Wave Rally

Eidos aims to win the Best Water competition with Wave Rally, the company?s personal PS2 response to Nintendo?s Wave Race.

Wave Rally takes the exact Wave Race formula (race around tracks while slaloming around red and yellow buoys) and peps it up with a Kawasaki endorsement and special attention to water graphics. It?s a formula that has proven successful in the past, so Opus and Eidos seem to have decided not to fix what ain?t broken.

What?s different in Wave Rally are the well-designed tracks and the introduction of the sit-down runabout class, which offers a much different feel from the stand-up jet skis. The problem is that the control isn?t quite good enough for either class of watercraft: The vehicles turn way too wide, and the only way to make up for that is a perfect racing line. Hitting the walls at any speed crashes your boat, so it?s vital that you master the stiff controls. The water itself also doesn?t quite react like it seems it should, and you?ll spend a lot of time bursting through the waves rather than using them to your advantage.

While Wave Rally?s sound (especially the annoying announcer) needs work, its graphics are topnotch. Glossy, realistic water and well-animated racers compliment the skillfully designed tracks. The only problem is that the graphics are a bit jaggy, but that?s as much a PS2 limitation as anything.

Wave Rally is essentially Wave Race for the PS2. Splashdown did water physics better, but Wave Rally definitely holds its own once you get used to the controls. The excellent tracks alone are worth a look.

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