Product: Sega Rally 2 : Sega Rally Championship
Company: Sega/Empire Sports
Website: http://www.empiresport.com
Estimated Street Price:
Review By: Alex Harris

The Features

Sega Rally 2 adds its name to the ever-increasing list of Driving/Racing games out there, which at the moment is lead by games like Colin McRae Rally. I myself am not much of a racing game fan mainly for the fact that it gets very monotonous very quickly.

According to the back of the box “The greatest Arcade hit of the decade skids onto your PC! Sega’s perfect re-creation of the spirit of rally racing runs in awesome graphical detail and truly shows off the power of your PC.

 Push every car to its limit; power sliding through gravel, mud, snow and tarmac shaving hundredths of a second from every turn to gain the quickest circuit time.

Sega Rally 2 has

• A brand new graphics system packed with detail including dust, weather effects and working brake lights.
• Single Race, 10 Year Championship, Time Trial and multiplayer modes, including a two player race on one PC and a network play option
• Drive 17 tracks with 21 different cars assembled using genuine World Rally Championship vehicle data
• Incredible 3D audio system reproduces current road surface and speed, using genuine sound effects from each cars engine
• Post your best times on Sega Rally Global Net Ranking Web site and fight to be the best in the world
• Force Feedback support for your joystick and steering wheel.

Installation And Settings

Installation was a breeze and you are given 3 standard modes being Full, Medium and Minimum. I choose Full install to start with and then after tried Medium. Since the system it was being tested on was powerful it didn’t make that much difference, but if you are going to be running this game on a low spec machine it might be worthwhile to do the Full install if space will allow. You are also given the choice to install Direct X 7 if required.

Once install and you start the game up you come to a Launcher screen which gives you the choice to

•  Install (it will be greyed out if you have installed the game already)

•  Uninstall

•  DirectX

•  Readme

•  Online help

•  Sega rally 2’s Official Website

•  Play/Network Play

•  Display Settings

•  Controller Settings

•  Replay Files

•  Exit

Graphics

One of the first down sides I found about this game is when I went to set up the graphics on the game. Since I have a 19” monitor and a G400 card I like to run games in quite high resolutions, but was disappointed to find that the game will only run in 800 x 600, but does give you the choice to use AGP memory. Even though the graphics only run at 800 x 600 the graphics aren’t that bad. There are people who stand on the sidelines and will run onto the road, but when they see you coming will run back to the side of the road, which I thought, was a nice touch. Even when you go through a mud puddle you get some mud splash up, but sadly doesn’t stay on the front windshield. There is also a nice effect where the rain beats against the windscreen if you are going fast and slows down when the car slows down.

One graphical annoyance I did find in the game is that when you move onto the second year and the rest of the years in the 10 Year Championship you find that the 4 backgrounds for the 4 races a year stay virtually the same. The tracks do differ which is good, but you always see the same castle in the distance and the same sort of buildings.

 Besides the similar track backgrounds and the limitations on the screen resolution the graphics aren’t to bad.

Sound

From the launcher menu you can get to the sound menu, which gives you three options, Mono, Stereo and 3D EAX sound. The sounds of the car in the game are quite good, but the annoyance comes with the navigator. When you have the male voice chosen it is quite bearable, but when you choose the female voice and hit against the side of the track (as you will most likely do at the start of the game) the female voice sounds like she is having an orgasm. Even though this sounds not to bad it can get quite annoying after a while.

Gameplay

Before I go on about the gameplay I must mention that one of the strong points of this game is the good setup for the controllers. It is very comprehensive and is quite easy to set up and calibrate once you have chosen what device you wish to use to play the game.

The Gameplay itself through for the first few games is quite good. There is a decent selection of cars to choose from and a nice selection of tuning that you can do to the cars depending on what the course is like. Some of the tuning you can choose is what tire type to use on what road condition, Steering response, and the braking response. Another good feature is that you can save these settings into user files so that if someone else wants to play they can either play about with the settings till they are comfortable with it or load their own up without any worry that yours will be lost.

Cars and Courses

Here is a listing of the cars and courses that are available to you as the game continues:

Final Comments

How It Grades
		Graphics: 78% Installation: 90% Sound: 70% Network Play: Manual: 85% Gameplay: 70% Overall: 75%

The game does merit a look at if you are a racing fan. There are a lot of good features in this game, but it is let down by the fact that the graphics only go as high as 800 x 600 and the backgrounds start to look to similar after a while.