Written By Shaun McCracken
The first Paris-Dakar rally game was released back in 2001 for the PS2 and was
developed by Broadsword Interactive. I never played the game, and by judging from
every review from every publication, I don't think I would want to. IGN said the
gameplay was "laughable", Gamespot said that this was "an embarassment to the Dakar
race". Even places where people can give thair opinions said that this game was bad.
On the EBGames.com site, one customer said that "the graphics looked like an N64 game".
As it turns out, this is/was the worst rally game for the PS2. So, it may come as a
suprise of what I'm about to say about the sequel.
Acclaim seemed pretty iffy about releasing the sequel, lowering the price to
$19.99. But perhaps they shouldn't have been so cautious. After all, they developed
the game themselves this time. In fact, it was the same team who did Extreme G3,
and that turned out pretty well. The same can be said for Dakar 2. The game isn't
without it's faults, but for $20, you can do a LOT worse.
This game kind of commemerates the 25th anniversary of the Paris-Dakar rally.
For those who don't know what this rally championship is, the Paris-Dakar is a
huge race from Paris, France to Dakar, Africa. In reality, it's one of the most
greuling races in the world, since most of it is spent in the intensley hot African
desert. While racers of the WRC championship have the luxury of racing through
less intense conditions, Paris-Dakar contestants put everything on the line to win.
And the Dakar isn't as much about rally cars as it is off-road racing. What is considered
cars is actually modified SUV's and Pick-up trucks. It would have been nice to see
an Impreza or Evolution in here, but what's here is pretty good. And they are licensed
from companies such as Mitsubishi, Toyota, Nissan and Ford. The next group is
interesting. They call it "trucks", and these aren't normal trucks. These are
huge-ass dump-truck like vehicles. And what's funny is that these things haul ass
and turn pretty well. The final group is dirt-bikes, which is pretty self explanitory.
While Dakar 2 does it's best to give the Paris-Dakar rally experience, it seems
more like a "best of" series of races. There's only 12 sections to race through,
and what's stranger, is that some of them are circuit courses. I though the whole
thing was point-to-point. Circuits aren't bad, and it actually varies the gameplay
somewhat. The best races are the wide-open races, the ones where you have free
run of the desert (though you do have to find the chackpoints), and it does best
represent the feeling of the sport. But the whole series can be blasted through
pretty quickly, probably in about an hour for the Normal campaign mode. And it's
not that hard to place 1st, either. I haven't gone through the "hard" campaign
yet, and hopefully it's challenging, but Dakar 2 seems pretty casual. Compared to
the multitude of racing modes in Rally Fusion, Dakar 2 is pretty limited. It does
have an arcade mode, and you can go through the campaign in different types of
vehicles for variety, plus there are cars to unlock. The arcade mode, in paticular
is interesting, because those courses have to be unlocked seperately, instead of
unlocking them through the campaign championship.
One of the best features of Dakar 2, though, is the GBA/GCN connectivity. You
will need the cable and a GBA for this, so you know. But you can unlock mini-games
that can be downloaded to your GBA, and take them with you to go. It does go away
when the GBA is turned off, but 20 minutes is long enough to play it through. You
can only download one course, but they come with three challenges. There really is
no reward if you win, it's just a time waster. But the graphics are pretty damn
good considering the limited memory that the GBA has to hold these games. It looks
as good as a decent Game Boy Color racing title. For a $20 game, this is a very
pleasant and unexpected suprise. And finally, my GCN/GBA cable has a better use
than unlocking things in Metroid Prime.
Graphically, this is not a bad looking game. I've seen worse, a LOT worse. For
a GCN game, this is average. The vehicle models are fine, but not extrordinary.
The textures are probably that of a PS2 game, but are fairly clear and not pixelated.
There is some good lighting and shadows, as well as some effects thrown in for good measure.
But these things come at a price. The framerate, while fairly smooth and constant
most of the time, and never to the point where it's unplayable ; is pretty low.
It seems like it's floating around 30, but at times it goes down to a high 20.
It's not as frisky as Spy Hunter's framerate, and nowhere near as bad as what I
heard about the GCN version of Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2's framerate. It's not
choppy, and it doesn't bog down. It's just not that fast, especially compared to
Burnout 2 or even Shox. But then again, these vehicles aren't as fast as the mentioned
games.
The sound is pretty respectable. It runs in Dolby Pro Logic II (again, unexpected
for a $20 game), and sounds pretty nice. The music is great and very thematic. It
matches the mood of every course perfectly. The engines are good, but it's stuff
that I've heard before time and again. The announcer is fine, and doesn't start
shouting off comments mid-race. The co-pilot is adequate. Overall, good.
The control is a bit touch at first. When I started my first race, I was pretty
concerned about how it would play out from there. But luckily, you can adjust the
steering sensitivity, and it remains tight and very playable. You may have to adjust
the sensitivity for each type of vehicle, since they all handle differently in nature.
The motorcycles do seem a bit squirrley, but it can be worked around. Overall, a
nit sensitive, but it can be worked around, and you can complete the whole game
pretty effortlessly. Like I said before, Dakar 2 seems pretty casual, and the controls
kind of reflect that. They seem pretty arcadey.
A brand new game for $19.99, especially for the GCN, does not come around often.
And usually when you see games at this price, you have to wonder what's wrong with
it. Dakar 2's biggest drawback is it's depth and longevity. It can be completed
pretty quickly, and just doesn't offer up as much as Rally Fusion does in terms
of gameplay modes. But, it's threefold better than what the first Dakar was like.
It's fully playable, and not overly frustrating. In fact, I don't think I swore
at this game once, unlike the many swears I shouted out at Shox, Rally Fusion, Freekstyle
and many other racers with a seemingly cheating AI. It's a fairly casual affair,
and serves as a pretty good racing adventure. The GBA games sweeten the pot
even more. Let's face it, the GCN does not have the largest supply of rally racers.
V-Rally 3 was SUPPOSED to come out March 25, but Infogrames instead released the X-Box
version, which majorly pissed me off. For $20, take what you can get, and hope
more come along the way. But Acclaim has really cleaned up the mess Broadsword made
pretty well with a better Dakar experience.
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Dakar 2: The World's Ultimate Rally
