| Author | Review |
|---|
VulturousPiano
184,687
TA Score for this game: 1,794
Posted on 04 March 12 at 09:41, Edited on 15 May 12 at 16:33 |
This review has 6 positive votes and 3 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Written for my site at http://www.vpgaming.co.uk/?p=6
Single Player:
So you want to know what has changed from the last game?
Well in short, not a lot. The only new things that I could find were the new cars/drivers and that they now have included Super-Special Stages, where 2 cars go head to head to find the winner.
So yeah from reading that then you pretty much get the gist of what this review is about. More of the same… Anyway, going past that and to actually review it. You have got a whole host of various things that you can do by yourself that range from building up your own team in “Road to the WRC” mode to just setting your fastest times on single stages. You could even “learn” how to drive a rally car correctly in the “WRC Academy” mode. But then you may be reading this and thinking, “That is all the same stuff as last year”. Well yes you would be correct but it is just with a different menu.
Now to sum up the single player. Yes that is it for the single player part as I have nothing new to say concerning it. It can keep you entertained for a while with all of the objectives that you can do within the “Road to the WRC” mode, but other than that it is pretty much a stale old single player.
Multiplayer:
I suppose that you could say that this is where they have made the biggest improvement.
You can choose from a either normal rally stages or you can do the Super-Special stages against 1 other person. Bare in mind that you have 2 different ranking’s, one for each of the types of races. But then if you want to do a Super-Special stage as your online experience then you may be waiting a while for someone to join you. There are not very many people who actually play online with this game. An example of this is that I have never seen more than 2 lobbies running at the same time, and then this is usually because one lobby has low ranks in and another has 70+ ranked people in, that is not saying you cannot win against the high ranked people but it is a bit daunting when you just start the game.
There is one thing that I do think every game should have in it. When you quit a race half way through/in loading it will dock you XP as a penalty for leaving the race. This generally means that you are not left with 2 completely differently skilled players in the lobby and can generally have a decent race with other people. Each car type also has a rank attached to it that if you wanted you could get them all up to the highest rank you could.
But I have not even mentioned the biggest thing that is annoying with the multiplayer side of the game. Just picture this, half-way through a stage and the host quits in rage due to not winning all the time, so then any other game would let you finish the race and then it would find the next most suitable host and make them the host. Well that is not what this game does. It will happily chuck you off the stage due to the host quitting. This can get rather frustrating because whatever XP you earn will be lost… Yeah, okay, granted the host will of lost some XP himself, well more than you, for leaving halfway through a race but it doesn’t happen once, it will always happen multiple times.
Graphics:
Now for the part where this game massively under-performs. If you do decide to compare it to the last game then you will notice straight away that the graphics really have no improved, except from the cars it does seem. Obviously when you start it up you have a nice new menu that is better than the first one and it gives you high hopes for this game.
Now, even though I have said that the graphics are not good I do have to commend them for not having any clipping occur within the game, whether or not this is because the game doesn’t really move fast enough for it to occur or not, this is a pretty big achievement for games in this time.
So overall, yeah, don’t come into this game expecting to be able to see a nice looking field as you are racing along the stage or a nice non-mirror effect water splash, oh my these really are terrible, as you will not find any of these. But do not let that hold you back fro enjoying the game as even with these issues it is still a very nice game to look at. Oh, I almost forgot the perfectly oval cloud dusts that your car kicks up behind you…
Sounds:
Once again this is another major downfall of the game. So lets start off with the actual good points.
As you may or may not expect each car has its own unique sound when you plant your foot onto the loud pedal. Also the sound that the tyres give off upon moving from different road surfaces is very good. But that really is where the good points of the sound in this game ends.
So now onto the bad points and boy do we have a lot of them. You will notice whilst racing that if you do an action that causes the co-driver to comment on it then 9 times out of 10 you will lose your pace notes for a few corners, you may think this is not such a big deal but when you have a series of corners coming up that are tricky then you will realise how much you miss the help of the pace notes as you go spinning off in the wrong direction. And the menu music, that really is so dull and repetitive, yes I know that it is a nice change from other games but after a while, and you will be playing this for a while if you want to finish it, it does get very repetitive. That now brings me on nicely to the sounds that your car makes, well, first off you have got the sounds as mention in the good points of surface noise, this really is the same in every car and I am pretty confident that it would sound different of each car due to the weight/wheelbase/etc. Now the other thing about the cars is the sound that they all make when landing off a jump, this is pretty generic and although it is okay, it still could do with some more work on it to give it a bit of life.
Achievements:
Now the bit that some people play games for and other people don’t. However you put it you all like to see these come up at the bottom of the screen.
Overall the achievement list in this game is varied and includes some in every aspect of the game, with the majority of your time taken up finishing the “Road to the WRC” and the on-line portion of the game. So there is very time consuming ones and ones that you can do within 5 minutes. This obviously does make it nice for you if you do finally finish knowing that you are one of the very few people who have actually finished this game completely.
One thing, that I personally think, that the developers have done right is finally put in an achievement that is related to difficulty. It may be only just to come first in one stage but it gives something of a challenge to do it as you do not have the use off ABS or Stability Control related aids that really do make it fun/frustrating to do.
Other:
I only really added this section into this review as there are a few aspects that I want to talk about that go over to each part of the game.
This first one is that if you are expecting all the stages to be like they are in real life then be prepared to be let down. A classic example of this is that the game includes two stages called “Great Orme 1? and “Great Orme 2?, now on these 2 stages in the game it has a castle with a draw bridge and the stage is mostly gravel, whilst in the real world there really is no castle with a draw bridge and the stage’s are completely tarmac. This carries on throughout the game and you will also find that a lot of the stages are just reverse version of another one or they are half of another one cut together with a new extra bit that makes it a little bit different.
Back to the time trials which I suppose technically are single player but then seeing as you can download ghosts off Xbox Live then I would class them as multiplayer as well. Not much to say about it really as it is the same as any other game that includes time trials, you generally have the same people at the top of each leaderboard.
Conclusion:
So in conclusion, this is a well made game, if you can say that as most has just been brought over from the last game, and can be enjoyable if you make it enjoyable yourself. It is one of the true rallying games that any rally fan would enjoy to play and appreciate.
So now onto “would I recommend it”. In short if you are a hard-core rally fan then yes I would recommend it, or if you enjoy rallying and just want a general game to play then I would say yes to buying/renting it. But if you were getting it just for the 1000 GS then I would really recommend you stay away from it, with it not being quick and if you really are just in it for the achievements then you will really not enjoy playing the game.
Scores:
Single Player: 7/10
Multiplayer: 8/10
Graphics: 6/10
Sounds: 6/10
Achievements: 9/10
Other: 6/10
Total (Average, Out of 5): 42/60 (7/10, 3.5 stars) |