If they had just done a few things differently, 4x4 Evo 2 could have been the offroading game on everybodies wish list.
User Rating: 5 | 4x4 EVO 2 XBOX
4x4 Evo 2, at first glance, seems like the Gran Turismo of the offroading genre, and in many ways it is. As said in the GameSpot review, there are "...more than 100 licensed trucks from Toyota, Chevy, Ford, Lexus, Mitsubishi, and more. Each truck has a specific lot of parts that can be used to upgrade it based upon its stock equipment. Building your mud monster is a trying process because you must install several prerequisite parts before making massive upgrades to performance." Sounds great right about now, but once the game is booted up and explored, a person realizes that 4x4 Evo 2 ends up way off course. What absolutely kills 4x4 Evo 2 is the gameplay, which features standard multiplayer races, a supposedly in-depth career mode, and even a mission mode for exploring and doing something to expand the life of the game by not just racing all the time. Let's start with the career mode, which, to be honest, is simply dumb. In order to win any race, only skill is needed. This sounds like it should be a, "no duh" statement to most, but in reality, there is no need what-so-ever to upgrade your truck beyond a few basics such as raised suspension and bigger tires. Everything that you do to your own truck in the game, the computer will react accordingly. In other words, if you were to earn money in mission mode and spend all the money you could on your truck to upgrade it to as powerful of an offroading vehicle you can by the first race, the computer will match what you have. This is unfortunate, as having a powerful speed demon vehicle is more difficult to control than something slower and sturdier, and so most of the game will be spent racing with simply mediocre vehicles. Mission mode, however, requires a ton of exploring, and there is where fast, upgraded trucks really do well. In my opinion, I had more fun with mission mode than the racing, as it let you roam around the game's huge environments searching for something. Some missions tell you that you're a park ranger and you have to find several canoes that washed up on stream while other will have you being an excavationist searching for lost treasures or giant temples. While it doesn't seem like much, it kept me entertained for awhile. That is until I realized the monotony of the missions, and how each one left me with less and less clues to a goal until I found myself driving around a map for hours searching for one tiny thing on that giant map. It simply became no fun. And finally, the computer AI racers are just retarded, and will ram into anything that get into their way, including trees and trains. It's funny to watch, but is pretty lame. One of the saving graces of 4x4 Evo 2 is the fact that it has a customizable soundtrack. That doesn't sound like much, but when you're driving for a few hours, music you enjoy listening to suddenly becomes very important. Unfortunately, the rest of the game doesn't sound all that good. There's little to no ambient noise, any voice-overs in the game are just annoying, and all the trucks sound basically the same. The graphics are, by far, the best part about this game. Though they are far from perfection, 4x4 Evo 2 does display some very large environments amazingly well, with very little pop-up or fog. There isn't a ton of detail, but the world around your vehicle still seems somewhat believable, with giant mountians to climb, rivers, lakes, and plenty of trees in some levels, it can sometimes be almost breathtaking. Although there is an occasional track that looks exactly like the ones from the original Dreamcast 4x4 Evo, and I can't help but wonder what they were thinking when they decided to not only put those into the game, but to not change the graphics to match the rest of the game is just strange. Another disappointment is the lack of ambient life. When driving through a massive forest environment, one expects to see something like deer, rabits, birds, and the like. Another complaint is the lack of detail on your vehicle itself. It will get dirty after driving it around for so long, but other than that the models simply aren't too impressive, and the lack of damage modeling is just too bad. Finally, the camera can and will be a bit of a pain in the ass, and the angles the game offers just don't help much in some cases. Like was best said before me, 4x4 Evo 2 just has too many problems. It really has the potential to be an excellent game, but issues such as the incredible lame AI and lack of any reason to progress through the game hold it back. 4x4 Evo 2 will hold your attention for awhile, but in the end is a horrible disappointment.
