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RalliSport Challenge 2

Rally racing is one of those world-wide sports that’s never caught on in America. In the States, the 800 pound gorilla of auto-racing is NASCAR; Americans prefer an oval tarmac with rednecks spinning out of control like runaway helicopter blades to supercharged death-buggies tearing across mesas, skidding around corners, slamming into rocks, and trying to beat an opponent’s time. I think it’s time to change all that. I think it’s time to crush NASCAR once and for all, and I’m rallying (no pun intended) behind a Constitutional amendment: one that guarantees life, liberty, and a requirement that every American has to play Rallisport Challenge 2 for the Xbox. This game is simply that good.

There is a sort of Zen to this game. The physics are good but certainly not realistic; the damage modeling is extensive but can be overly forgiving; the sim options are featherweight. This is by no means a perfect game. But when you actually spin the tires and get on the track…none of that seems to matter. What does matter is that you’re careening on a midnight run down some godforsaken backroad in the middle of nowhere…and the clock is ticking. This game excels in the creation of white-knuckle urgency coupled with a fantastic sense of speed. And because it succeeds so well, the fact that you can’t tune the coolant system doesn’t really seem to matter.

This game’s most egregious strength is the fantastic graphics and sound. PS2 fans salivating over the upcoming Gran Turismo 4 should take a gander at this title. There is simply no way that it will look better than this. Equal, maybe. But not better. Rallisport Challenge 2 looks so good, a relative of mine thought that I bought a new console. This is not hyperbole — the attention to detail on this title is phenomenal. RC2’s favorite trick is to show you a far-off mountain or meadow — something that most titles would use as a background — and allow you to drive through it over the course of the race. We’re talking miles here. There is almost no pop-up or fade-in; no tricks such as a long tunnel or dense “walls” of trees. Each track feels totally organic and has little touches — rocks, weeds, tree stumps, grass — that make it seem utterly believably. The levels are laid out in a convincing manner as well; some rally tracks use existing roads and geographical features as part of the circuit, while others dump you on winding back trails barely wide enough for your buggy. The game also features convincing lighting and weather effects; there are featured races at dusk and the occasional night drive. Night driving in this game is done better than any other racing title I’ve ever played; the headlight effect has to be seen to be believed.

The sound is no slouch, either. I’m not going to dwell on the meaty audio of this game; sufficed to say the cars sound powerful and the various types of surfaces sound appropriate. About the only complaint I have is the rather dull-sound collision effects, which lack oomph. When I slam into a tree at 50 mph, I expect a bone-shattering crash, not a weak little thud. This brings us to the damage modeling. It’s impressive. Cars can have their windows broke, lose tires, lose body panels (spoiler, trunk, bumper, hood, etc), have doors ripped loose, etc. But the game seems a little too forgiving. If I plunge off a dirt road at 60 mph and flip end-over-end across some jagged rocks, I expect a lot more than just cosmetic damage and a balky front tire. Slamming to a dead stop on a tree should do more than slightly dent my front bumper. But oftentimes, this is precisely what happens. And, at least in single player, there’s no way to make vehicle damage truly “real”.

Speaking of vehicles, there are over 40 of them in Rallisport Challenge 2. All of them have three unlockable paint jobs and varying characteristics. The cars are grouped by event, so (for example) you can’t take Ice Racing cars on Rally tracks in the single-player campaign. But according to the instruction manual, you wouldn’t want to. In free mode you can take any vehicle on any track, and it seems that the designers are right — cars made for Ice Racing don’t handle well in the desert. Color me surprised. Provided you’re using the right car for the right track, however, things go extremely well. The cars handle differently from each other depending on their power and surface type. I took a car designed to climb mountains on a mud track and fishtailed wildly around each turn. The cars can also be “tweaked” before each race to better enhance their performance for specific tracks. Unfortunately, the manual does a terrible job of explaining what each tweak does, so there’s some trial and error. Or you can simply leave the vehicle stock and let your skills do the talking.

And you’d better have a LOT of skill. Most tracks contain only a little tarmac; you’ll be slogging through mud, gravel, and snow. Learning to manage skids and traction is essential; this is not a “clean” racing game like Project Gotham 2 that involves memorizing where and when to brake and accelerate. Because many of the tracks are so long and there are so many variables, it’s hard to lock down the “perfect path” through every section. That’s not to say that track knowledge is unimportant, but it’s far more vital to have a feel for your vehicle and what it’s capable of. Maneuvers that are safe in a Rally will tank you in Ice Racing.

As for actually playing in those aforementioned Ice Racing and Rally events, the game features an adequate single-player mode. There are four career paths: Amateur, Pro, Champion, and SuperRally. SuperRally is locked at the beginning of the game, but the other three modes are open. Essentially, you advance along the career path by placing and winning races is various events. Completing certain events opens up more paths on the career ladder as well as additional vehicles and tracks — pretty standard console racer stuff. A nice feature of the game is that you don’t always have to place first to get your unlockable; you simply have to place high enough in enough events to earn enough points to continue up the career ladder. So you could place first in three events or second in four events to move up the ladder.

There are a nice variety of events here. There’s Rallycross, which is essentially motocross with rally cars; Ice Racing, which is track/lap racing around tracks covered in ice; Crossover, which are “Mobius Strip” double tracks where you switch off routes between laps; Rally which is the standard point-to-point race across harsh environs; and Hill Climbs which are Rally-type races up steep mountains. My personal favorites were Rally and the incredible Hill Climb. If you’ve ever driven a twisting mountain road and wondered what it would be like to take a turbocharged racer around those curves, wonder no longer. The Hill Climbs send you up steep and treacherous alpine roads and around blind curves where the only thing that stands between you and a precipitous drop to your doom is a thin guardrail. And the “Reset Car on Track” button, of course.

The single most pressing problem with the career mode is that the first two levels of play, Amateur and Pro, are far too easy. I was able to place first on every single event on my first try when in Amateur and Pro mode with one exception — the last Pro event. However, Champion mode started to bring the pain. The difficulty doesn’t ramp up so much as skyrocket — I literally went from beating the computer by 40 seconds per race to barely scraping by with 6 second wins to having to redo entire runs, all within the space of a few events. Some tracks can get downright brutal, with a few events that require an almost perfect run to place. If you hit an obstacle or skid out you might as well just retire and restart…or use The Magic Button. The Magic Button is the white button the Xbox control pad. It’s the “Reset on Track” button and it’s far too powerful. It re-centers you on the track regardless of what is happening and does not incur a time penalty. It’s frankly ridiculous that crashing through a thicket and getting stuck in a ditch can be negated by the power of imagination and that little white button, but nonetheless – this is precisely the case. Whether it’s a spectacular wipe-out or a simple little mistake, The Magic Button can fix it.

But enough about that. Get good at single player, because it serves as both a training ground and the gateway to Rallisport Challenge 2’s multiplayer mode. Once you get those unlockables, you can take them online and challenge other people via Xbox Live. This game is Live-Aware and integrates nicely into the service. Much like Project Gotham Racing 2, you appear online even when playing single-player and thus can be invited into online matches even while practicing your mountain runs. There are a wide variety of options to choose when creating your online game. You can force people to use cockpit (i.e. first person) view, turn on or off collisions if there are less than 5 players in the game (after the 5th player joins, the game automatically turns off collisions), force them to use manual transmissions only, and scale up damage modeling. The entire game experience can change with judicious use of these settings; long night drives in cockpit mode with heavy damage modeling become more of endurance races then flat out speed runs. Or a demolition derby if the host has turned on collisions. One of the problems is that the tracks are clearly designed for the single-player experience, and when you get three or four players on them things can get a bit hectic. Nothing is worse than being run off the road by some 13-year-old named DARTH_AWESOME_69.

Nonetheless, these small problems cannot stop Rallisport Challenge 2 from being one of the top racers out there. This game is top notch in every department: graphics, sound, gameplay, and multiplayer connectivity. The game is forgiving enough to be enjoyed by fans of arcade racers but realistic enough to appeal to the more hardcore set. It’s a true crossover hit and one that I highly recommend.

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Posted by David Moore on May 8th, 2004 and is filed under Reviews, Xbox Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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