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1
Things obviously don't get that grim, but the often-cramped crowds do make the historical stages a compelling challenge because just the tiniest touch to a stupid spectator will instantly respawn you on track with a stiff penalty.
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2
KT Racing has done very well selecting a range of rally cars that really matter, and a lot of world championship-winning cars are represented.
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3
The classics garage stretches from the Alpine A110, the winner of the first WRC in 1973, all the way to Ott Tänak's 2019 Toyota Yaris, which famously ended 15 years of the championship, being won by blokes called Sébastien.
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4
There's plenty of iconic Metal in between, too, like a pair of fire-breathing Audi Quattros, several Lancias (including the mighty Integrale), the Peugeot 205, the Toyota Celica and 99 Corolla, the 2007 Ford Focus RS, the Volkswagen Polo R, and a handful of successful Citroëns.
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5
Colin Mcrae's 1997 Subaru Impreza and Tommy Mäkinen's 1998 Mitsubishi Lancer Evo V are two other legends, you may have access to.
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6
But as of launch they are currently tied up as either console pre-order incentives or deluxe edition content.
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7
Broadly speaking, however, it's a very good spectrum of both drivers' and manufacturers' championship-winning cars, there aren't too many major winning models missing.
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8
Annoyingly, WRC 10 instantly makes one of WRC 9's more irksome missteps, which is demanding that everybody begins the career mode in either the WRC Junior or WRC 3 series.
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9
With no way for those of us who've done a few laps already to skip past these feeder series and get straight into the main WRC championship.
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10
I get that climbing the motorsport ladder is a natural part of a career mode process, but it just feels a little punitive to make the faithful redo it every year.
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11
I suspect I would've had more patience for it had WRC 10 let me dive straight into the new Private team career option, which lets you build your own race team and buy and design your own team car with the welcome new livery editor.
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12
But KT Racing has locked the most interesting new element of WRC 10's career mode behind the completion of Anniversary mode, which I don't get.
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13
On top of that, the baffling bonus objectives have survived another iteration without being kicked to the curb.
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14
Meaning you'll still need to put up with your manufacturer suggesting daft things like "don't use hard tires for this rally", which slightly undermines the interesting new tyre strategy layer KT Racing has inserted this time around.
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15
Not only must we choose a stockpile of tyre types to take into each rally, but tires can even be cross-mounted if you want to experiment and potentially discover some extra speed on drastically mixed surface stages.
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16
Opting to complete the new shakedown before each rally will also give you four additional tyres in your stash.