V-Rally 3

"Top PS2 rally title, but one for a hardcore audience exclusively."

Once upon a time it was but a mere novelty to be able to drive in 4WD monsters on narrow roads covered in distinctly layered dirt. The original V-Rally from 1997 was an instant gaming classic, the twitchiness (yet incredible steering accuracy) of the console world's first serious attempt at a rally driving simulation came up trumps with the globe's media. Yet if there’s one thing for sure, it’s that the PlayStation2 rallying fraternity has certainly added on fat since then; Colin McRae Rally represented the first venture into the genre for a big-name star. Not only that, it was innovative: introducing the time-trial nature of the true sport to gamers as they crossed numerous countries in a bid to help Mister McRae to the greatest title honor.

And now comes the third incarnation of it’s old rival, predictably titled V-Rally 3. Taking in the lessons from the previous century and also the newest attempts to steal the crown from the last few years (WRC, Rally Championship…), this game should be a biggie. Like the Colin McRae series, it is noted for innovation (according to many fans, V-Rally 2 created the first, and arguably one of the last great track editing facilities). But for the first time yet, the French development crew Eden Studios have bowed to the Mac’s new trend by doing the unthinkable: dropping all of the previous games’ arcade properties and instead crafting the third title into a real brute, the gaming world’s most serious WRC simulation.

It’s a curious direction for one of the games, which led the way for the extension of arcade’s life at the top. But it also fills in a gap: something, which has often been the case for V-Rally titles.

For the first time, a videogame is asking you to take part in a real career, season by season, as a driver in the World Rally Championship. You drive your car and battle to win events with other competitors, just like all rally games thus far. But the gaming structure is different. It is not stand-alone; it links seasons together into a full career. Which means you have to fight your way up the ladder from promising rookie driver to four-time World title holder, experiencing all the hitches – coupled to the usual emotion – along the way.

You’ll have to start somewhere, and in this very innovative game mode that forms the spine of V-Rally 3, you’ll have to start it from the very bottom. The first thing, of course, is to create an identity for starting the game with – choosing a face, a nationality and finally a name, assumed to be your own. The game grants you a license which can be used for starting your rally career, and it’s off you go to your office to look at the good old PC in the hope of signing a contract which will allow you to compete.

Here, a comprehensive menu allows you to see your career thus far, and your goals for the season, as well as a ‘Press book’ allowing you to look at the stage records you have acquired. Log onto your PC (a virtual one, of course) allows you to check your email. This feature is useful for a number of reasons: as well as providing a Eurosport news feed illustrating what’s happening in the championship where you’re currently competing, you’ll get to look at contract offers – yep, teams are already interested in you and they want your talent!

The first step of this is quite simply, to get something signed. The offers you get will be from low-key teams in the bottom level 1.6L championship, while your long-term goal will be to fight up the order in these twitchy front-wheel-drive cars (based on the real things competing in the Kit-Car rules) and win the 1.6L title. Then, the big boys get an eye-opener. Having spotted your talent, you’ll suddenly find yourself being asked by the likes of Mitsubishi and Subaru if you’d like to drive their Lancer Evolution and Impreza 2001 World Rally Cars in a grueling season in the 2.0L championship!

Every time you get a contract offer, though, at any time during your career, whether it be for a drive in Citroen’s go-kart-a-like Saxo Kit-Car or the championship-leading Peugeot 206WRC, you’ll have to prove your skills to your potential future employers, in their own car. This usually involves rocketing down a typical stage on any of the six countries in the game (including Germany, Finland, Sweden and England) and getting to the end as fast as possible with as little damage as possible. Having to keep the car in one piece for several fast kilometers, as well as set a time better than the target suggested, ensures just getting a contract signed feels like a tiring process. And it is typical of the entire game; if you fail, you have to try again, or look elsewhere. Beat the challenge and you can freely sign for the team, and see yourself sitting next to the car at a glitzy press conference pre-season.

Then it’s finally onto the racing. And although nobody said V-Rally 3 looked or sounded easy, it’s never easy starting up something and this is no exception. As soon as it starts, no question, this is simulation: the whole thing’s so twitchy that you’ll veer off relentlessly off the road, most likely into some trees, which you’ll see a lot of on your first rally in the 1.6L championship which just so happens to be Rally of Finland. The jumps don’t make the exacting handling any easier to master any time soon and for the opening season most of us are likely to be gaining experience of what it’s like to stupidly lose a wheel down a ditch on what looks like a laughably easy corner. But such is the nature of the game, those Eden people want you to suffer: fail to meet targets and you’ll be sacked, but thankfully there will always be other teams interested in your potential and thus you can carry on in your quest for glory.

The most diverse of rallies, swapping from the dusty and rocky plains of Kenya to abrasive French asphalt, provokes even more diverse emotions, ranging from shouting made-up swear words repeatedly falling down into the 7th ditch on the same stage, to the ecstasy of winning: and the first one always feels good, because chances are you came close about three or four times before yet blew it when you took the last Swedish bend over-optimistically. There are other notes to help, or compound your misery – retirements are possible in a rally game, which as far as I can remember, is a first. It means you’ve got that extra bit of pressure remaining to finish, and pick up those vital few points that could raise your profile.

One helpful reminder is that points are scored for every finisher of a rally bar the last person, and your abilities on tarmac, gravel and snow are specifically graded – A, B or C – as are other aspects of your driving, which include Consistency, Velocity (your sheer speed), and many others. A portfolio can be built up for each driver, and you can look at how individual teams are doing as well by looking at their statistics. Data such as Morale is measured when you’re talking teams, and you can substantially affect your own team’s record, even becoming a strong, or weak point, depending on your performances. No one team is ever dominant all the time; things change across history and this is another aspect V-Rally 3 rates well. The better a driver performs, the better position a team is in to give them the right equipment. The cars are actually more samey than they are radically different (they’re all 300bhp turbocharged 4WD machines after all), so if you’re just supremely talented you can often win rallies in Hyundais or SEATs, something which puts another complexion on proceedings.

Undoubtedly huge, the V-Rally Mode spans across 32 seasons, and there’s plenty of initiative as winning the 2.0L series more than once puts extra ‘levels’ of performance on your license, allowing you to drive quicker cars in the Quick Race mode of the game. Things only end once you’ve won the championship four times, and even then you can continue your career at the top until your time is up.

Sadly, that’s where there’s reason for criticism. V-Rally 3 is a very specialist game and it does have one big, staple problem: it can’t pull off the jack-of-all-trades forte anywhere near as well as Colin McRae Rally 2.0, which essentially speaking is an ageing game and is in a position to be immediately replaced before the year ends. There’s a lot of hardcore element about this title and it can extend a little too far for even the avid rally fan’s comfort. The handling is still very twitchy and a little too removed from other driving games for it’s own good: you can never return to V-Rally 3 having played another game beforehand, and immediately set decent times. It just won’t happen. It has to be argued; too, that we play games for their enjoyment value and while this game is accurate in every way and certainly has character, it can turn mundane quickly and rather sterile, not unlike some aspects of Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec.

To emphasize the point, there are few game modes besides the full-bloated V-Rally Mode. So if you don’t like the limits placed on you by taking up the career option, there’s precious little point in opening the game. While it’s older brother V-Rally 2 seemed like a complete directory of mini-games rolled within one another, it’s hard to say this is a title that can afford the same stance. There’s no arcade mode, as we stated earlier, which would give the game a bit more spark in the ‘fun’ stakes. Additional, surprising yet very pleasant features in previous games such as the Track Editor aren’t to be found, although there’s a saving grace in the shape of the mildly testing Challenge Mode. It’s still only a novelty though, and even the ability to create your own challenges will only be of serious interest short-term.

Still, you have to give it to Infogrames. This is a genuinely different rally game. The graphics do their job admirably well, even if they’re not full-on spectacular, with accurate modeling of virtually every car in both the WRC and JWRC categories (save for the Skoda Octavia and Suzuki Ignis). Most are in their correct liveries save for the likes of the Evolution VII, with dummy versions of the real thing, but they’re acceptable and accurate enough for most gamers.

The thing you admire this game for, though, is it’s grit. It took bravery for such a game mode like that which takes the centerpiece of V-Rally 3 to ever be created. And yes, it’s not faultless, but it’s a specialist game which will mostly appeal to hardcore fans of the rally series with the novelty value of it’s game structure. The game structure itself, still being in it’s immature stages as far as videogame driving goes, still has faults and could be improved on.

But that’s for V-Rally 4. This is nowhere near the peak of what could be achieved by the developers. It’s a great base to build on, and let’s face it, it’s the best rally title to appear on PS2 as of yet. Enjoy it while you can.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/09/02, Updated 08/09/02