EA Sports WRC 24 Season Expansion review: More of the same

EA Sports WRC 24 was easily one of the best racing experiences for me last year, particularly because I felt burnt out on Gran Turismo 7 and the rather underwhelming Forza Motorsport. While I'm not the biggest rally racing fan out there, I did enjoy the way WRC 24 presented the sport.

As such, when it came to the Season Expansion, I was expecting to get more of the same, perhaps with some improvements, particularly in the sections where I felt the game was lacking. Having spent more than eight hours playing through the new tracks and trying out the cars, I think the expansion delivered just that, albeit with some caveats.

For better, or for worse, the Season Expansion for EA Sports WRC 24 is just that — more of the same. While I did enjoy my time with the new tracks, the novelty wore thin pretty quickly, especially since the expansion barely does anything to address the major criticisms I or most other players had with the base game.

Looking for Crossword hints & solutions? Check out latest NYT Mini Crossword Answers, LA Times Crossword Answers, and USA Today Crossword Answers

EA Sports WRC 24 Season Expansion - More rally racing goodness bogged down by the same technical issues of the base game

What's new in the Season Expansion?

The Season Expansion for EA Sports WRC 24 introduces two new tracks to the game - the Tet Rally, Latvia, which made its WRC debut this year, and the iconic Orlen 80th Rally, Poland. Both these tracks are recreated with impeccable attention to detail, which isn't surprising, considering developer Codemasters nailed the track designs in the base game as well.

Orlen 80th Rally, Poland is an excellent addition to the existing roster of rally tracks in WRC 24 (Image via EA)

Furthermore, the expansion comes with five high-performance rally vehicles from Ford, Toyota, and Hyundai. It also adds the GR Yaris Rally 2 hybrid, which is among my personal favorites for offroad and dirt racing.

That's not all; the Season Expansion will also feature two more new add-ons. The first is the Le Maestros, which adds two new routes - Briançonnet and Fafe. The second is the Hard Chargers mode, which will feature newly updated stages.

However, both Le Maestros and Hard Chargers will be released later this year and in early 2025. As of October 2024, you'll get access to the new tracks and hybrid cars.

Is it worth getting the Season Expansion?

I'll just get straight to the point here - if you enjoyed the base game of EA Sports WRC 24 (like me), then the Season Expansion is a no-brainer. It's essentially more of WRC 24, but with some new tracks, cars to customize and master, as well as the promise of future content, which perfectly lines up with my expectations from an "expansion."

The Hyundai Rally 1 is among the five new cars added with the Season Expansion (Image via EA)

However, if you were expecting something revolutionary out of the Season Expansion, this isn't going to impress you.

If you didn't like EA Sports WRC 24 at launch, the Season Expansion isn't going to change your mind about it, especially since it doesn't offer anything new.

Don't get me wrong, the new circuits are excellent, especially the Orlen 80th. The new cars you get with the expansion (especially the GR Yaris) are also incredible to drive. However, it's not anything that you haven't seen in the base game. The expansion still follows the same, somewhat repetitive campaign structure as the base game.

I think with an expansion, Codemasters had the chance to improve on a ton of things that fans complained about in the base game or maybe add something entirely new that could bring new players to WRC 24. Unfortunately, the Season Expansion doesn't do any of that. Instead, it just sticks to what worked in the base game.

While there's nothing wrong with sticking with what works, with an expansion that's going to be paywalled, players do expect a bit more than just a handful of new tracks and cars.

Despite the expansion not delivering anything ground-breaking, I enjoyed my 8+ hours with it, simply because Codemasters has nailed what rally racing should feel like.

Despite my gripes with the game, I enjoyed every single moment of the time I spent with the expansion. As I mentioned in my review of the base game, EA Sports WRC 24 is easily one of the best rally racing titles out there. It sits comfortably among some of the best racing sims of this generation, and that still holds true.

Technical shortcomings

In my review of WRC 24, I mentioned that the game's visuals can often look a bit dated, especially compared to most modern racing titles. And sadly that's still true for WRC's Season Expansion. Furthermore, the technical issues, i.e., stuttering and occasional crashes, are still prevalent in the expansion, perhaps more so than in the base game.

WRC 24 can look incredibly stunning at times, when it's working as intended (Image via EA)

During my initial four-hour session, the game crashed for a total of three times. I played it on a PC equipped with RTX 4070, Ryzen 5 5600X, and 16GB of RAM. While the game ran fine most of the time, there were a handful of instances of stuttering, freezing, and crashing.

Apart from the dated visuals and technical shortcomings, there were also some odd graphical errors that popped up during my playthrough. Chief among these issues was the persistent texture-loading bug, which prevented some parts of the new tracks to fully load the textures, despite the settings being cranked to the absolute maximum.

Texture-loading issues are nothing new for Unreal Engine 4, but this is one that I never faced in the base game of WRC 24. As such, it felt a little jarring to see certain tracks look way more muddier than usual. I do hope Codemasters will patch these issues out at the earliest, perhaps even before the official launch of the expansion.

In conclusion

EA Sports WRC 24 Season Expansion is essentially more of what the base game had to offer. The new tracks, hybrid rally cars, as well as the promise of new game modes in the future, are admittedly excellent. However, the expansion doesn't offer anything new or exciting enough to entice fans who might not have liked WRC to give the game a shot.

The Season Expansion is more of what the base game had to offer (Image via EA)

That's not to say the Season Expansion isn't good; it's just not anything ground-breaking or revolutionary.

If you're looking for more WRC rally racing action, the expansion is more than enough to scratch that itch. However, if you weren't a fan of Codemasters' take on WRC, the expansion isn't going to win you over.