Rallisport Challenge is the first rally style game on the Xbox and it’s a whopper of a game. Admittedly at first glance the game appears to be like any other rally game that’s out or will be out. But believe me, this game is no Colin McRae or V-Rally replica its pure driving fun from the instant you pick up and start power sliding round those corners.

Gameplay:
When you first load up Rallisport Challenge you have the main game available to you or you can dip in for some ‘Instant Action’, which only lets you play with a random track and car, which isn’t great but useful if you want a 2-minute drive just before you go out. The main menu offers a couple of options consisting of a career mode, single race, time trials and multiplayer mode. At first the game only allows you to drive on a few of the tracks and cars at the beginning of the game, even in some modes you cannot select tracks at all but Rallisport Challenge offers the ability of unlocking things as you progress. The game offers 4 types of driving overall: Rally, Hill Climb, Ice Racing and Rally Cross all requiring different skills to master each mode. They have all been well thought out, meaning that there is a range of items available through the different modes, from simple corners and long straights to harsh weather conditions and smarter rivals. The navigator in the game doesn’t seem to be on the ball some of the time as you are told what corner is next and it seems more like something else. At times the navigator can also announce corners far too early or late leaving you crashing off the course, smashing up your car making the game just that little bit frustrating at times.

The career mode has a quality to it, it’s not a long and career type as you’d expect, but offers what you’d expect from a career mode. Through the whole of career mode there are only 17 tournaments to enter all off which only consist of maybe 3 or 4 circuits on average. But there is a range of tracks throughout the career mode from all over the world: Africa, The Mediterranean, The Alpines and more. The single race and time trial modes offer the same set of tracks meaning there is hardly any difference between single race and time trial really. the multiplayer mode does the business, with 4 player split screen available making full use of the Xboxes 4 controller ports, it makes a brilliant experience for you and three friends to be racing each other in rally style all over the world.

With 26 Cars available including the Volkswagen Beetle, Subaru Impreza, Ford Focus and Audi Quattro, giving you quite a range to drive with all with their own different handling styles and it’s really noticeable as one car may have better turning than another and another may accelerate better, meaning you have to choose your car wisely. The controls in the game are very ‘pick up and play’ style as a beginner can get to grips easily yet it takes that bit longer to master. There are at least 70+ tracks in the game easily although this may seem like a lot, it isn’t realistically as other rally games have had far more tracks offering better range and more longetivity, one of the few flaws this game possesses.

Graphics:
The graphics in Rallisport Challenge are simply amazing and are amongst the top found on the Xbox today. Trees don’t even look the pixely at all close up, small pieces of rubble on the ground are viewable and birds can be seen flying around independently. The detail that has been used in this game is amazing, effects such as mist, dirt, mud and snow do look very lifelike, the cars are all accurately modelled with official logos and parts with the odd Xbox logo on them, damage is even viewable on the cars – smashed mirrors and dented panels are easy to see once inflicted. There isn’t even any slowdown in the frame rate at all, which is simply astounding considering the quality of the graphics.

Sound:
The sound in the game isn’t overly impressive, but it’s easily up to Xbox standards. With 10 tracks in the game to listen to at first the selection isn’t great and the tracks tend to sound vaguely similar at times, but that doesn’t matter too much as all the music is very suitable for rally driving and makes driving along and thrashing your car enjoyable. The ability to add your own soundtracks has been implemented here and is very useful; with only a small amount of tracks the game initially offers this is a necessity. Music from a user defined play list is played in game and tracks are randomly played from that list. Unfortunately there is no ability to change tracks in game which is disappointing to me as I’ve found myself being selective over the play list, which I shouldn’t really have to do.

Longevity:
Rallisport Challenge has a good challenge to offer under its belt. With various styles of rally available and multiplayer mode also available too, the game won’t be an easy job but compared to the likes of the Colin McRae and V-Rally series you can see that Rallisport Challenge falls short over the amount of tracks available. There aren’t a vast amount of cars either but there’s enough to last the game, overall the game will last the hardcore gamer a couple of weeks but the average gamer will take a few more weeks to get everything out of the game available.

Round Up:
Rallisport Challenge is the game for all the rally fans out there. It offers a good range of modes and options along with well-suited cars and tracks. The graphics will simply blow you away by how realistic they are. But if there was something that had to tweak this game to perfection it would have to be that there needs to be a larger quantity of the finer things that Rallisport Challenge offers. This is a superb game and considering this is Digital Illusions first game I’m extremely impressed, worth buying and it’s always there if Project Gotham isn’t your thing.