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Disappointed

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 18
Date: November 14, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I eagerly awaited my copy of Rallisport Challenge, and finally after installing the 3 cds ?!, I fired it up.
I should preface this by saying I prefer my rally games to be as realistic as possible. I would trade finely rendered trees and shiney cars for accurate physics engine any day. Rallisport Challenge dispointed me on both fronts. The physics don't feel accurate, and the graphics were dispointing. The signs and objects that surround the "stages" are nice, but the roads blend in with the banks in spots and look like flat sheets of painted glass.
I did enjoy the ice racing circuits as long as I didn't expect too much from the physics engine. This game would have been good if it was released 4 years ago, but against other current Rally titles such as Colin McRae 2 and Rally Trophy it comes up short.

Ultimately disappointing

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 10
Date: December 04, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This console (X-Box) port results in slick graphics, annoying music and unrealistic physics. The intensity, the hair-raising stress of on-the-edge racing is completely missing. If you think this is a 5 star racing sim, you should get out more often!

RALLISPORT CHALLENGE BY MICROSOFT

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game with high expectations; having owned both Rally Trophy and Collin M'Crae rally 2.0 I was a little disappointed. This is more of an arcade game/ x-Box then a serious rally simulator. Driving model and force feed back were not upto par. when it comes to serious rally look someplace else such as Rally Trophy which when you get the bugs out of it is the best rally simulator out there.

Not what I expected.....

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: March 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I am disappointed..., great graphics, but to me, that's about it. They have the sound close, but not close enough, there is a very vauge car setup screen, and the cars really don't handle that well. Put it this way, I was driving one car on a track that had some long streight streches. I assumed that it would be best to have the "tall" gear setting for this. I assumed that I would still be pulling higher sppeds before I had to slam on the breaks, but no. The engine revved out WAY before the next turn. Not nearly enough car settings. But it is multi-player "A+". I think they could have done better. But again, the graphics, especially the ice tracks, are pure art!

Heard of Richard Burns Rally?

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 5
Date: April 13, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Colin McRae is totally arcade and NON-REALISTIC rally game. Its ridiculous as to how many times you can totally pound up your car and you axle will not give out. In the trailers they had the races seem like real thrill with the actual car turning end over end but in the real game the car is like a solid rock, pulverizing everything in its path. BUT you cannot hit those American speed limit signs, they are made out of concrete or something and will stop a 160mph car flying down the tarmac roads.

Besides Colin McRae Rally being totally unrealistic its a fun game as an arcade game, like that of Need for Speed Underground, but its nothing near the physics in Forza Motorsports for Xbox or the GT series for PS2.

I am VERY surprised as to why there does not exist a realistic simulator for driving for PC while the consoles are taking all the fun... Maybe they figure people with PC also have consoles or perhaps the PC is not made for realistic sims...

In conclusion, Richard Burns Rally>>>Colin McRae>>> Rallisport Challenge>>> Need for Speed (anything, well, besides Porsche unleashed)

An addictive game, with just a few laughable flaws

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 24 / 25
Date: June 09, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I love Rallisport Challenge, and just like the people I love, I've had to love it with all of its flaws. This game is a mix of majestic graphics, realistic off-road driving physics, and ridiculously exaggerated speed. Don't kid yourself: if at any time, you slow to below 90 mph (and that means sharp hair-pin turns), you'll finish last. This game actually made me a Rally fan, and you can imagine my shock when I watched a WRC rally on TV, only to see the pro's sliding through turns and taking jumps at 60 mph! That's right, Colin McRae, Marcus Gronholm, and Markko Martin couldn't win a single race in "Beginner" mode in this game! This makes me wonder if Rallisport Challenge wouldn've have been better named as "Rallisport Blitz," and released by Midway as part of their arcade sports lineup.
That said, Rallisport Challenge is quite addicting. I've spent four hours at a time on this game, and I was never a race fan before. Mastering the art of the powerslide through tight turns on perilous mountain roads is joyous. You'll have to figure out the technique on your own, however, as there's no hint in the game manual, or tutorial in the game. I fear too many people will give up on the game before their skill-level improves, and miss out on the fun. Speaking of fun, here are a few fun facts you'll learn from this game:
1. A rock the size of your fist can destroy a 500 hp, 1230 kg rally car.
2. Rally cars are filled with helium. Any bumps in the road, especially in turns, will, best case, render your car uncontrollable for a while as you wait for your tires to touch the ground again, or, worst case, send your car sailing off a cliff into the sunset with air traffic control clearance.
3. A 500 hp, 1230 kg rally car at 145 mph is no match for a flimsy wooden advertising billboard on the roadside. In fact, the car will do three or four backflips in the air if you hit one.
4. Your AI opponents will all finish to within a nanosecond of eachother. If you don't finish first, you'll finish last.
5. Your AI opponents will seem to get a 5-second head-start. I'm asking the FIA to check their cars for nitrous boosters. Could be quite the scandal.
6. A few levels have you racing head-to-head with three other cars. This is nothing more than a "crash-up derby." If you don't ram that stupid Saab off the road quickly, he'll do it to you every time you get a lead.
7. Your co-driver insists on reading off the turns several miles in advance. You'd better have a good memory, otherwise you'll be confused as you enter a left turn as he's yelling "hard right!" That "hard right" won't be for a few more miles. We're having him tested for stimulant use. We'll get back to you on that.
If you can view these game issues with a sense of humor, and be prepared to spend a little time learning to control the cars, you'll find yourself as addicted to this game as I am.
One last piece of advice: play responsibly - don't get behind the wheel for at least 30 minutes after playing Rallisport Challenge.

Best Arcade Style Rallying Since Sega Rally 2

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: January 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Fans of the classic Sega Rally arcade game should rush out to get this X-Box port - the variety of play modes and beautiful graphics will be enough to keep your pulse pounding for weeks. Fans of accurate simulation style rally racing should avoid this title - the retro "Rally Trophy" is the best recent rally simulator. However, for what Rallisport aims to be, a fun and wide-appealing racer, it succeeds on many grounds.

The game comes on three CD-ROM's and the breadth that this suggests clearly shows through with more cars and tracks than you can shake a stick-shift at. There are four modes of racing - the classic solo rallying against the clock, the fictitious NASCAR-bumping race with four cars in a dirt and asphalt oval, another fictitious race with four cars in an ice oval, and the Pikes Peak style hill climb. In the core "career" mode, you will need to race in all of these events to accumulate points and unlock more tracks and cars.

The terrain representation is the most noteworthy on the list of merits. For the first time on a PC rally game, the sense of uneven terrain is truly frightening. Banked turns and cambered roads look and feel authentic, especially in the Hill Climb event, where you can actually see the terrain just above your head that the upcoming off-camber hairpin turn is leading into - the sense of going uphill has never been captured better. Owners of Geforce3 or higher and ATI Radeon 8500 and higher graphics cards will especially appreciate the shadow and lighting effects, especially on ice, where the bright glare of the surface is captured convincingly. The downside of the arcade approach is that the roads are all extremely wide to allow plenty of room to slide around in, unlike the claustrophobic narrow roads seen at real rally events, lending a particularly inauthentic feel.

The driving dynamics, while clearly in the arcade camp, do break some new territory. Real rally cars are notoriously difficult to turn in. Rallisport captures that more than any other rally game before it - if you simply charge into a turn and crank the steering wheel, very little will happen except that you will plow straight ahead into the tree at the outside of the turn. You will need to utilize real life rally techniques such as the pendulum turn to rotate and begin sliding the vehicle into a turn and this will require some adjustment from past rally games that did not bring this initial understeer into stark relief. That said, the controllability of the vehicle slide clearly shouts "arcade fun", not "simulator".

Disappointments include the lack of a large dust plume on dirt tracks, an awesome sight in real rallies that I would have expected would be possible by now with today's computing power. And although the cars differ in power delivery, the cars all share the same 8000-rpm redline and vaccuum cleaner sound effects, from the 1.6 liter normally aspirated engine to the turbocharged Group-B monsters. Furthermore, some details show a lack of thorough testing - the gearbox options (short, medium, tall) effect only the top two gears which, although not optimal, may be fine except that when you select "short", fifth gear is actually shorter than fourth gear and sixth gear is barely taller than fourth gear.

A Pentium 1.8 GHz and GeForce4 Ti4200 is plenty good to turn on almost all of the eye candy options at 1024x768. However, the program did curiously un-mount one of my drives that I had mounted as my "Program Files" directory during the installation process. If you don't know what this means then you probably do not have a set-up like mine and do not need to worry about it - the game has run without crashing for many weeks now on my Windows 2000 set-up.

Very Fun Rally Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is extremely fun for any person who enjoys car racing games and even for some who dont. The graphics will take your breath away. The game play is solid, simple, and fun. It will take you about a day to fully get used to the controls of the car but once you do the game is a blast. The game could be better, but is still very fun to play. Your experience will only greaten if you have a steering wheel with force feedback. You will find yourself coming back to the game a month after you finish it to play again.

Good but not perfect!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: October 31, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is good but still I feel there is a little bit lag time (around 1/5 second) between my Logitech MOMO Force Feedback Wheel USB and the wheel from the game. I also own a NASCAR 2003 SEASON. Compare with these two games, I like NASCAR 2003 SEASON more because it has no steeling wheel lag time.

The graphic is good and clear, easy to manage option setting and the fast racing mode which I like most whenever I have a few minutes to spend before I go out for a dinner with my girlfriend. :)

Anyway, forom the price to the game, this is "almost" a must own game. If you are very tricky racing gamer, you can also concider NASCAR 2003 SEASON which is the best game that I played so far.

One of the better looking !!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: January 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game shows some brilliant visuals just because of its advancement in graphics technology, but its somewhat shameful that it couldn`t deliver graphics that could beat the less advanced Playstation2.
The smoke and dust effects aren`t upto mark, not even equal to Ps2`s Gran Turismo 3 which isn`t at all a full pledged Rally game.
I give it 4 stars because of the vertex and pixel shading utilisation to a large extent.

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