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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hard but fun!, 7 Sep 2004
This is one of the most demanding simulations I've ever played. Even getting to the end of a stage feels like a massive achievement. I've yet to complete an actually rally. You have to throw out the preconceptions all those other rally games have taught you and begin again from scratch. Pulling off a powerslide takes a lot of practice and car control, and often its not even the fastest way to get around. Rarely can you put your foot to the floor and you're constantly dancing on the brake and throttle, edging the car along the narrow strip of road, tense, waiting to react to the next danger. Listening to the co-driver is essential, and the pace notes are quite complex so it takes a lot of concentration to keep up to speed with everything he says.The physics are fantastic. I never tire of watching every single replay the game makes, I just sit with my mouth open watching the car move in a way thats so realistic you would be forgiven for thinking it was an actual video of a real car. I'd go so far as to say it probably has the best physics of any simulation around at the moment. Perhaps only the excellent Papyrus sims exceed it in this area. The crash damage is excellent too, and very harsh. Even just nudging a log with your rear tyre can damage the suspension, and all the damage has a big and noticeable affect on how the car handles. Bumpers break off, bodywork crumples, windscreen cracks (making it impossible to see), engine overheats and stalls, radiators get punctured... so do tyres obviously. The damage is very comprehensive and believable. It's also terminal, and this is what makes the game so hard. Half way through a rally you nudge a log which slings the car round into a ditch. The engine stalls and you cant restart it. If you can't get back to the service area you cannot continue the rally. One tiny mistake destroying many hours of hard work. The stages are long too, and range from taking 5 minutes to taking 15 minutes to complete. 15 minutes driving on the edge of your seat, unable to relax, is very tiring. The stages feature a mixture of road surfaces, and you can feel the surface change and the grip of the car change through the fantastic force-feedback. There is also real time weather, which changes around you as you drive. You have to pick the right tyres as driving in the wet with dry tyres on is near impossible. The rain and weather graphic effects are very good. Actually, all the graphic effects are very good, such as the dust thrown up by the rear tyres. Throughout the stages there are hundreds of tiny details which all add to the atmosphere. Spectators and camera men leap out the way, birds scatter and sometimes hit the windscreen cracking it. Apparently deer and other animals can be seen leaping in front of the car, but I admit to never having seen it. Theres a whole lot of stuff I've never seen though, so I'm quite prepared to believe it. The game seems to be pretty aware of how damn hard it is, and it features a proper rally school which teaches you a lot of the real techniques that the drivers use. Far from feeling patronizing like many game tutorials, you really feel you're learning a lot when you work through them. They are also well made and Richard Burns himself does a good job of narrating them. His voice is certainly not as dour and boring as Mr McRae. The game requires a very powerful PC to work and the system requirement seem a fair assessment of what you need to play it. My PC just scrapes by on the minimum spec and I can run the game smoothly in 800x600. With a powerful computer the graphics are verging photo-realistic, but at low details and resolutions they are not that impressive. Also the game doesn't have many tweaking options, which will disappoint the fiddlers amongst us. Definitely nearing the time for an upgrade! :) My only problem with the game is that it lacks any kind of online multiplayer feature. But as rallying is more about you verses the clock, it's not a big deal. Still it would have elevated the game from excellent to truly outstanding had it been included. OK, I wrote more than I planned and not nearly covered half the things I could say about this game. To sum up, its big and hard and very demanding. If you're a sim nut (like me :p ) looking for a new challenge or a rally fan wanted to get close to experiencing the life of your heroes, then you have to play this game. If you're looking for something to pickup and play at the weekends, then this isn't the game for you.
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