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Talen
Capellan Confederation
Sang-shao
Joined: 05-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 1269
Location: United States
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 Posted: 28-Mar-2002 17:19 Post subject: WRC for PS2, Full Review |
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The World Rally Championship is a form of racing unlike most others. Unlike Formula 1 or NASCAR the WRC cars do not run at the same time. Instead, each car is staggered a few minutes between each launch, and the teams race the clock in a point to point race. Though many people find that aspect tame, the roads bein run on are usually not roads at all, but simply gravel covered paths running the wilderness.
To this date few games have really attempted to make a decent rally experience. The Network Q Rally "Rally Championship" was the closest thing for many years, but it emphasized beating other cars across the line. In recent months a few games have come out that try to blend the Rally experience with the thrill of head to head racing. Most notably were the Colin McRae Rally Games. But, again, they simply leaned more toward circut style head to head.
WRC for PS2 is different though. Throwing the head to head style out the window WRC tries to emulate the Rally experience in the best way possible. In this race your enemy is time, but the competition between teams is no less intense. In fact, it may be a little more intense as you cant see where they mess up or where they didnt push hard enough. All you know is that you are 1/2 second behind the leader and you have to push that much harder to beat him. WRC gives you this experience...
Gameplay:
The idea of driving 100 mph on dirt roads might be a little intimidating, but the easy to learn controls make jumping into the game quite simple. Give it about 15 minutes and you'll be able to keep up with the opposing teams in "Normal" mode. Some terrain takes a little more time to get adjusted to like the slippery iced over asphalt of Monte Carlo and the muddy stages in Great Britain. Each car handles slightly different. Some handle better on the asphalt than on gravel, but the differences are minute enough that you can choose whatever car you want and expect the same outcome every time. One thing to mention is how you can feel the difference in terrain. Even the asphalt events feel dramatically different from eachother and keep you on your toes. The action is fast and most stages will take between 2 and 4 minutes to complete. A few longer stages appear and can take as long as 10 minutes to get through, but these stages are no less intense than the short ones.
The entire time the Co-driver is reading off his pace notes to you, informing you of several things. How far to the next "situation", the severity of a turn, the direction, and warning of danger. You need this too, as most of the time you dont know what is coming up over the crest of a turn. Apperaing in the top center of the screen is an iditicator that announces the next turn. Each turn is rated on a 1-5 scale, one being easiest. The color will go from yellow to dark orange depenind on how severe it is. Hairpins are a bright red and are unmistakeable. Jumps and Crests are also marked, but with a "!" instead. Sometimes the voice lags behind and will lose pace, but in a few seconds it will be back to normal. This really happens on the twisty mountain coruses with several hairpins and hard turns all over the place.
The Championship is based on points earned per race. When a team places in the top 6 places they score points. 1st gets 10 pts, 2nd get 6, 3rd gets 4. 4th-6th get 3, 2 and 1 points respectively. Both the drivers and the teams score points in this manner. A team can score no more than 16 points per event. Throughout the season the teams and drivers build up points, and the winner at the end is crowned champion.
Modes of play are different, and the same. WRC mode is the entire season, while Single Rally is just a single set of stages from one country. At first most are locked up, but winning in WRC mode unlocks more events. Time Trial allows you to tackle any one stage whenver you want, after they have been unlocked in WRC mode. WRC and Single Rally have 3 difficulty stages. Novice is for people new to the game, and new to racing games in general. Normal is the standard mode, and Professional is the hardest. The major difference between the 3 is the times of the opposing teams. professional will have the hardest times, of course. Novice mode also allows you to restart the stage if you are doing poorly or get in an accident. Beating WRC mode in Normal unlocks Professional. Winning certain races in the WRC mode in Professional will unlock several bonus stages. I have raced them, and all are very good stages worth unlocking. Time Trial will keep your scores so in the future you can go back and compare how you have done.
All the major teams from the 2001 season are featured in the game. Subaru, Ford, Puegeot, Mitsubishi, Skoda, Citroen and Hyundai all have their cars and their respective teams. Of particular note are Richard Burns (last year's Champion), Marcus Grunholm, Carlo Sainz, Tommi Maikenen and "Ford Driver" who is unmistakeably Colin McRae, but due to license issues Evolution Studios was not allowed to put his name in the game. Nicky Grist is still the co-driver, so I find that particulary funny.
Damage is a big part of WRC. As you car races, you may take damage from htting things. Several things can go wrong, from a broken gearbox to a jammed steering system. All the problems will basically cause you to slow down and lose time. Dont give up though...finish the up as fast as you can and make up time in the next stage. Damage can be a little annoying, as even a slight bump into a rock on the side of the road can knock everything out, but thats how it really is. The best advice is to not hit anything. Going off the road is lame, as you wont get nearly as good of traction. After a few seconds the computer puts you back on the track, but you do lose a few seconds.
Graphics:
To put it simply the graphics themselves are bland. Gran Turismo (the benchmark of all racing games) has much better graphics. But what WRC has is draw distance. Its amazing to be driving in the mountains of Italy, turn a corner and see where you will be 40 seconds from that point. The viewing distance is insanely long, and in while driving along the alpine roads in Monte Carlo you wish you couldnt look out the window and see the 600 foot drop in the canyon to the right. Textures can look repetive at points, but usually you dont notice it until you veiw a replay from the helicopter. When in the car the sides of the road look even and flowing. The game runs at very high FPS, probably around 60 or so. I have yet to notice ANY slowdown, even when in the cockpit view looking down the next kilomter of road and mountain.
The cars themsleves are modeled beautifulyl and look just like their real life counterparts. Depending on the stage the car will get extra parts. At night the huge blister of headlights is added on, an in Africa the extra intake and snorkel are added on.
The views are pretty good, and each has its own special use. The prequisite bumper and behind the car views are included, but the best views are the 2 in car views. One camera places you between the Driver and co-drover seats, looking over their shoulder. The other actually puts you in the dirver's place. These views are useful, particularly the driver's view, but when the windshield gets broken ro its dark it may be hard to see from. Still, there is no better way to experience the game than from the driver's view. The hands on the wheel move as expected, and they even shift in sync with the sound, a truly great thing to watch. Replays have at least a dozen views, inclduing 5 different in car views. The most interesting is the driver view. Unlike the racing camera, this one is not staionary. The replay view will move and follwo the track like a real driver's head would. Its really cool to watch, but you could get sick after a while. The helicopter veiws show off the game's engine as the camera will pull out, and keep pulling out until the car is a small speck on the screen, but you can see huge sections of the track ahead with no frame rate hit at all.
People, trees, animals and different rock formations of all sorts dot the side of the track, and road signs on the highway inform you of dangerous cliffs and inform you that the speed limit the other 364 days of the year is below 50mph.
Sound:
Some of the best in a game ever. The engine noises were all recorded from the actual cars, so a Pueget 206 sounds VERY different from a Subaru Impreza WRC. Shifting noises sound realistic, and if you have ever watched WRC you can expect to hear the turbo-chargers and compressors as well.
The great thing with the sound is the co-driver vocals. There are at least a dozen different accents, depending on who you are driving as. The great thing is that each is as clear as day to listen to. I have had no trouble at all understanding what they are saying.
Music is decent too. You wont have any music to listen to during the race itself, but replays are accompanied by a few different songs ranging from so techo-trance music to a few punk songs. Again, music is not important here, but it is a nice touch.
2 Player:
This is where the game lacks, unfortuneatly. 2 modes are available: Stage and Super Special.
Stage puts you against your friend split screen on a normal stage with all the normal things that go along with that stage. The race is simply a point to point race, but your opponent is rendered as a ghost car.
Super Special could have been a lot better. In real life the Super Special stages are special side by side tracks specifically designed to be 100% equal. 2 drivers race head to head to see who is the winner. WRC throws a few SS stages in, but like Stage mode you are simply racing the ghost car being controlled by your friend.
The worst problem is the lack of the map and co-driver. The lack of a co-driver is okay, as having 2 voices at once would be impossible to work with, but even the turn severity and direction indicators would be a nice touch. And if it had to be ONE thing the map could be added. As it is all 3 are missing and make the 2 player mode close to impossible. Still, it is a fun diversion sometimes.
Extras and Replayability:
There are tons of FMV clips taken from the WRC show that are unlocked with every event you get to in WRC mode. Each one explains the history and complexity of the event, as well as showing off the rally cars and racers.
Racing WRC in Professional Mode allows you to gain access to a few bonus stages, that like I said before, are worth opening.
One thing missing from the American version is WRC Challenge, a contest held by Evolution Studios and SCEE. That pissed me off, cause the contest was closed before the American release of the game, but oh well.
WRC mode can take a while to beat as they're are 5 stages per country, and there are 14 countries. Thats 70 stages that have to be completed. The 10 2 player stages and the few bouns stages put the total above 80 tracks to compete on, an amazing number by any count. Unlocking everything will probably take between 20 and 30 hours total. But like any racing game you will constantly try to improve on all your old times.
Overall:
Basically I rate this as one of the 3 essential car games for PS2 along with Gran Turismo 3 and Formula-1 2001. Great gameplay, graphics and sound, as well as so much to do, keep you coming back to play over and over again. If you are a fan of racing or rally, this is a MUST BUY.
Gameplay: 9/10
Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 9/10
2 Player: 5/10
Replay: 9/10
Overall: 9/10
_________________
"Historians exercise great power and some of them know it. They recreate the past, changing it to fit their own interpretations. Thus, they change the future as well." - Leto II
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