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By Contributing Writer Jimmy Payne Rating: Average The racing genre is so over-crowded with mediocre games that it really takes something special to make a racing game stand out from all the garbage. Sega Rally 2 is far from the worst racing game ever made, but it adds almost nothing to the genre. One thing that Sega Rally 2 does have going for it is great graphics. The replay mode is just as impressive as Gran Turismo's, and unlike Gran Turismo, your cars can actually take damage in Sega Rally 2. It's nothing major, but sometimes you'll find that your car is muddy or scratched depending on what kind of terrain you're racing on. Also, a lot of stuff takes place on the tracks themselves, such as helicopters flying and even people running across the track on rare occasions. At first, I thought Sega Rally 2's control was horrible. Every single race was frustrating because I hit the wall on every turn. In order to prevent this from happening, you have to tune up your car before every race by re-working the suspension, changing tires, etc. After you figure out how to do this, you'll find that the control is almost perfect (and if it's not, it's because you didn't tune your car properly). I normally don't take the time to tune my cars in racing games, but it's the difference between winning and losing in Sega Rally 2. It would be nice if you didn't have to do it at all, but tuning your car in this game a lot less painful than it is in a lot of other racing games. Sega Rally 2's sound is plagued by horrible voice-overs. These range from an annoying voice on the Game Over screen that screams, "GAME OVER YEAHHHHH!" to a companion in your car that constantly tells you about upcoming turns. Since there are so many turns in Sega Rally 2, you're constantly listening to a voice saying something like "200 sharp right" or "50 narrow bridge." There's no way to turn these voices off; you can only change them from a male voice to a female voice. The Versus Mode is only slightly better than the single-player mode, and that's just because the annoying voice-overs aren't in the Versus Mode. When I had some people over to play, they were disgusted to find that they hit the wall on every turn and spun out of control wildly, just as I did when I first started playing the game. There is a catch-up option that gives better speed and handling to the person who is in second place, but this just leads to cheap games that don't really involve any skill at all. The bottom line is that any game's Versus Mode should be easy enough that anyone can jump in and play without being given an in-depth tutorial first. It didn't take me long to realize that the pathetically short and poorly-done Arcade Mode isn't the focus of the game; the "10-Year Mode" is. The Arcade Mode only offers four tracks, but the 10-Year Mode offers four tracks for every virtual year. Even in the 10-Year Mode, many of the so- called "different tracks" are just variations of another track with different conditions like mud, snow, and rain. After you've played every track under every condition (which doesn't take too long), the repetition is very noticeable and the game is very boring. When there are games like Crash Team Racing on the market with over 16 completely unique tracks, the trick used in Sega Rally 2 (and many other racing games) just isn't acceptable anymore. The difficulty level in Sega Rally 2 is even worse than it is Virtua Fighter 3tb. It gets to a point where it's almost impossible to win, and the game just isn't good enough to make you want to keep playing despite the difficulty. In addition, there are no continues whatsoever. If you miss a single checkpoint, you have to start all over at the beginning of the circuit. When the repetitive tracks and insane difficulty level cause you to lose interest in the game, you can't even have fun racing backwards on the tracks in an effort to create some nasty head-on collisions. If you manage to run into a computer-controlled car, it keeps on driving as if nothing happened. You would think that a head-on collision would at least slow them down for a few seconds... With games like Crash Team Racing and Gran Turismo 2 on the market, there's no reason to buy Sega Rally 2. I wouldn't even recommend renting it unless you're looking for a quick racing game fix over the weekend and there is nothing else available. Send your thoughts on this review to jimmy@mastergamer.com
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