V-Rally Edition '99 Review

All 11 Licensed Rally Cars
Over 40 Tracks
Real Weather Effects
The Toyota Celica (My Fave)

Poor Car Physics
Easy AI
Hard to See Roads Due to Excessive Draw-In

This game comes down to quantity over quality. You have 11 licensed rally vehicles and 4 special bonus cars that have to be unlocked. You can race in 8 different locales throughout the world and there are over 40 tracks in total. Pretty good deal, so far. Throw in the touchy control and the fact that the tracks are difficult to make out due to the pop in and you have a quandary. Reminds me of a joke. A woman comments to her husband, "The food in this restaurant is terrible." The husband replies, "That's true but at least they have big portions." On one hand I dig everything that V-Rally Edition '99 has to offer, but on the other, if it's not much fun to play, then you really have nothing.

I consider myself to be a videogame racing buff. I play a lot of them and I think I know my way around a good driving game. V-Rally frustrated me for a few reasons. It took me quite awhile to get used to the control. I felt that I was constantly out of control, even when I wasn't. In this game, when you spin out, you really spin out. You'll end up facing the opposite direction, which means it takes time to get your bearings and turn around. Once I got used to this, I then found that I couldn't make out the tracks because of the alarming amount of draw-in. All of a sudden a sharp turn appears where there was only a blur a millisecond ago. It reminded me of the time Homer Simpson asked if the Itchy and Scratchy cartoon would air live. This game feels like it's being drawn while you play it and that's only half of it. Let me ask you; have you ever been driving down a road in South America and by accident nipped a red plant that sent your car careening end over end killing all of your passengers? If that has happened you may not want to play V-Rally because it's just too darn realistic, and we wouldn't want you to relive the horror of that terrible sunny afternoon. Here's the clincher though: No matter how much you drive like a terrified Diff'rent Strokes actor running from the fuzz, you'll probably still win because the AI drives as bad as you do. That's right, it is the final insult. Now you can't even add "challenge" to the list of reasons why you should play this game.

Helping you navigate this mess is your co-pilot who will warn you of the upcoming turns. The trouble is, due to the draw-in half the time you'll think he's telling you to go the wrong way, because you'd swear the track is going left and then...it turns right! He can be turned off, but it's kind of nice listening to "medium left", "hard right" for hours on end. I have my wife say that now while we are driving, just to drive me further insane. It's working, especially since she adopted the phony British accent.

V-Rally contains the usual modes such as Single Race, Championship and Trial, and at this point in the review the only person you could convince me to describe these modes to would be a bushman from the deepest regions of the Congo who had never seen civilization before. I bet even he'd stop me and say, "Yeah, yeah, I get it already, who doesn't know what Single Race or Championship mode is?"

Finally, the only thing that will entice you is the sheer amount of tracks and the real world cars. Other than that, there isn't much here for the average gamer. If you are a rally fanatic then this game might be worth investing some time in, but I think you'd agree with me in the end. If this game had some semblance of control (even the adjustments don't help much) and much less draw-in, it would be a keeper. As it is, it should be re-named V-Rally: Fish-Tailing Edition '99. Now go on home kids. Oh but one last thing: Beware of those red plants. You've been warned.

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