V-Rally 3 starts off has by involving you more in the off-road decision making process and kind of simulates the career of a rally driver - kind of. Sat in your in-game office, you'll receive emails from various teams offering you tryouts to see if you're good enough to drive for them. These tryouts involve no more than completing a cut-down stage in a set time and most are pretty easy to pass (they get tougher when you enter the 2.0L class). From your office PC you can also call up all kinds of statistics and get regular updates from various sources. You'll also get emails from rival drivers and the feeling of rivalry that they encourage is rather a neat idea, in a similar way to Toca Race Driver.

   

I started my 1.6 litre formula career driving a baby blue VW Polo, but in the lower class you'll also find Ford's Puma, the Peugeot 206 1.6, MG ZR, Fiat Punto, Renault Clio, Opel Corsa and the Citroen Saxo. You must win this Championship if you want to drive in the 2.0 class and unlock extra rallies/stages, and you'd better get as much practice as you can get, because the difficulty level increase noticeably when you drive the faster cars like the Peugeot 206 2.0, Subaru Impreza, Mitsubishi Lancer, Ford Focus RS, Toyota Corolla, Citroen Xsara, Seat Cordoba or Hyundai Accent.

Drive well and even if you don't win the Championship your present team will want you back, and probably have improved morale, performance and budget, and other teams will offer you tryouts as well.

At first you won't notice the stats doing much to affect your cars' performance, but drive for a team with low morale and performance and bits will start to drop off your car (well, you'll get gears go missing, engine misfires and tyre punctures). Punctures are ridiculously penal and slow you down to a crawl, and you may as well quit the rally if you get one. Becoming an increasingly important part of any rally game are the pace notes. I seriously doubt you'll have any success in the 2.0 litre class without paying close attention to them (or alternatively by practicing the stages 'til your eyes bleed). V-Rally 3's co-driver's pace notes vary from spot-on to distinctly dodgy, as sometimes he warns you about little things like bridges and on others doesn't seem to care. If I'm not mistaken you can hear where Eden have added or changed a note here and there in this Xbox version, but they're still not perfect and some corners come up before they're announced when you're flying along in the faster cars.

   

Now V-Rally 3 is a port of an unremarkable PS2 game and it really shows graphically. The cars are solid and nicely modeled, if a little low detail compared to some Xbox racers like Colin McRae Rally 3, PGR, Racing Evoluzione or Rallisport Challenge. When watching replays the cars rarely make you think they're real with some questionable physical behaviour, and shadows that are too subtle, and fail to 'plant' the cars on the ground. The scenery is a bit on the blocky side, and although there's improved draw distance and resolution over the original game you still see pop-up and glitching here and there. The game still has its visual moments though, with some lovely snowy Swedish rally stages picturesque vistas throughout. The game's visual lows are without doubt the cut scenes before, during and after rallies. These are simply awful - some of the worse graphics yet seen in an Xbox game (with their poorly drawn and animated drivers, mechanics and spectators) and a static menu or congratulatory screen would probably have been better, certainly less embarrassing. Fortunately you can click through them all relatively quickly (although the sad sight of my badly drawn winning driver spraying NOTHING out of his badly drawn champagne bottle may be etched on my eyeballs forever).

A challenge mode and a multiplayer mode (alternate turns, no split screen) add some variety but do little to help the game look or feel like an Xbox game. It's a playable and challenging rally outing, but with Mr. McRae already available on Xbox it's difficult to see where this game's market will come from.