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| Developer: Dice Publisher: Microsoft Release Date: Out Now Players: 1-4, 1-16 via system link, 1-16 on Xbox Live |
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Being an Xbox launch game couldn't have been easy, and whilst we weren't great fans of the original Rallisport Challenge (we thought it was kind of shallow structure-wise, overly fussy and failed to convince in the handling and physics departments) you couldn't fail to be impressed with the visuals. RC2 picks up the baton and takes rallying online to see if it can work as well as PGR2's street racing…
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) Picking from an initially impressive selection of cars, you can do time trial or single races on any of the unlocked tracks - and you unlock the tracks in the career mode. You work your way through a series of stages and event, earning points based on how you place at the end of each race. Increase your points total to qualify for new events and unlock new cars. The icons on the career menu indicate which events will unlock a car or track. Career mode has four difficulty levels: Amateur (21 events), Pro (36 events), Champion (47 events) and Superrally (16 events). The events come in 5 different styles; Rally, Rallycross, Crossover (like a super special stage in a rally), Hill Climb and Ice Racing. RC2 doesn't confine you to one country either - you flit around all over the place, from country to country. It could be snowy Sweden, leafy English stages, dusty USA desert point to point races, spectacular winding Monte Carlo roads, mountainous Canadian road stages, or the amazing Australian outback rallies. Developers Dice know how to model cars beautifully, and where as Rallisport Challenge's cars got minor scrapes and smashed glass, RC2's cars can get completely destroyed a la Colin McRae 04. Each of the 42 cars has four "skins", and you unlock these extra paintjobs by simply putting mileage on the cars.
Car list:
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) The handling and physics, undoubtedly the original Rallisport's weak points, have been greatly improved. The steering is highly sensitive but you soon get used to it (although we would have preferred a bit more subtlety). The cars certainly feel like they have mass and varied handling but the steering is rather too immediate and at times the cars seem to have a ridiculous, almost arcade-racer-like, amount of grip. Damage affects the handling, and the new physics model allows for all kinds of crashes, flips, rolls and cartwheels. The cars are pretty tough but repeated shunts will result in the loss of wheels, body parts, gears, lights etc (and you REALLY don't want to lose your lights on one of the night time stages)... The look, starting with the cars, the driver/co driver, the damage modelling, to the scenery (draw distance, foliage, trees, animated spectators and birds, water, weather effects, water/mud/snow splashes, various times of day, lighting, smoke, dust and dirt effects….) - it's simply remarkable. RC2 could be considered a beautiful game regardless of the genre - as a rally/racing game it's visually a head (if not shoulders too) above anything else out there, PGR2, TRD2, GT3 et al… Trouble is, developers Dice seem to have gotten a bit carried away with their lovely weather and night time headlight effects and gave us some horrifically long (up to 7 miles) and difficult night, foggy and snowy Swedish stages. In the real WRC, the Swedish rally is one of the fastest on the calendar with miles of straight-ish forest roads and snow banks that allow the drivers to take some amazing risks… yet the Swedish stages in RC2 are twisty, hilly, slidey, very narrow, and no fun at all - challenging certainly, but no fun.
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) The original Rallisport Challenge was widely criticised for never letting you stray far off the intended track, and resetting the car automatically if you drifted wide or took so much as a teensy-weensy short cut. RC2 gives you much more freedom, and has a wider driving "corridor", but still gets overly fussy at times (you may skid off, be returning to the track and it'll reset you, whilst other times you can mess around for ages seemingly hundreds of yards from the track before you find your way back). And to compound the problems during "off moments", some reason RC2 also has a strange automatic "crash cam" view that pulls out to third person (even if you were driving from in-car) to show you leaving the track - although it can look cool should you recover quickly, it can be totally disorientating, and amazingly, you can't turn it off.
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) The game sounds absolutely fantastic, everything from the growling, whining, screaming engines and gearboxes to the chattering turbo waste gates, farty exhausts and squealing tyres. But your co-driver on the Rally stages doesn't actually sound like a co-driver at all - he sounds like he's narrating a National Geographic TV programme and never puts any emphasis on upcoming danger. We want Nicky Grist! RC2 has its own soundtrack (yik) or you can play your own, but the engines sound so good you probably won't want to. Race options include Time Attack or Single Race on any unlocked track, or you can head to the career mode where you unlock all the lovely extra tracks/stages and cars. Multiplayer supports up to 4 players split screen, or up to 16 system linked with 4 Xboxes. On Xbox Live most races are for a maximum of 4 cars, but if you turn the collisions off then you can race against wireframe ghosts of up to 16 players - even with wireframe cars this can get utterly mad on some of the narrower tracks and stages.
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) RC2 has all the record tables and XSN competitions you'd expect, but unfortunately wise-assed cheats have already dominated the lap records by exploiting cheats and bugs in the game (hopefully they'll be reset regularly or the bugs patched). We were disappointed to find that you can't alter car set-ups online and you can't even change between manual and automatic gearboxes once you've joined a game - we like to use a manual gearbox but sadly RC2 is yet another racer that doesn't seem to give you any benefit for playing the game the proper way as the automatic gear shifting is absolutely perfect, and always keeps the engine in the power band. The voice communication was/is one of the best parts of PGR2 and sadly RC2's just doesn't cut it - it only allows you to talk to the driver either side of you, or if you're in the lead, only the guy in 2nd place - so you'd best get all your yapping done in the lobby beforehand - it may well be a bandwidth problem, and that full voice coms would have effected the frame rate, but if you like to chat with friends while you're racing like we do, you're really going to miss it… If you host a Live game, you can define the number of laps, turn collisions on or off and even force players to use a particular view, gearbox or limit races to a particular license. Offline multiplayer is a hoot, with frantic 4-player races that have an amazing amount of detail and a remarkably steady frame rate, as well as immensely enjoyable, in-all-its-glory system linked racing if you're lucky enough to be able to partake (like us lucky gits). RC2 has a superb replay mode - several views and an excellent variable slo-mo option - save them and watch yourself do that perfect slide again and again and AGAIN (and bore your family members/friends silly with too).
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) All in all you've got a visually impressive (at times, quite beautiful) sequel with some nice online options (and hopefully downloadable content) and a substantial offline career mode with lots to unlock. RC2 doesn't seem quite sure whether it wants to be a sim or an arcade game but sits happily on the shelf alongside Colin McRae 04 and PGR2. Rallsport Challenge 2 is a really smashing sequel.
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- Sexy, beautifully modelled rally cars (and some Volvos) that you can smash to bits. - Gorgeous scenery and lighting effects. - Four cars on a rally stage simultaneously is a hoot. - Excellent sensation of speed and power. - Neat replay mode. - 10 mile (16 km) stages are amazing. |
- Twitchy steering. - Stupid "crash camera" view causes more problems than it solves. - The limited Xbox Live voice coms are disappointing. - The Swedish stages are mostly horrible - the level designer must be a real bundle of laughs... - 7 miles, in the snow, in the dark? Oh, what fun! |
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