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Platform
Xbox
Genre
Racing
Publisher
Activision
Developer
Climax
ESRB
E (Everyone)
Released
Q4 2002
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- Plenty of curvaceous,
well-designed levels
- Provides adequate challenge
- Controls are responsive
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- License and Race of Champions
mode is confusing early on
- Graphics could have been better
- Not enough cars
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Review: Rally Fusion (Playstation 2)
Review: Mario Kart: Double-Dash (GC)
Review: Outrun 2 (XB)
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Rally
Fusion
Score: 6.8 / 10
Do you enjoy lots of mud slinging, plenty
of curves, and heated competition? If you do, you’re probably one of two
types of people: someone who likes watching women’s mud wrestling or a
rally-car racing fan. Women’s mud wrestling fans can call the local
strip joint to see when the next mud-wrestling extravaganza is
scheduled, but for all you rally-car racing aficionados, Activision’s
new rally-car racing title, Rally Fusion (RF) for the Xbox, is meant to
appeal to you. But even though it can be a good ride at times, in the
end RF makes a turn down Merely-Average Street and can’t come anywhere
near the excitement that you’ll get from the other mud activity.
RF has a lot of revved-up features under its hood. There’s a bunch of
different modes including Follow the Leader, Elimination, Relay, and
Rallycross. Nine
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different environments including rain
forests and deserts are here (yes, there’s even mud-filled tracks) and
30 drivers are ready to compete against you in the Race of Champions.
The game’s levels are filled with plenty of twists, turns and curves
that will keep your fingers on the trigger as you negotiate the
accelerator and brakes. The tracks are designed well too, giving racers
a good variety of different and contrasting races to |
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motor through.
Another plus for RF is the game’s visuals. While they certainly won’t
overly impress you, they are generally of a high-speed viscosity
(although they may disappoint those expecting better graphics from the
Xbox version of the game). RF’s vehicular graphics actually were just
average at best, considering how spoiled Xbox racing gamers have been in
this respect from past racing titles such as Project Gotham Racing and
RalliSport Challenge.
Helping to accentuate RF’s attempt at providing a touch of realism is
some graphical touches like mud that builds up on your car while you are
racing and progressive damage such as broken windows or missing front
hoods and doors if you happen to get a little too reckless on the track.
But as soon as the game seems to get off the starting line in promising
shape, a few gaskets start popping which throws a wrench into any chance
the game had of achieving A-list status that has been reserved for Xbox
rally-car racers RalliSport Challenge and Colin McRae 3. To start, there
is only a scant amount of cars available in the game, 19 in all. In
today’s racing gaming world where Sega GT and Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec
(PS2) have multiple times that amount of cars, RF is a disappointment.
Even worse, RF forces you to race with particular cars for certain races
in the Race of Champions, which can be a real drag when the car in
question isn’t one you would have chosen if you had the choice. I can
guess this was done to give you a much harder challenge while at the
same time letting you taste the flavor of RF’s full range of motor
machines, but it turns out backfiring when driving lesser-performing
cars drains all the gas from your gaming fun.
RF’s biggest speed bump on its way past Mediocrity Street is the
hard-to-figure-out license and Race of Champions mode. Because of its
not-too-well-thought-out implementation, you may get confused early on
figuring out what your next racing goals are and exactly what vehicles
you’ll have at your disposal. It became increasingly frustrating in my
early RF racing experiences trying to surmise where I was traveling
next.
You know, there’s nothing more annoying to me on a family-driving
excursion than to have my wife offer critiques or suggestions on my
driving technique. Multiply that annoyance by about ten and you’ll get
the feeling of how bothersome the remarks from your rally-car navigator
can be. Yeah, buddy, I know rolling the car into that gully on the side
of the track wasn’t exactly good for our chances of winning. You don’t
have to rub it in with your smart-alecky remarks. That’s one little
touch of reality that RF could have definitely done without.
The game’s controls are actually very responsive, but in the same way as
driving my minivan; the brakes stop when you want them to and the
accelerator ramps up speed when you want them to, but a little too
stop-on-a-dime well for a rally-car racing game. You should be able to
slide through turns as real rally-car racers can and as both RalliSport
Challenge and Colin McRae 3 have established as part of their much more
realistic control scheme. In RF it’s much too easy to get by on the
tight stopping and accelerating controls while missing out on the
mud-sliding fun that is rally-car racing.
The hardest obstacle a developer needs to hurtle when creating a new
game in a well-established gaming genre is giving something new to the
gamer that they haven’t seen before. In the case of RF, the developer
does a nice job of creating a good rally-car racing game with solid
graphics and controls. But ultimately it fails to deliver on the
haven’t-seen-this-before features (and in fact falls a little short in
the features it does provide) that would entice gamebuyers to choose RF
over much better rally racing Xbox games RalliSport Challenge and Colin
McRae 3.
If you are looking for a realistic Xbox rally car racing title packed
with features, RF isn’t your best choice. RalliSport Challenge and Colin
McRae 3 are much more a true-to-life representation of what rally car
racing really is all about. Check out RF as a rental first before
selecting your rally-car racing title for your Xbox.
- Lee Cieniawa
lcieniawa@armchairempire.com
(February 3, 2003) |
