SPECIAL BARGAIN PRICE
BRILLIANT GAME
Original Game + Booklet
Don't be fooled by its name. V-Rally 3 is actually the fifth entry in this driving game series, which at one point fell under both the Test Drive and Need for Speed umbrellas and has spawned games for the PlayStation, Dreamcast, PC, and Nintendo 64 in its five-year existence. Previous V-Rally games included both hard-core simulators and more arcadelike driving games that had greater appeal for casual players. This latest game for the PlayStation 2 certainly contains more qualities of the former group than the latter, and it could have been a great driving sim were it not marred by its poor control.
But the most notable aspect of V-Rally 3 isn't what it shares with other rally games, it's what it does differently. Specifically, it's the game's impressive career mode. You'll start out the game by creating an inexperienced driver who will receive offers to test-drive a number of 1.6-liter FWD rally cars from certain racing teams. If you impress these teams with your race times at these test-drive events, you'll be offered a one-year contract that'll get you into the 1.6-liter FWD rally championships. These championships are split up into multiple seasons, with each season spanning four different rally events, and with each rally event consisting of five individual races. The 20 teams in V-Rally 3 are ranked in staff morale, car reliability, season performance, and budget. Obviously, you'll attract offers only from teams with low-ranking characteristics at first, but if you perform well in any given season, your team's ranking will increase accordingly. Changes to your team's rank will have a noticeable effect in the game, too. A higher budget, for example, means that you'll have access to a wider variety of tires and tuning options, while a higher staff morale means that crucial repairs can be performed more quickly at the service areas, where you're given only 30 minutes to fix any damage your car has sustained.
