Rally Championship Xtreme

The Good
Fast pace, arcade style car behavior. Plenty of cars and various tracks to get your wheels on. Nice graphics that add up to the game. Not as easy at it seems at first, it gradually builds up and gets monstrous at the end with corners and rocks waiting for your little mistake to devour your car. You really need a lot of practice and mastership to even win the first race. Here we have the A5 to A8 classes as they were featured in Rally championship too. Detailed car models and tracks.

The Bad
So this one is supposed to be the sequel to the king of all rally simulators eh?

Well, where has all that realism gone then?? For most of the time I though I was driving some Sega Rally clone, or a McRae rally bad copy... Can anybody explain me why the best rally games do not get any better as technology proceeds?? Where you would expect another rally simulation masterpiece, comes this "let's do it quick and release it to scoop all the money" thing...

The sound is terrible to awful, the racing roars of the revving monsters gave it's place to a constant buzz (that you can barely hear it) and on top of that you have some tecno tunes to accompany your fury on the S.S. (=Special Stage). Oh! That's alright then! maybe you guys wanna put some dingles and wingles inside the cockpit next time and turn this series into Wacky Racers Championship!!!

So since the game has a true arcade orientation why is it so difficult to master?

Another thing that I didn't like in this game was the lack of screenshot captures during the replays. At least Rally Championship is an old game, but you could capture yourself drifting on a hairpin and show it to your mom afterwards! "Look what I'm doing with dad's car mom! - iiiiiiiiieeeeeeekk!"

The Bottom Line
Simply it left me disappointed due to the heavy title that carries behind it. Don't get me wrong, it's a good arcade racing game and a lot of people will enjoy this. Alas! I'm having some serious fun out of it myself! It's that engine buzz which I cannot stand. It seems that Actualize decided that another true rally simulation wouldn't do any good, so the "sequel" is the arcade version of RC.