April 2, 2001 - Before I begin this review, I have a question to ask. For the little Rally Racing coverage we actually get in North America, how did we manage to get three top Rally Games to enjoy, including Rally Masters, Colin McRae Rally 2, and Mobil 1 Rally Championship. There must a market for these types of games, but then again, who wouldn't like driving around on the brink of destruction with mud flying through the air behind them?

For those not familiar with Rally racing, is involves cars racing through difficult terrain in time trials in an attempt to gain the fastest time. Sound boring? Well, it can be at times, but most of these tracks are so tough that there's really no need for opponents, as you will have plenty to deal with just trying to survive the course. Also, Rally Masters includes the ability to race against opponents head-to-head, and beat and bang those Rally cars in a way they were never designed to be raced.

Rally Masters, published by Infogrames Entertainment and developed by Digital Illusions features 30 officially licenced Rally drivers and an extrodinary 46 real rally courses. Installation is quck and easy, and was completed within three minutes on my Pentium III 500. The navigational menus are easy to use and navigate, but do not offer much in the way of graphical enhancements. Also, no mouse support is included, so everything must be done using the keyboard. This is not a big problem, but it can become annoying at times. Load times are excellent, with only a few seconds load time to go from the menus to the track, to green flag racing. The manual is thin, but provides a good bit of detail on setting up the game and driving the car.

The general layout of Rally Masters is pretty simple. Players can race in a championship season, which is a set of races with two lanes. After the first lap around the course, the player and opponent switch lanes and the first one back to the line on the second lap is the winner. Some other modes include single player mode where players can select a track and condition, whether it be a double lane track used in championship modes, or an open race course where you battle head-to-head against opponents. Also, Rally Masters includes a multiplayer gaming system which uses GameSpy to allow players to connect, find and join races.

The physics in Rally Masters are very well done. Cars have the ability to flip and roll in wrecks, but rolling is not overdone as in many titles. It takes a hard wreck to roll the car, and usually wrecks like this are devistating to the performance of the vehicle. Weight transfers are very realistic, and the car will often whip sideways in the corners forcing the driver to quickly react in order to save the car, or wreck trying. At high rates of speed, it is not uncommon to cause massive suspension damage should you drive over a large bump at a bad angle. Driving a Rally car is much different than driving a regular automobile as the weight transfers are much more noticeable. Players will also have to learn to keep the rear of the car in line with the front while driving around corners at high rates of speed, or inevitably you will find yourself having to try and recover from spin after spin. Overall, the physics in Rally Masters are excellent, and appears to us to be very similar to what we've seen real Rally drivers having do on the track.

The graphics in Rally Masters are impressive to say the least. Excellent lighting effects are just the beginning, as there are also many highly detailed terrains to race on and conditions to race in. If you are driving through the rain, often you will see a flicker of lightning lighten up the sky. When driving through different conditions such as mud, you will see dirt flying through the air from your spinning tires. If you should happen to drive through numerous puddles of mud or gravel you'll notice that the sediment you've kicked up will build up on the side of the car, slowly covering sponsership decals. Framerates in Rally Masters are excellent at all times, even on older video cards such as the Voodoo 3 2000. All of the car models are very detailed and, believe me, there are an extensive selection of vehicles included. Digital Illusions has gone above and beyond in this department, and it definitely shows in the final product.