Rally Cross

by Dan Elektro
January 01, 2000 00:00 AM PST

The realistic vehicle physics will no doubt still scare some drivers away, but gamers who like a good off-road ruckus will enjoy Rally Cross 2's enhancements. They're all shifts in the right direction.

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The original Rally Cross certainly took its lumps. Many racing fans were turned off by the cars' springy suspensions, which led to more bouncing around than actual driving. There's still a lot of bumpin' and jumpin' in the sequel, but the overall experience has been sufficiently enhanced--maybe enough to win back some of the critics.

My Name Is Mud
Rally Cross 2 isn't afraid to get dirty, offering eight tracks and ten off-road vehicles, ranging from sporty coupes to baja trucks. The courses and cars are unlocked through skillful driving in season mode; to earn them, you'll literally have to learn the tracks backwards and forwards, while keeping your eyes open for shortcuts and alternate paths--which your CPU opponents already know where to find!

Track to the Future
The track development in Rally Cross 2 really deserves special praise. You'll plow through construction zones, icy mountain passes, airport hangars, and more; and each path is littered with obstacles and tricky corners and features cool weather effects. The courses are challenging, realistic, intelligent, and reasonably attractive to look at, while dynamic replays will give you plenty of good views of the tracks' nuances.

When you've learned the secrets of all the existing courses, the track editor enables you to plan out your own--down to the track's last whoop-dee-do. Although this track editor is not as advanced as Moto Racer 2's, and you can't make courses equal to the ones that come with the game, RC2's editor is easy to use and lets you create instant, new challenges at will.

Tuned Up
Rally Cross 2 offers many more user options than its forebear, including tweakable steering and suspensions (which addresses the first game's main problem) along with a paint kit that allows you to slather the color scheme of your choice onto your car and save it to a memory card. The realistic vehicle physics will no doubt still scare some drivers away, but gamers who like a good off-road ruckus will enjoy Rally Cross 2's enhancements. They're all shifts in the right direction.