Rallisport Challenge 2 : Web Wombat : Games

The sight of a rally car cresting a hill at full throttle, engine screaming, while mud and grit is liberally sprayed across adoring spectators is truly something to behold.

But in the replays of Rallisport 2, it's even better.

One of my favourite things about this game is the ability to use the analogue triggers to control the speed of the playback in replays.

It's such a cool feature, and it makes an already engrossing game more so.

There's nothing quite like watching a super slow-mo replay of your half-million dollar Subaru WRX 22B getting absolutely smashed to smithereens.

You can even slow the video down to almost standstill and see exactly what went wrong and at what point (usually when your dumb flat mate walks in front of the TV) as the car proceeds to flip and twist in what looks like zero gravity, complete with the driver's door swinging open from the centrifugal forces, and every window shattering instantly.

For mine, this is what rallying is all about. Not just the carnage, but the struggle between machine and the elements, and being able to relive this in acute detail is enormously rewarding.

Well, with that out of the way, I guess you'll all be wanting to know what this game is like to play? Well, the good news is that it's an enjoyable game. It's no Colin McRae, but the physics engine is very impressive, and a plethora of game modes add heaps of replayability.

The game is set out like most serious racing games of the 128-bit era: from the outset you create a profile and then can choose career, single race, time trials, rallycross and the list goes on. There's also a great multiplayer mode that anyone with an Xbox Live kit and a broadband connection can connect to.

We'll focus on the career mode in this review because I'm writing it and I call the shots. Well, that's a lie, I had trained chimps write this, but the career mode is where you'll probably head to first.

The lighting system is tasty: note
the way the shadows are thrown

So, to begin with you can tackle the amateur or the pro league, and rather than just competing in stage after stage successively, you get to choose a number of different paths along the way, which is such a refreshing change for a driving/rally game.

There's also a good mixture between traditional point-to-point timed stages, circuits, hill climbs and ice racing.

A high frame rate ensures the sense of speed is realistic, and I'll be frank - the graphical detail is sensational.

Not only do the cars look super-fly, but the trackside detail is phenomenal, and while you'll only be able to notice larger features, such as forests, mountains or exploding llamas, the replay's do a brilliant job of showing off just how powerful the graphics engine is.

There's a real sense of immersion to the game, as all the various countries feel quite authentic, albeit in a fairly stereotypical way. There's swaying palm trees in the tropical levels, snow-dusted pine trees in the Swedish hinterlands and lots of fog and mud in Britain.

The car's themselves can take a pounding, and they look the part after one too many collisions with trees, as bumpers get ripped off, the front end gets mashed in and windows shatter. Vehicle performance also suffers after many incidents, adding nicely to the feel of being there and crashing these cars yourself.

But getting back to the graphics - ring-a-ding-ding! It's one ultra-sexy game, and the polygon count is out of sight. The bump-mapped track surfaces look great with minute attention to detail, and on a visual level this game is very hard to fault, and for my money is the best looking rally game on a console to date.

The weather effects are awesome, particularly when rain and fog combine, and even things like getting the sun in your eyes will have an effect on how well you drive. Particle effects are uniformly ace, and the dust plumes that rise behind the rally cars are some of the best yet.

Playing the game started out as a shocking experience, as viewing the car from the external camera angles was a no-no, because I thought it sucked. To be brutally honest, I felt that the car's looked incredibly arcadey in the way they reacted to the surface, fishtailing and slip-sliding about in an exaggerated fashion.

Prepare for many heart-in-mouth moments
on sealed roads, where these rally cars'
supreme grip and power come to the fore

As a result of my hatred for this apparently unrealistic behaviour, I played the game from one of the interior views, or bumper cam, and I found the game much more accessible.

Maybe it's just me, and perhaps other gamers will find it easier, but the physics just looked a bit weird and thus controlling the car became hit and miss from the third person perspective.

Change to an inside view and everything worked well and I found the first career difficulty level - amateur - to be a cake walk.

But the game does offer a good challenge as the difficulty progresses, and rally game veterans would be well advised to skip the amateur class.

Track design is an important facet of any racing game - rally or not - and the folks at Digital Illusions (DICE) have done an incredible job in this instance. From the bitumen-covered stages of Monte Carlo to the outback tracks of Australia, the sheer variety of driving in most tracks makes this game hard to put down.

The gameplay is cleverly influenced by the awesome track design, as you'll feel loss of grip when driving through puddles of water, and the way the cars react to different surfaces is immeasurably pleasing - and the rumble through the Xbox controller also adds to the experience.

There's nary a dull moment in Rallisport 2, and with plenty of jumps, inclines, hairpins, and sweeping downhill off-camber corners, most people will revel in the thoughtfully-designed stages and tracks, while racing fanatics will be impressed at the diversity and technicality of some sections.

There are roughly 40 cars to drive, many of them popular rides, such as the Mitsubishi Evo VII and Peugeot 206, and there are even a few car that were banned from competition because they pumped out too many ponies.

Like any rally game, you can tune your car, and while it's not the sort of in-depth fiddling like in McRae, the simpler form definitely suits the games attitude.

Rallisport Challenge 2 brings a lot to the Rally table, first and foremost its whiz-bang graphics engine. It won't challenge McRae for realism or detailed physics, but sometimes a hint of arcade goodness is all that's needed to up the fun factor.

You like Saab? You like fog? Me neither...

The online aspect is a winner as well, because Rallisport 2 allows multiple players on the same tracks - hence the name, I guess.

This gives the game instant online potential, and like many Xbox Live games, it works a treat. You can even set up your own leagues and tournaments online, and in general the multiplayer experience is seamless.

It's an incredibly addictive game at times, this Rallisport Challenge 2, and there are few things as rewarding as coming from behind to pip the front-runner with a scorching time. Perfectly powersliding rally cars through corners is always a blast, and the way you have to rack up miles in specific cars to unlock new paint jobs is pretty cool too.

It's also a much more approachable game than the McRae franchise, and one that will probably appeal to a wider audience and be far less intimidating. It is a better game than the original, thanks to killer graphics, more tracks (90+), online play and a lot more variety.

If there's anything bad to say about the game, it would probably be concerning load times, but in general I find there's very little to fault. The controls are tight, the options numerous and the gameplay engrossing. And, in the event that you do eventually tire of the game, you can always set up awesome crashes and watch them back in slow-mo thanks to the powerful replay suite. Tops!

If you like your rally games with a huge number of testing tracks, vivacious visuals, gregarious gameplay and replays that really rock the house, there are a few titles that can compete on the same level as Rallisport Challenge 2.

Game: Rallisport Challenge 2
System: Xbox
Players: 1-multi
Online: Yes
Developer: Digital Illusions CE
Distributor: Microsoft

Rating: 85%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)

Rallisport Challenge 2 is on the shelves now.

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