Excellent addition to this driving simulator
Massive research has gone into this game to make it as real as possible. I remember Codemasters were most proud of their backdrop settings and graphics, with the life-like introduction of moving grasses as your car speeds by. The graphics are so good that the cut scenes on the introduction are actual in-game footage.
There are several game modes, from Championship to Quick race and your own made up series. There are several courses to unlock and a great selection of cars. The cars are based on real rally cars, mostly from today: 4-wheel drive and 2WD, but also some classic old cars of yesteryear. You are able to see what cars are there to unlock and it tells you what you need to do so as to unlock it – such as complete 4WD championship mode advanced.
The game saves have improved on the early instalments, allowing you to save after every two stages and not needing to wait for all six to finish, thus allowing you to quit and reload and try those last two stages again. One down part to the game is that it is going to take up a large amount of your tiny little PS2 memory card – I had to buy a new one. Beware loading times are highly slow and end up making me turn my PS2 off and try a different game.
Onto this realistic game-play then. The car handling certainly does change with different road surfaces, be it a grippy tarmac or loose gravel. All the cars do handle differently, with the old rear 2WD cars driving like a bus. Hard to tell how realistic it is, as I’ve never driven off road. The Tarmac courses are very realistic and a good setup allows for a very fast turning car. However my favourite level is Britain and the tarmac levels are so easy that I can chuck the car in at full speed on most corners. The last gravel stage is where I can compare cars – here you notice some of the cars are very similar and some are just poor.
On the different difficulty setting you can have the option of car damage. With this the car will degrade in performance in relation to what you damaged. If you damage the bodywork it just seems to be the looks you impair, but slam into a tree head on you’re likely to damage the front suspension and thus have a poor handling car. Land too heavily on a jump and its possible the wheels might fall off; and it isn’t an automatic fail – you can choose to limp home to the service station – but why would you do that? Reload.
Generally the game is too hard to pick up and play on Advanced level – which I guess is good. But on the Normal level, the game is far too easy to beat. There needs to be a happy inbetween. Only a dedicated gamer will learn how to drive fast enough on Advanced level to beat the game. You need to learn the tracks, difficult corners and nasty hidden rocks – as any crashes are bound to end you up with a very slow time. The game is brutal in the sense that you cannot afford to crash; I guess its very life like. However when a game does this it needs to be flawless and Codemasters have done a good job, but not a perfect one.
As real rallys go, you do not race head to head against an opponent – you don’t in the game either. However I’ve never managed to catch up or overtake a broken down car yet. I may have seen an opponent up ahead on the snow course though – not sure.
Sound – there is no music; you can get bored of listening to the revy little engine noises. I end up choosing a car based on if I can stand to listen to it. Whilst driving you don’t just get a minimap but also a co-driver. This incomprehensible Scottish twit spurts out words that I sometimes struggle to hear or understand and any Yanks playing this game will think he’s speaking in a foreign language.
Summary – it will take weeks of hard playing to master the Advanced and Expert level. As a pickup game it sucks. Where’s the fun?