Digital Foundry takes on another ‘impossible port’.
Six months after its console debut, World Rally Championship 10 has made the jump to Switch.
Let’s find out.
First, let’s take a look at the headline visual stats.
And at 648p, the upscale to a full HDTV isn’t flattering.
The pre-race fly-bys don’t do much to hide them.
Impressively though, all of the crowds track-side are in full 3D at least.
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In fairness, none of this is really noticed in motion.
Shadows are another big reason why the Switch rendition looks so barren in so many shots.
Everything to the horizon looks plain as a result, almost two-dimensional rather than a realistic 3D environment.
Without a doubt the biggest cutback is in the terrain itself.
Entire chunks of plant life are yanked out of the scene to save on Switch’s GPU headroom.
Other stages trim back detail aggressively, if not quite to the same extent.
On the plus side, far distance detail like woodlands are nicely filled out even on Switch.
All round, it’s stunning to see how greatly WRC10’s engine scales.
The car models, for example, are impressively detailed and amongst the best I’ve seen on Switch.
Sound quality for engine revs and the co-driver are also presented at a high bitrate.
Audio in WRC10 presents as crisp and clear as you’d expect, which is great.
So is the Switch version playable?
Visual cutbacks aside, is it feature-complete?
A more worrying issue playing on Nintendo’s handheld is the controls.
Between all three modes the main difference really is in resolution and shadow quality.
No contest with Switch here, obviously, but again it shows just how scalable the engine is.
One other major advantage for upgrading to PS5 over PS4 is in loading times.
Jumping into the Monte Carlo stage, for example, takes just seven seconds on PS5.
To be honest, loading times on PS4 and Switch are a frustration.
So again, game load times are a huge plus for moving to the new generation.
That is, alongside the leap to 60fps and beyond.
Performance then: how does it stack up?
Lets’s focus on Switch first.
For docked TV play, all the drops to visual configs meant that performance is usually solid at 30fps.
Frame-pacing also becomes uneven once the performance drops.
Playing on a small screen makes it less perceptible in motion, but it’s hardly ideal.
Jumping over to PS4 next, our prospects improve quite a bit.
Here it’s again rock-solid, with only rare signs of screen tearing.
Despite its cutbacks, WRC 10 gets a lot right.
The absence of multiplayer modes is a shame, but the core mechanics for a race are here.
So is it as bad as people say?
Visually speaking, absolutely.
WRC 10 is very rough in places.
Some tracks look acceptable next to PS4, but others are unrecognisable.
Especially on a big screen it’s hard to accept the barebones look of most tracks.
There is, though, redeeming value in playing in portable mode.
With a tweak to the frankly nearly unusable default controls, there is a game worth playing here.
Mechanically, WRC10 is sound on Switch then, but its visuals could use a serious tune-up.
