Rallisport Challenge 2

It's not going to win any awards as a simulation. But if you are looking for a gorgeous, fast, smooth and rewarding arcade racing game, then look no further than Rallisport Challenge 2.

Rallisport Challenge was one of the launch games for Xbox in the UK and many people were impressed by its graphics and accessible gameplay. Yet I never really like the game, I felt the handling was too slippy and being something of a fan of the sport of rallying, believed the game fell well short. DICE has had another crack at the genre though and in Rallisport Challenge 2, we have a top-notch arcade racing game with excellent Xbox Live support.

Fans of proper rallying are perhaps going to turn their nose up at Rallisport Challenge 2. Yet Xbox owners don't exactly have much choice as far as rallying goes, there's the arcade-handling Colin McRae Rally from Code-"we'll fix it this year, honest"-masters or the wait until autumn for Richard Burns Rally. Lucky old PS2 owners have the excellent WRC franchise to themselves.

The core of RSC2 is the career mode, which at first is split into three separate sections. The Amateur, Pro and Champion Career modes offer a rising level of challenge with success in the latter opening up the even tougher Super Rally. Amateur offers 21 events, Pro 26, Champion 48 and Super Rally 16. Each of these events is made up of several races, usually between two and four. The layout of the progression chart allows the user to have a choice in which events to take part in to continue, it's a good system that lets the player go on and win the championship. The only problem with this set-up is that the game is very easy, even the Champion mode isn't going to cause any real difficulties for regular race game fans. Even with that old annoying problem of the same AI drivers always coming second, it really doesn't take a whole lot to beat the Champion career mode.

The racing events come in several forms. The most popular event is a regular Rally, here the player races alone from point to point guided by a co-driver. The overall time for several stages is added together to find the winner compared to several AI drivers. The Hill Climb events are similar point-to-point races but without the aid of a co-driver. Rallycross and Ice Racing both follow a similar format; the player drives a qualifying lap and is then placed in a race with 3 AI cars that posted similar qualifying times. Obviously, a player would need to qualify in the top four to race the best drivers with a chance of earning full marks for the event. Crossover is similar in that there is a qualifying event, but the final is held between two cars over a crossover style super special rally stage.

There's quite a variety in stages and weather with total number of stages just a few short of one hundred. They are not exactly all unique stages, the rally and hill climb stages are set in particular areas with sections being re-used in different stages. There is also the traditional disappointment of the weather and time of day being fixed so it's not possible to race the longest British rally stage in daytime and good weather.

The career modes are complemented by the ability to race any of the unlocked modes as a single event and/or a time trial. Time trial ghost cars can be saved to the hard disk, as can any of the superb replays. A replay theatre lets the player watch their moments of glory again from cameras of their choice and a helpful list of unlocks shows what the player has unlocked and what needs to be done to release each feature.

The handling model of the cars is pretty good for an arcade game. Gone is the over slippy handling of the original game and there's much more grip available. Sometimes this is taken too far, wet weather tires on wet tarmac seem to have more grip than dry tires in dry weather and make it feel like a ride on rails. Yet on the whole, the car handling is fun and easy to get to grips with, and there are no nasty surprises in the physics model. There's an impressive amount of weight to the feel of the cars but at times, it does feel like the joystick is moving the car directly rather than moving the front wheels.