Simply put, your Xbox collection isn't complete without RalliSport Challenge 2
Compared with the most-recent rally competition, Colin McRae 2004, Rallisport Challenge 2 is much more arcade in style. Taking a cue from its predecessor, you’ll be able to slide around corners with ease and gain some wicked air from even the most trivial of jumps. It’s not what you would necessarily call realistic but it’s much less over-the-top than the original—where hitting a pebble with your racer would send it in a barrel-roll across three counties.
To experience all this mayhem through single player you have the three basic modes: Single Race, Time Trial, and Career Mode. Single race, as you’re probably guessing, gives you the opportunity to race a single map to learn its quirks and time trial lets you compete to try to get the fastest time. The real meat of the game is Career Mode, where you have four different rally difficulties: amateur, pro, champion, and super-rally. The career mode is essential in completing because it’s the only source to unlock everything in the game. The vast majority of the cars, tracks, and the super-rally mode itself are locked when you first boot up the game.
In the various single player modes you’ll compete in five different types of contests: Rally, Crossover, Ice Racing, Rallycross, and Hill Climb. Ice Racing, Rallycross, and Crossover are the only races in which you’ll actually race against visible opponents. You first race the track by yourself in a qualifying round—attempting to get the fastest time possible—and then, depending on the track, you will race against 1 or 3 AI opponents. In both Rally and Hill Climb you race to checkpoints and times are calculated for those of your opponents—beat their times and you get first place. This won’t be a difficult task in the Amateur and Pro races but becomes significantly harder in the later difficulties. Not only is the AI beefed up per difficulty plateau but the extent of damage received and the length of the races increases also.
The races themselves take place in a number of different locales, all of which are presented in great detail and are unique from one another. You’ll race tracks in the deserts of Australia and the U.S., the mountains of Argentina and Canada, and on the hilly city streets and country roads of Italy and the United Kingdom. There are several dozen tracks to race over the course of the game. Within each geographical location the tracks boil down to being variations and different combinations of the same sets of roads. You’d barely notice in the game though. The tracks can vary from 2 mile rally races to 12 mile excursions and never cross the same patch of road twice in the same race. The only mode in which the tracks become repetitious is Crossover; they only have one or two different paths and in the later difficulties will consist of mirror tracks.
To race the tracks you can use the 40-plus licensed vehicles that Rallisport Challenge 2 lets you use at your disposal. Take the Subaru Impreza WRX, Peugeot 306 Maxi, or even the Ford RS200 Evo for a spin. The cars are rated in four different categories: handling, speed, durability, and acceleration. The cars do handle very differently from one another and you’ll find yourself picking the cars that respond the best to your style of racing. Every car has four different skins but, as mentioned before, everything but the base skin must be unlocked in career mode. Each car is controlled easily by the Xbox controller. Acceleration and braking are handled by the right and left triggers respectively. You can slam the emergency brake down for some extra sliding action by tapping A and the black and white buttons regulate the camera view and resetting the car on the track.
In addition, you can customize the performance of your car to your specific tastes in the options screen. Basic tunes like tire type, gear ratio, and steering are available and advanced tweaks like brake stiffness and power ratio are editable. For you sticklers there’s even an entire section devoted to tuning up the suspension on your rally ride. You can tinker with front and rear spring stiffness, sprint length, and the damper on both the front and the rear of the car. I only edited the steering once during a single race because I didn’t trust myself enough to be able to accurately modify one of the racers. I was happy with the stock options but it’s good to know that you have the option of changing just about anything on the car if you so wish.
Another interesting feature of the cars is the amount of damage that you can do to your own car. Rallisport Challenge 2 features an extensive damage system which lets you tear apart your car if given the right conditions. Windshields and windows will crack and eventually shatter when dealt enough punishment. Spoilers and bumpers will smash, dangle, and fly off when hit just right. The damage isn’t only cosmetic either. This became apparent to me doing some night racing in a snow rally. One flight off the side of a hill and head-first smash into a tree took my headlights out. I was blind as a bat with about half the race still left to do. I had to navigate by my HUD map and the verbal commands I was receiving from my navigator. Sure I took a few extra minutes—eight minutes more than the last AI opponent to be exact—but my pride was intact even though my chances at winning that set of rally races were shot.
Headlights aside, you can also knock your tires off if you hit them hard enough. You haven’t experienced ice-racing until you’ve done it on three wheels—that’s all I have to say on that subject. The engine can suffer some performance problems as well if given a few knocks. Some of this can be avoided however if you anticipate crashing and can hit the reset button fast enough. It is this reason that I never suffered any loss of parts from flying off the side of a mountain—not that the penalty for doing so was that great anyway.
The damage model is a testament to the spectacular graphics that Rallisport Challenge 2 boasts. The original was considered one of the best-looking games for the Xbox when it came out and the sequel is no different. The engine is sporting a virtual orgy of graphical goodness that shows players just what the Xbox can do. The cars themselves appear almost real and environmental effects slap mud, snow, and dust on to the cars in the appropriate condition. Raindrops will spatter across the camera lens in rainy environments and slush and mud will fly up from behind your tires. The roads are rich in detail and feature speed signs, cones, and road barriers that you can take out with a quick slide. The environments themselves are absolutely gorgeous and you can see the splendor of the surrounding areas—especially on the Hill Climb levels—which include vast stretching deserts, mountain waterfalls, and multi-colored autumn forests. The glare on the rising and setting sun in the morning and evening levels is adequate although still a bit too much for my preference. More than once I was caught with the sun in my eyes and flew off the track screaming, “My eyes! The goggles, they do nothing!” The frame rate stayed consistent in all of the single-player and multi-player races I was able to throw at it.
In addition to spectacular graphics, the sounds of Rallisport Challenge 2 really make it stand out. You’ll hear everything in your car: the roar of the engine, the squeak of the stick shift, and the tires as they squeal around turns. The effects are crisp and individualistic; the sounds never muffle each other. The game sports a soundtrack of techno and nu-metal which fits the material well but the developers included the ability to use the custom soundtrack. Thankfully I might add, as I can only concentrate on racing to the tunes of Metallica and AC/DC.
Rounding out the game is its multiplayer support which doesn’t disappoint. Players can play on four-player split screen or via Xbox Live. On Live you can browse the different lobbies or host your own game. As the host you’ll have access to a wide variety of options from gear shift type and whether collision is on. Collision actually determines how many players you can have in a given race. With collision on you are limited to four but with the setting turned off you can have up to 16 players in a single race.
Rallisport Challenge 2 is a great sequel which takes everything that was good from the original and super-charges it with even more excitement. Both fans of rally racers and the casual racing fan will find that Rallisport Challenge is both accessible to beginners and has its fair share of difficulty for racing veterans. Simply put, your Xbox collection isn’t complete without Rallisport Challenge 2.