Giveaway of the Day - Race Cars: the Extreme Rally

Sorry for the delay in moderating for some reason I wasn’t able to gain access to the admin console until now nearly 4 hours after the game giveaway started.

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Race Cars: the Extreme Rally was originally given away back in March 2007 when it received 79% of 282 positive votes. There were 77 comments made about the game; then it was given away again in January 2008 where it received a positive 61% of 422 votes with 87 comments. You can see all previous comments made via the following links:

March 2007:

http://game.giveawayoftheday.com/race-cars-the-extreme-rally/#comments

Jan 2008:

http://game.giveawayoftheday.com/the-extreme-rally/#comments (Check out game seekers comment #21 and #54, and my comment #32)

Installation

The game downloads to a 22.2Mb zip file that unpacks to a dual activation and set up file, plus a read me stating the terms and conditions. By default the game installs to C:\Program Files (x86)\Playrix Entertainment\Race Cars – The Extreme Rally (Vista and Win 7) or C:\Program Files\Playrix Entertainment\Race Cars – The Extreme Rally (XP) and the installed game is 45.2Mb. You can select another installation path during the installation wizard if you wish.

Shortcuts are installed to both the Desktop and Start Menu via All Programs/Playrix Entertainment. You’ll also find an uninstaller in the All Programs folder.

I couldn’t get this to work on either of my Win 7 installations (even in compatibility mode) but it does work on Win XP Pro 32 bit. I’ve not got around to testing it on Vista yet, but I suspect that it won’t work; hopefully someone will disprove my theory.

Introduction:

Drive the super-fast race cars and see if you could have been or perhaps still can become the world’s best racer. This fabulous 3D game will put you to a test of speed and skill. With 12 fastest race cars to choose from, a number of bonuses to help you win and various difficulty levels to help you improve, participate in over 50 tournaments and win the grand prix. Compete on a variety of race tracks in different weather conditions and climates and prove that you are really fast and furious!

Reference http://download.cnet.com/Race-Cars-the-Extreme-Rally/3000-2099_4-75323292.html accessed 17th april 2011

The Game:

Race Cars: The Extreme Rally is a top down third person racing game with a retro feel to it. To play the game you use a limited number of keyboard keys. These are the arrow keys for acceleration, braking and reverse as well as steering plus a reset key to take you back onto the road if you crash, the Esc key to restart the game, just in case you are hopelessly out classed and a camera key (C) which changes the camera position three times. You can also use the space bar to brake or reverse as well as the down arrow key.

There are around 50 tournaments spread over 15 different races including countryside1 & 2, Wild West 1 & 2, Greece, Texas, a military base, an Aztec site, a UFO crash site and a few others, most of which you have to unlock. Initially you only have two cars to choose from, but as you progress through the game you’ll unlock another 10 cars. Each car has slightly different attributes such as speed, acceleration, handling and weight. Of the two cars you get at the beginning, the Beemer is probably the best choice because it has better handling properties than the Mars although the Mars has better speed and acceleration. That said, these differences are very hard to spot when you are actually racing.
You can change the screen resolution via the options menu, though these are limited to 640 x 480 x 16 to 1024 x 768 x32 as well as graphic detail and brightness. There are also sound and music sliders to change the in game volume

You can choose from a quick race or tournament. The latter has two difficulty settings Normal and Extreme, though I couldn’t see much difference between either apart from the cars seemed to set off a little faster. After some practice I was able to win all races with relative ease and my 10 daughter with no practice at all won her first race. If you choose quick race you’ll find three of the 15 tracks open, (Countryside 1, Wild West 1 and Greece), the rest you have to win races to unlock, though once you’ve unlocked them via the tournament mode you can always access them via the quick race mode. Apart from being able to play races in any order there’s little difference between the modes. You can save your progress but if you want to change difficulty you have to start from the beginning. It’s possible to set up multiple profiles, so rather than lose progress it’s better to create a new profile. .

I found the keyboard controls a little sensitive and needed to practice quite a lot just to get around most corners when I first played this game four years ago. I was constantly going off the road and ending up last. Once in that position it was very hard to get ahead especially as power ups were being picked up by those ahead of you. To pick up a power up you have to drive over them. They include an acceleration bonus (Yellow diamond with letter A), a red diamond with letter ‘T’ which slows down your car as well as a ghost car (White box with letter G and stylized image of ghost) and finally a slow motion bonus that slows down all of your opponents (Green diamond with the letter S). Being in last position is disadvantageous because you end up missing out on the good bonuses, though they do re-spawn, but not immediately. To unlock new races and cars you need to win races.

Once you’ve mastered the cornering, the game is okay. You can change the camera view via the C key or reset if you come off the road by pressing R, but this does not restart the game it just places you back on the road. To restart a race press the Esc key and choose Restart Race. There is a small map of the circuit to the bottom left of the play area, this can be of use in preparing yourself for any hairpin bends etc.

Images:

Will post some later today.

Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dHgBuzLAiE

Conclusion:

After playing some of the best racing games around (all the Need for Speed games, most of the Colin McRae Rally games including the two Dirt games, Richard Burns Rally, Fuel, Race 07, Grid, Toca Race Driver, F1: 2010, Moto GP, Flatout II and Ultimate Carnage as well as loads of open world car based games such as Test Drive Unlimited I & II, Grand Theft Auto IV, III, Vice City, San Andreas, Saints Row II, Wheelman, Crash Time I & II , Burnout Paradise and even my old favourites Motocross Mania Motocross Madness II, Midtown Madness I & II plus loads more too numerous to mention here, I could never get into this game. It was uncomfortable to control with only keyboard controls to play the game with (that is no gamepad or wheel inputs) though the AI wasn’t that hard to beat once you’ve mastered cornering. I spent many hours when this was first given away trying to enjoy the game, which initially I did because I’d never bothered with previous incarnations of this type of racer, much preferring the first person style racer.

Unfortunately I’m too biased to give a fair deal or to score this relatively old game because of the massive collection of racing/vehicle based games that I already own. I’m sure it’s worth more than I’d give it. The graphics are okay, the music becomes very annoying, but thankfully that can be turned off or even changed, but make sure you convert any music you want to use to .ogg files and rename them to the four titles in the music folder (C:\Program files (x86)\Playrix Entertainment\Race Cars – The Extreme Rally\Sound\Music).

I can only suggest you download the game and give it a try yourself. It’s not a large download, so for those on capped bandwidth, you’re not going to lose a significant amount of your allowance and to those still on dial up, it should only take around 6 minutes to download .

If you liked Micro cars (from around 10 + years ago), you’ll probably like this one. There’s a bunch of this type of games available from MyPlayCity and Gametop which I’ve linked to below. There’s also an emulator that enables you to use a gamepad instead of the keyboard, but for the life of me I can’t remember the name of the program at the moment. Hopefully someone with a better memory than me will post a download link for the program.

Other Information/games:

You’ll find a totally free copy of this game, which they call Real Cars over on the Gametop site that I reference in my previous comment, though I didn’t mention this game then.

http://www.gametop.com/download-free-games/racing/

It’s always useful to know where to get the game free just in case you lose today’s giveaway to a full format or a fresh installation of windows. There are several car racing games available free from that site.

Another site to visit would be MyPlayCity where you’ll find nearly 40 racing games from top down to 3D, Cars and Trucks to drag racing and motorcycles. Check them out via the following link:

http://www.myplaycity.com/free_racing_games/

Finally you’ll find loads of free racing/vehicle related games in the giveaway forums via the wheeled games thread and the free games synopsis.

Free Games Synopsis (around free 2000 games available):

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/4534

Wheeled Games thread:

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/2574#post-17105

For free I highly recommend Trackmania Nations, Death Rally and an online racing game called Darkwind. (Trackmania Nations is also online, but you can play a single player game. However, if you are a real racing aficionado, I can only suggest some of the latest commercial racing games such as Need for Speed: Shift 1 & 2 and the updated Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, though if you want a rally type game you can’t beat the Colin McRae Rally games (including Dirt and Dirt 2), Richard Burns Rally or for loads of ‘smashing’ fun try out the Flatout series of games (for cost I recommend Flatout 2 rather than Ultimate Carnage because they are basically the same game except Ultimate Carnage has had a face lift so you get a better looking game plus you race against 11 instead of 7 other cars’ apart from that all the races are the same). Finally if you fancy an open world racing game why not try Fuel ; which was released nearly 2 years ago. It covers many of America’s beauty spots such as the Grand Canyon via thousands of miles of roads and tracks, or if you’re feeling dangerous explore on freeride There’s over 14 000 sq Km that you can explore; with gorgeous graphics, a day and night cycle plus weather systems that include hurricanes, this is a great game. (Check out the video below)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P85HCuPc5fg

I dont know what to say about this game. It is a piece of ****. Where should i start hmmmm. The *****y ai: which only follows some waypoints they wont try to go around you they will just hit you in the back. The graphics are ****: you can actually see the pixels on the road. Stupid level design: obvious shortcuts in level but you can’t use them game resets your car.And little obstacles that isnt possible to notice while driving. The game is too easy even on extreme diff. without using powerups. The sounds are ****. There is no gear shifting sound like your using an electric car that has no gears. Even todays mobile phones have better games for free. I cant believe that some1 would actually spend a penny on this ****. ps. Dont mind my bad language.

………………………Moderator Comment……………………..

This is a family site so I would ask that you don’t use unecessary bad language. (I’ve starred out all of your bad language) Thank you for your feedback though. You have to remember this game is several years old, so graphics won’t be as good as we are used to today. I booted up a 7 year old game the other day (Battlefield Vietnam) and was shocked to see how pixillated it was, yet when I used to play it regularily back before BF2 was relased in 2005 I used to think the graphics were amazing. Such things are relative. You have to remember there has been a revolution in graphics over the past several years. Just check out the latest video for Battlefield 3. It looks amazing (far better than any Call of Duty graphic that many rave about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wi2tae2PmmU