V-Rally 4 Review

It's unfortunate that I should have to tell people to people to avoid this game even though it can be enjoyed somehow. What's presented is a very fun and challenging rally racing game with changing physics for separate event types that keeps the players on their toes, but it's severely ham-stringed by a difficulty setting that is almost impossible to win against when set to the default. It's great for anyone who's a fan of rally racing games but not so much for anyone else. 

To those of us who do enjoy the off-road sport, V-Rally 4 is a decent game with solid racing but not much else to speak of. The metagame of managing a team and budget adds a realistic but somewhat unwelcome touch by charging thousands of dollars to maintain operations. It feels very hands off but is unavoidably necessary to upgrade vehicles in order to even stand a chance at a podium finish. Higher level mechanics, researchers, and a PR agents must be added to get better parts and access to higher paying events. Car upgrades come sparsely and are unlocked per days raced as opposed to an XP system, it also forces the player to manage the budget: will a car upgrade help now or would it be better save up for a new car for higher level races? It hardly matters because the AI is constantly overwhelming if not adjusted and even at the default difficulty setting it seems to be hard to keep up even when pushing the cars to their limits. Lowering the difficulty feels no better when things seem to be going well in a race only to somehow find yourself in 9th place at the very end. Lowering the difficulty lowers your overall prize money so the unhealthy balance of risk vs reward has no appeal.

The changing physics happen with each and every race and event type. The rally racing is the most diverse between dry asphalt, snowy roads, sand, and more. Buggy racing hardly feels any different when powering through water or sand but recovering from a large jump can be unpredictable. Gymkhana is on dry asphalt but you're expected to drift through hairpin turns, often times with a FWD car. Hill climb is the fastest on dry asphalt and can be tricky with unexpected turns and no pace notes to guide the player.

The game has a distinct lack of personality and design-wise is very boring. The in-game UI is dull and there is no flare or excitement when pulling off a perfectly executed handbrake turn around a hairpin or landing on all four tires from a jump is met with no excitement or reaction. It features a very basic photo mode that only angles and zooms the camera, nothing more. (The screenshots in this review were taken by me.)

The locales are gorgeous and light rays, grass, water reflections, and dirt clouds make everything look amazing and is the best part of the game. However there's a big lack of variety in regards to the amount of cars and tracks available and racing the same places over and over will become tiresome after just a few hours.

Sound design has taken a hit with each engine sounding different from one another but not very powerful. There is no bass to the backfires, no feeling from the tires squealing, and no reaction from the crowds. Pace notes are accurate but not very detailed for the rapidly-changing rally events, even the co-driver sounds bored and not concerned with the racing. The only music is in the menus is same song repeated each time a race is finished.

If you've beaten the WRC games as well as the DiRT series then you'll find plenty of faults with V-Rally 4 but you may also find enjoyment in the challenge. When compared to the other series it feels like a budget title which is a shame since the V-Rally series, which started as an offshoot from the NFS franchise, has a pedigree as far back as the first Colin McRae Rally on the PS1. It has changed developers and some ideas were gleaned from the others but nothing about this title pushes the limits of rally racing games or makes the player want to play more.

If an XP system that rewarded the player for drifts, speeds, jumps, etc had been added in exchange of team management, it would have given the game it's own personality. It would have added an arcade flair to a sim racing game. Instead it's hindered by copied ideas and a difficulty system that doesn't actually adjust. V-Rally could be better in the future but only time will tell.

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Sebastien Loeb Rally EVO Review

If the WRC and DiRT series could be compared to Gran Turismo and Forza, then Sebastien Loeb Rally EVO could be compared to Driving Emotion Type-S: a one-off game from SquareEnix (back then just SquareSoft) that may have looked decent given the initial reviews, but once played the disaster that it truly is becomes apparent. It can't hold it's own against the bigger titles and is left on the shelves or in the cloud as a forgotten regrettable purchase. Developer Milestone has been around since the 90s and have worked on the WRC series in the past and is currently the developer of the MotoGP series which proves they have some knowledge when it comes to sim racing, it's just surprising to see how mediocre Rally EVO truly is. It seems to have hit a bump and crashed headfirst into some trees.

The first and immediate problem are the physics that seem to toe the line between reality and arcade: it's hard to understand just how they work and even when you think you understand them, the game seems to change with each and every car and surface. RWD cars slide violently from the back when braking while 4WD cars seem to lose the ability to steer altogether when the brakes are pressed. Thankfully options such as traction and stability controls can be adjusted from the menus even during a race. Wonky physics aside, the game has a rewind function that allows to undo some mistakes. These are limited in the number of uses for each race and have a time limit before being able to be used again so crashing so soon after using one can be frustrating.
The variety of race types is commendable but some of them are absolutely useless in the overall package of this being a rally game. Modes such as Sector racing, which has you racing to be the fastest driver in a sector on a single race track, can last less than three minutes. Elimination races are something you'd expect to find in an arcade racing game. The rally stages are the best and there's a huge variety to the courses, with changing surface types. Speaking of, the career mode feels more like an arcade mode by jumping from event to event being broken up by classes for each car type. The Loeb Experience portion of the game does the same thing but is unlocked by climbing higher on the reputation ladder. All the while there are no end-race consequences for damage so you don't have to worry about paying for repairs, you can use those credits to buy new cars and keep going. It all adds up to a game with $30 worth of quality and content that retailed for $60 at launch.

There is nothing steady about the overall game when you have to remember how to drive a RWD car on the snow in one race to a 4WD car on dry pavement in another. 

Each stage and locale are detailed to be as realistic as possible and feature some of the courses from the official WRC calendar, but there's no pizzazz behind it, all the colors feel muted and the scenery feels lifeless. In spite of that, the light rays, reflections, and shadows are excellently placed and reflect nicely off of the car and bodies of water or ice. I use the first screenshot as a Facebook banner and one of my relatives thought it was a real picture.
Each car sounds unique and the backfire from the more powerful vehicles have a nice bass to them. Pacenotes seem to go an extra mile in the wrong direction compared to other games and the co-driver sounds like a robot. Even counting down at the start of a race you can hear him say "Go?" There are audio hiccups and more than once while playing, the co-driver switched to a completely different language. Several times there are audio clips of Sebastien Loeb speaking to the player in the career mode only it's not really him. Loeb is French and has an accent, the man in the recording is purely American

Every once in a while a game comes along that has some competence: it "works well" but for some unexplained reason all of it comes together in a big mess of slush that gets pushed to the side in favor of a more well-established series of games. For those who don't know, Sebastien Loeb currently has the most victories in the WRC: 77 wins according to the website (for comparison, McRae only has 25), so a man of such importance should have had a better game than this. I didn't expect Colin Mcrae Rally series level of quality but if I'm being honest I'd like to see another developer take over this title and try something new.

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