put off by its massiveness to do a third run (though I certainly will do a third run at least), and it seems to get more gameplay dense as the game goes on. There's lots of replayability potential otherwise.
STILL haven't finished Chained Echoes. Once that's done, I'll be playing Persona 3 Reload in Feb because the original was my other favorite game, and then FFVII in March. Then I kinda wanna play Sea of Stars.
