Written By Shaun McCracken
Rally racers is and still one of the most poorly represented genres for the
Gamecube. It's kind of sad when there's only two true rally racers on the system,
and both are ports of older PS2 versions. Pro Rally was the first rally game to
come out for the Gamecube, but it's hardly new. It's basically a port of the 2001
PS2 title with 2002 slapped on. While it's true that the PS2 edition never made it to
the states, it's pretty obvious it was a PS2 port. Especially in the texturing.
Pro Rally is fairly standard in it's overall design, but kind of "dumbed down"
when compared to WRC on the PS2, or to a certain extent, Dakar 2. You have very few,
if any tuning options. This may be good for those who do not like to fumble with
all the small details, but if you want to refine how your car reacts and optimize
the settings for each stage, forget it. Your journey through the stages is also
pretty much standard fare. You race in locales such as Spain, France and Argentina
with varying conditions. The courses themselves are designed pretty well, and
there are weather conditions. But then there are problems I have noticed within
the stages. You can't go very far off course, or you will be automatically replaced.
Also, there are some objects off course that I collided into that caused the game to
freeze. Then there is the fact that your car almost comes to a complete stop
when you hit another care. It's like you never really exert force on another
object. I wouldn't have expected this amount of glitchiness in a game like this.
The graphics are average. Blurry PS2 textures in most spots, and nothing
ever really takes advantage of what the GCN can do. I bet if a developer actually
designed a rally game specifically for the GCN, it would look excellent. But we
have yet to see such a thing done. I think the best aspect of the graphics deals
with the car models. They look fairly sharp and good. Not perfect, but much
better than the background area. Here's a strange thing, though. At some areas,
the entire background of the stage will flicker quickly. It's like for a split
second, the entire area has been deforested.
I'm glad that Ubi Soft actually provided music during the race. I can understand
why some developers would leave music out during the race (it's so you can hear your co-pilot),
but I would like to have the option to have music during the race. Here I do.
It's not fantastic, but it's not annoying. Standard engine noises and collision
effects round out the audio package.
Final Thought
Overall, Pro Rally is a disappointment if you have played games such as Rallisport Challenge, V-Rally 3,
WRC, Colin McRae 3, Shox, Rally Fusion and even Gran Turismo 3. I think the only ones
who could enjoy this are the ones who only own a GCN and are very desperate for
a rally game. Honestly, if off road action is what you want, buy Freekstyle or
ATV2. If you want a racer with a lot of gameplay, get Burnout 2. If you own
multiple systems, there's no need to bother with this. I'm just hoping one developer
can give GC owners a good rally racer before the end of the system's lifespan.
|
Pro Rally
