At first glance, major improvement are visible, graphics are more realistic and they added the possibility of tire puncture and manual windscreen wipers and headlights control.
But after a while, you start to notice some things which are even worse than the previous title, like the co-driver and engine sound, horrible, soo frustrating, I can't even disable the HUD because of that, you just cannot distinguish when you even have to change gear if there wasn't an on-screen display for that. At last, also the force-feedback is awful, you just can't distinguish when you are both oversteering or understeering.

All in all, I would highly recommend you to rather play the DiRT series, as they even if the game doesn't have licensed WRC cars and tracks, it's still a far better game than this.