Top Gear Rally (Game Boy Advance) - Review by Dennis

Introduction

Top Gear Rally is, as the name suggests, a racing game. Not an ordinary racing game, but a 3D modelled racing game through dirt and cities.

This game is best compared to Atari's VRally 3. VRally 3 was also a 3D modelled racing game, but Top Gear Rally is going a little step further. On first sight, Top Gear Rally looks better than VRally 3 did. The cars look smoother the tracks are a bit sharper drawn and the backgrounds look like they were taken from a photo.

Just like the cars are rendered in 3D, the tracks are also in 3D so be prepared to see some hills. Top Gear Rally also has something I didn't see in a previous racing game before (on GBA): whenever there's a 180' turn, you will still see your opponents cars riding on the other side of the road. Normally, you couldn't see anything else but the piece of road you were on (and maybe a piece of the curve to come), but Top Gear Rally renders the track from quite a distance.

Driving the cars has always been a problem for me in previous games. The cars are either to sensitive so I end up on the side of the road, or they don't respond at all. In this game however, even I could handle the car! Taking a curves goes quite smooth, so I didn't even face any problems there either.

Another nice addition compared to VRally 3, is that Top Gear Rally added several cars driving the same track during your run. And the nice part is, those cars were rendered in 3D aswell. This may sound like I was bribed by Tantalus, but Top Gear Rally is an eye-catcher!

Like in every rally game, you (as the driver) need to know what's coming. Is there a sharp curve coming? A hill maybe? Previous games tried solving this problem by giving screen hints (VRally 3 did), or by some cracky voice-like sound (Colin McRae 2.0). Top Gear Rally features a realistic voice! You'll actually hear a guy shouting 'sharp turn left!' (or 'right', whichever is the most appropriate).

This game is great. I didn't think things could get better from VRally 3, but Top Gear Rally sure beats all other rally-games easily. Great graphics, almost perfect speech, easy to control... almost perfect.

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