You have to pay for this info but someone posted it and I grab it. Enjoy! I\'m picking this baby up!
RalliSport Challenge review at IGNThe new king of Xbox racing is here.
February 28, 2002 - The Xbox is quickly turning into a racing fan\'s dream machine. While we\'ve yet to see a game that tackles the depth of Sony\'s Gran Turismo, Microsoft and its third-parties are doing a great job at covering each and every sub-genre. Whether it\'s NASCAR, F1, off-roading, or street racing, there\'s plenty of vehicle action for everyone. Now, just in time for the European launch, Microsoft is adding yet another quality title to the list. RalliSport Challenge, the first rally racer for Xbox comes courtesy of Swedish development studio Digital Illusions (not to be confused with the Canada-based studio behind Shrek), the same guys that created Rally Masters.
Fusing fast-paced arcade racing with tons of authentic cars, realistic rally tracks, and gorgeous graphics, DICE has created a riveting game that no racing fan should be without. Don\'t worry if you\'re not into watching WRC on TV and don\'t know why people would possibly want to drive from Paris to Dakar -- you don\'t have to be a rally fan to get into this game. All you need is two hands and a hankering for driving insanely fast on vicious terrain.
Gameplay
Let\'s get this out of the way first: RalliSport Challenge goes for fun over realism. The realistic graphics may make it look like a racing simulation, but the developers decided to forego some of the technical aspects of rally racing and instead added a healthy dose of extra speed. You can still set up your car before each race and pick your choice of tire, but the car management menus are more of an afterthought than an integral part of the game. Likewise, damage is mostly cosmetic and merely influences your bonus points -- not car behavior or control. While it would have been nice to have a deeper damage system, you really can\'t fault this game for concentrating on racing over car customization and maintenance. You don\'t need to wade through tons of menus or worry that driving off a cliff will have a lasting impact on the overall championship. RalliSport Challenge is fast and exciting -- and it never slows down.
The game features four basic gameplay modes: Career, Single Race, Time Attack, and Multiplayer (up to four players split-screen). The Career mode is of course the heart of the game. You create a player profile, then dive right into a series of 17 racing events. Progression through the career mode is point based. After each race, you are awarded points according to your placement, time, and car damage. Your totals are then added up after each completed event (you can go back and re-race an event to get a higher point score), which in turn unlocks new sets of tracks and cars.
In case you\'re wondering, RalliSport Challenge features a huge lineup of licensed rally and hill climb cars, including: Ford Escort Cosworth Rally, Volkswagen Beetle, Castrol Toyota Corolla, Peugeot 306, Mitsubishi Lancer EVO VI, Subaru Impreza WRX, Ford Focus Cosworth, Peugeot 206, Saab 83 TI6 4x4, Opel Astra TI6 4x4, Ford Focus Rallycross, Citroen Xsara Rallycross, Mitsubishi Lancer EVO 65, Subaru Impreza Hill Climb, Lancia Delta Integrale, Nissan Skyline, Metro ER4, Peugeot 205 TI6, Audi Quattro SI, Lancia Delta S4, Peugeot 405 TI6 Hill Climb, Audi Quattro SI Hill Climb, Suzuki Grand Vitara PP Special, Toyota Tacoma Hill Climb, as well as some unlisted prize cars you can win by getting first in some of the competitions. The events themselves are made up of multiple races and draw from four different rally racing styles: point-to-point Rally (you race alone against a timer to place within the top 3), Rallycross (circuit-based races against three opponents), Ice Racing (circuit-based racing once ice tracks against three opponents), and Hill Climb (an uphill point-to-point race to get to the peak of a mountain). While the first two have become staple elements of each and every rally racing game, it\'s great to see Hill Climb and Ice Racing making the cut. The number of environments/countries in RalliSport Challenge may not be as high as in competing racers, like V-Rally, for example, but the actual gameplay is much more varied thanks to the fact that Ice Racing feels so different from a point-to-point competition.
Which brings me to what makes this game so much fun: it feels just right. Unlike most rally racers, RalliSport Challenge is not only fast, it also features truly exciting tracks. Sure, certain track elements repeat, but the terrain just doesn\'t have that generic "texture-set-swapped" quality that plagues many rally games. If you\'ve ever watched a rally race on TV and marveled at the dash-cam footage, you\'ll be amazed at how well DICE translated the look and feel of battling against the terrain to your Xbox. But the developers didn\'t just duplicate the look of a static camera. By introducing subtle camera movement when using the hood view cam, you really feel like you\'re experiencing what it feels like to speed towards a sharp curve, pull the e-brake and slide around the corner at an angle. Using one of the many third-person camera viewpoints may make navigating the unknown tracks easier in the beginning, but there\'s nothing like viewing this game from the driver\'s eyes.
While power-slide heavy street racers like Ridge Racer can get away with fantasy physics, realistic car behavior and friction is key to making rally games feel like the real thing. Even though RalliSport features slightly relaxed gravity (letting you catch more air), it perfectly captures the feeling of driving on different surfaces. You really get a good sense of the tires gripping when you skid from gravel onto tarmac, for example. Likewise, competing in an ice race not only feels different from hill climb, it requires you to adjust your driving to turn into curves earlier and to use your brakes more often to keep from crashing into barriers.
I could go on and on -- but I\'d just be repeating myself: this is a great game that\'s easily the Xbox\'s best racer yet. There are some minor flaws, like the lack of a "true" rear view mirror (which would have helped in Rallicross mode -- the full-screen look back is a bit dangerous), or the way the game sometimes resets you too early when you\'re skidding off track, but those are minor issues. The only real complaint I have is that the career mode could have been so much deeper. The way you progress through the championships isn\'t exactly innovative, but it gets the job done. It would have been nice to have more of a true career/team mode where you stick with one team and compete for sponsorships, new cars, or car upgrades, but the legal issues involved with trying to persuade car manufacturers and rally teams to carry fantasy decals would of course be immense. In the same vein, I would have much preferred to compete for single prize cars rather than trying to beat a bonus point score and unlock a batch of cars at the same time. That way, the new cars you win become much more meaningful and you\'ll actually want to try out each one you unlock. Finally, the multiplayer mode is a bit underdeveloped. A two-player career mode would have helped to make it more than just an afterthought. As it stands, RalliSport provides fun (and fairly smooth) split-screen versus races for up to four players, but it remains just an added bonus to an excellent single player racer.
Graphics
The first time I played Halo, I asked myself how long we\'d have to wait to see another Xbox game with textures that look this good when viewed up close. If you don\'t know what I\'m talking about and you\'ve been too busy blasting the Talmadge Blevins-like grunts, pop in Halo, put away your blaster for a second, and walk up to a tree and look at the bark. That\'s some sweet texture design (and mip-mapping) right there. Well, turns out that we didn\'t have to wait all that long. Thanks to Digital Illusions, RalliSport Challenge not only plays great, it\'s also a graphical tour-de-force with detailed textures, beautiful lighting, and smooth framerates all around. If you\'ve been looking at the screenshots we\'ve put up of this game, you already know to expect highly detailed car models, realistic landscapes, and fantastic lighting effects. But it\'s the little details that really make this game shine. Trees and grass gently sway in the wind, your car\'s windows shatter after a particularly rough landing, a thin layer of dust coats your car when you drive through the desert, the tarmac subtly reflects the sunlight, and the ice... Well, you\'ve got to see an ice race at dusk in action to truly cherish how good this game looks.
There are so many little details, we didn\'t even notice some of them until a few days into playing RalliSport Challenge. Drive into a tree and leaves fall down, pass some zebras and their heads will turn, and virtually any object you smash into will get knocked over and will remain on the ground until the end of the race. Add to that a plethora of particle and weather effects and you\'ve got one sweet looking racer. On the downside, owners of large TVs will definitely notice some jaggies around the cars and the game doesn\'t quite get mud right. I\'m still waiting for a next-gen rally racer that treats mud with the respect it deserves. Mud is slippery and nasty and splatters all over your car when you drive through it. I would have loved to see some real mud action in RalliSport\'s rainy stages, but every other type of surface in this game looks and feels convincing, so that\'s a minor flaw. Overall, this is one pretty game that makes even driving yellow cars look cool.
