posted 12-21- 12:17 PM               

graphics are the best i've ever seen on the PSX. The cars are modeled like i've never seen before. and the phyics are the best ever.

the sence of speed will make you wet yourself in the corners

it's a must buy. so stop reading this and go get it!!!

posted 12-21- 04:43 PM               

well i totally agree with razer, gt2 is going to be great but its not going to have this games nice graphics and amazing sence of speed nor the visible crash damage, flips and barrel rolls, and of coarse the track editor

i did a sample review to try my hand on that stuff and it just happened to be on VR2
here is its in all its glory
Mad Dog was my editor so blame him for any mistakes

Title of Game: V-Rally 2 Need For Speed

Country of Origin (if known): Originally a European release I think Now released in North America.

Publisher: Electronic arts

Developer: Infrogames Made in Eden Studios

Release Date (approximate, as close as possible): Out now

Number of Players: 2 players split screen or alternate

Dual Shock YES

Peripherals
Analog
Memory Pack
Steering wheel
Brain

Review Strapline “ A new Rally sim hits the psx. Is it all that’s expected? Or better yet is it better then V-Rally 1?

Need For Speed V- Rally 2

When I first heard about NFS V-Rally 2 (crazy long name from now on know as VR2) I was mildly interested but not overly excited. You see I love rally and consider it one of the best forms of auto racing there is, give me a little front or four wheel drive car with crazy amounts of turbo induced power on slippery, skinny roads over a banked oval any day. Add to it that you don’t know where your going, and that a co pilot yells directions at ya like a woman about to give birth. It all adds up to an exciting form of racing, and finally we in North America have a GOOD PSX rally game to see if we would make the cut.

VR2 is one of those games in which the sum is greater then the parts. Graphics are decent but not amazing, Track design works and is fun but is a little lacking in inspiration, the interface does its job but can be a little confusing. Don’t let that last sentence scare you away though cause what we have here is a game that any racing fan should be adding to his or her collection

Is it better then its older sibling? Read on and find out.
Gameplay

Well slap that flat plastic disk in and get ready for some racing. Just let her load up don’t hit anything, you don’t want to skip the intro movie. It gets your blood pumping. When I first watched it I though “Great but what does this have to do with the game?” I didn’t want to get all reved up for anything like the movie was showing, just to be let down in the game. It turns out the game is a lot like the movie, powerslides, dust trails, twisting hilly tracks, and bumps LOTS of bumps. Its all there except the hi res graphics, hopefully VR3 or VR2000 if it ever comes out will be on the PS2 (I know, I can’t wait either) and it will look like this.

There’s some options you can play with. Display with screen format wide or normal, mph or kph, screen centering, and split screen mode horizontal or vert. Audio consists of sound volumes, play type as in random or repeat, and track #. Memory cards with save mode, load, save, and erase. Game scores where you can view, clear and merge the score data. Game progression where you can view what you have done and unlocked.

Sign up as a new driver and from now on the game will autoload all the players, keep track of their milage, play time, and performance points. It also adds this name to your license plate! Move forward and select your car, there is 3 available categories at start with a bonus car category opening up when you start unlocking them up too a grand total of 10. When you add the original cars there are 26 cars to play with.

Now you have three choices Game mode, Track editor which is fully described below and alternative play which will also be fully explained. Jump into the arcade mode for now.

Arcade mode

is 4 players you and 3 AI. You compete in a race against the clock. Make it though the checkpoints just like any other arcade game, and complete 3 laps. Of course the fastest time wins. There are 3 levels of play: level 1, level 2, and expert. The goal is to make it through all the races in good time and move on to the next level. In arcade level 1 isn’t very hard and is mostly good training, it gets much harder with the higher levels. There is visible damage and such but it’s all cosmetic for now.

V-Rally Trophy mode

consists of three track groups, Euro trophy, World trophy, and Expert trophy. You and 3 others compete for the trophies. The man with the lowest cumulative race time of all the group stages gets the chicks and unfortunately he always seems to have to buy the beers too. Still just visual damage but we are just getting ready for the big time.

Championship mode

Now we have some Rallying to do, no more groupies for us just the classy and hopefully busty blondes or maybe some other hair color. Win and you will have your choice. This is Rally the way it was meant to be its just you, your co-pilot and the road in a race against your competitor’s times. They have upped the ante buy giving you 7 of them. ‘Course the station doesn’t have to render them so your frame rate doesn’t suffer. Its all good though cause you don’t usually pass in rally so you shouldn’t have to in a real rally sim. If driving by yourself sounds boring then you either A: haven’t seen a rally or B: have never taken your mom’s chevette out on some back roads for a “test drive”. Just to Drive home the point (heh, no pun intended I assure you) we now have full damage that effects the performance of your automobile. After you damage that expensive piece of machinery, and believe me you will, you can repair it in the service area this comes up between stages of a championship round. You will have 30 minutes to put towards repairing your car. Stuff you can repair here is engine, gear box, Brakes, steering, and suspension. After a round (which is 2 or 3 stages) the 6 best racers get points. Those points are used to calculate standings. After the last round the one with the most chicks wins. Or maybe that’s points…yeah probably points. I guess it depends on what’s most important to you. Just don’t wear yourself out the night before a race with one of those classy ladies (no not even the palmala sisters… especialy not them, ya don’t want to wear out your playing hands do ya?) Save that kind of stuff for the celebration will need all your strength to win the Expert mode.

Time Trial mode

is pretty much standard fare here. Race on the tracks by yourself for practice or fun, hopefully both. You can also race split screen or alternate play with a friend here.

Multiplayer

, well you and a friend can both plug in and share in some racing fun. It comes in split screen, and take alternate turn flavors. I’m not a big fan of split screen but this pulls it off as well as it can with the screen real estate it has to work with. I find me and that friend always end up in a fight over the ladies though (and no I’m not talking about palmela this time).

Well now is a good time as any to mention the car set up option. You can set up your car for the up coming race. The stuff you can change includes tire types, gear ratio with 7 settings between all out speed and all out acceleration. Chassis has suspension hardness, car ride height, and over/understeer. Breaks setup is as simple as strength and bias towards the front and back.

Yep one more thing (if there’s one thing this game has its options). You can also adjust your driving options. Auto or Manual, Braking assistance, steering sensitivity, and controller set up. You will want to go in here because you will want to customize your button layout to your liking.

With great control that is highly customizable, 84 races, 26 cars and a track editor this could keep ya in racing bliss for awhile.

Graphics

Well I find the graphics pretty damn good, they might not be quite as polished as GT but I doubt the team had as much time or money to spend on this venture either. They can be a little rough and there is some draw in and clipping problems, but they can be overlooked and ignored cause they’re not very annoying. The great thing about the graphics is that although they may be just a tad rough, the sensation of speed and the little extras are great. When I say this game feels fast, I mean REALLY FAST! When your going full out, 120mph down a little skinny road you really feel like you’re Haulin’ ass.

The little graphics extras

This game has all kinds of stuff to add to the experience. When you smoke a rock cut or grind body panels with another car, you’ll see a smashed window or busted tail light, and your car gets dirty as you add up the laps. The head light effects are great at night, actually adding to the experience unlike some others that tried portray night time driving. There is a trail of dust following your car on all the dusty tracks and it looks phenomenal especialy in replay modes. You will find yourself coming around blind corners and seeing 6 or more people scurry to the side of the track to let you by, just like a real rally. During the replay (which is great and lets you change what car your focusing on and rewind it) it has a motion blur type effect which they pulled off wonderfully and it still ends up really smooth with no slow down.

While the graphics might not be the best there is in PSX racing games, it’s better then most and they pull it off with a high frame rate, no slow downs and a very realistic sense of speed.

Sound

Hmm… the sound. Well it works. You can hear the crashing and crunching, you can hear some birds tweeting, you can hear the shifter clunking, but its not very imersive. It ends up coming across as more of an after thought then anything more. All in all, it’s not any worse then a lot of other racing games, except for one thing… the engine sound. All the cars sound exactly the same to me… Like they don’t have different engines or something?!

The voices

for your co pilot work and fit, I wouldn’t want the voices to stick out cause that would mean they messed it up. I don’t want him to do anything special, “quit your bitching and knit me a sweater! Err, uh, read the damn map and let me handle the racing” Well maybe he should have a little tinge of fear in his voice when things get rough. Hehe… I’m never satisfied though.

The music

is from a wide range of genres, from heavy rock to techno and such. It all sounds good and none of then suck but heck, after a couple test runs I usually turn it off so I can hear my co-pilot and gearbox better.

The Track Editor

When I heard it was coming with a track editor I thought “Great idea but I doubt they will pull it off”. The reason I say that is it seems like a lot of racing games are coming with track editors lately, and to put it gently, THEY ALL SUCK!! Well guess what? This one doesn’t. A lot of the other ones are too limiting or just plain useless. The tracks you make with them just aren’t fun to drive and race on. The only limit I found with this one is it can only use 50 blocks, not 50 blocks of memory card space (you can actually fit 7 tracks in one memory card block) but just 50 segments of track. That’s still a decent size though and I can live with it. With that size I could make a track that was 2.2 miles long. One of the great things about it is the elevation tool. I love hill climbing and boy oh boy can I make hills with this sucker! I made a track that was as high as the screen and I started to go off the screen so ya know what I did? I zoomed out a bit. Yep, pull back a bit and keep on going. It ended up being around 2 miles high and when you turn around and come back down you can hit 200mph. I hit a bump coming down that you couldn’t even see going up, and did something like 15 end over end flips. Thank god for that roll cage! You can rotate, zoom, pan and center the track in your view. The biggest problem with the track editor is you can only do time trials on it no racing with other racers, which really sucks.

and the conclusion?

Well all in all I really like this game, the sence of speed gets me everytime. There is no frame rate problems at all, only minor graphics glitches and crazy amounts of options, modes and cars to keep ya coming back for more. The only complaints I have are the load times into the diffent race modes (yep it takes longer to load a race mode then a track) the sound and the confusing menus. I can look past all that to get on with some down and dirty racing. Now all I need is some bikini clad women to wash the dust off my car in PSX FMV glory. It comes of as a way better racer then VR1 with none of the control issues that had me frustrated with it and a boat load of new additions. If this is the direction this series is taking in I’m in for the duration.

Presentation (box, docs, menu layout, game options, etc):

Decently laid out, can be a bit confusing and the loading time is pretty long when entering a raceing mode. It does its job and that’s about it. 6.5

Graphics:

Well done, above the bar for most PSX racing games and with smooth frame rates and an awsome sence of speed to boot. 8

Sound:

Bland and unplolished I find sound very important to games when will developers realize that also? 5

Gameplay:

This is where VR2 gets major points. Lots of options, great control, all kinds of race modes 9

Lasting Appeal:

You should be playing this one for awhile. 26 cars including historic ones, 84 tracks, 4 diffent race modes with 3 sub modes each and a track editor should keep ya plenty busy. 9

Final Score: 8.5

ps i was wrong you can play 4 player split if you have the controlers and a multitap
i couldn't test it cause i don't have one.