International Rally Championship

The Good
Overall this game is an excellent rally simulation. You get 16 excellent tracks as well as the ability to create your own using an easy to use track editor. The graphics in the game are also outstanding and the cars used look identical to their real life counterparts. You can also set up the car (suspension height, tyres, etc) using an easy to use interface. The various modes in the game also offer a lot of different ways to race on the tracks. The soundtrack on the game is also very good.

The Bad
There are just a couple of things I didn't like about this game. If you could have the dashboard view as in Europress's previous rally game the game would have been even more realistic. I also think the replay feature could have been easier to use as it is hard to find parts of the replay and edit them. Because of this little problem I rarely use the replay feature.

The Bottom Line
International Rally Championship is an excellent rally simulation offering many different options to make playing the game very enjoyable. It is a very good follow up to Rally Championship.

The Good
The track editor, lots of stages, some authentic cars

The Bad
Lousy resolution (it LOOKS like 320x200, I swear!), stupid graphics bugs (turn on the rear view mirror and half of your screen goes black diagonally!) No handbrakes so you can't powerslide! You can't combine joystick and keyboard commands! There are only two collisions: vertical flip, and horizontal spin. All cars handle about the same, in both simulation and arcade modes.

The Bottom Line
International Rally Championship is a US release by Interplay/THQ of an OLD rally game originally published by Europress in Europe. The game is several years old and it shows. Graphics quality is lousy, even with D3D acceleration. None of the stages are authentic. The cars may be but they sure don't feel authentic either. Graphical bugs abound. Control scheme s***s bigtime as you can't use both keyboard and joystick at the same time. And who ever heard of a rally sim in which you can't powerslide with handbrakes? The "rally" design (where you pick the stages and the sequence) and "course design" editors are cute but you're just recombining existing parts. Alternate game modes are next to useless, much less fun. Even at $14.95 this is a waste of money. Save your money and get Mobil 1 Rally Championship (i.e. Rally Championship 2000) instead. That's Magnetic Field's next product and is MUCH better than this half-hearted effort.