Spent a good couple hours on this now. Really enjoying it, good step up from 9, the cars have a lot more weight to them, makes the braking a bit harder to judge coming from 9 but feels really good. The classic cars definitely feel better than they did in previous games, they seem to have benefited the most from the upgraded physics. Sounds are an improvement, some of the cars still sound a bit weak but there's generally a lot more body to the audio, backfires and off throttle burbles are much more present and sound great. The classics again have seen the biggest upgrade here. Graphically, very similar to 9, but with much better crowds, better foliage and the car damage seems a bit more intricate. I have noticed some screen tearing and some stuttering but not often and the stuttering only happened once.
Content wise, loads to do, the historic stages are actually really fun, and there's a few few, Monte Carlo, Sweden, Kenya, Greece, San Remo, New Zealand and Catalunya all have historic variants. New Zealand, Greece and San Remo ONLY have historic variants. San Remo seems to have the most with 4, 1974, 1981, 1997 and 1998. But realistically it's one stage, 1974 and 1998 and 'forward'and 1981, 1997 are the reversed stage. But there slightly different graphics and the crowds are period correct. Also worth mentioning that you can drive any car on any stage variation, so classics on the modern WRC stages but also the modern WRC cars on the historic stages.
Quickly dipped in to career mode, pretty much the same here with a couple of nice tweaks. You can now name your co-driver for a start. But the realistic duration setting is what made me happy. WRC9 typically had 5 or 6 stages per event, and you can still have that in 10, but if you turn on the realistic setting then, Monte Carlo for example at the start of the WRC3 campaign, has 15 stages, so much closer to the real WRC events. This also leads into the next bit nicely, tyre strategy. You can choose how many of each compound/tyre type you take for the rally, and there's a new menu that shows all your tyres and the life they have. This is where cross mounting comes in. For example in Monaco, for the more mixed surface stages you can mount a studded tyre on the front with the rest being dry softs, just as they would in real life. Loads of flexibility over your tyre choices and with the longer events, has a key role to play. Very cool. You can also choose what compound your spare tyres are. And if you opt in to the shakedown, which gets added as an additional stage at the start of the rally, you get 4 additional tyres.
Edit: should add this is Xbox Series S.
Here's some screens:
)
