To see this review fully formatted and with screenshots, click here: http://igamer-game-reviews.blogspot.com/2010/01/rally-master-pro-3d.html
Rally Master Pro 3D is, by iPhone standards, a gorgeous game. Unfortunately the engine that renders the lush visuals is not really up to the task, so let me state this plainly and up-front: if you own an iPhone 3G or lower then do not buy this game, as it just doesn't run at a playable frame rate on those devices. If you own a 3GS or better, read on.
Rally Master Pro 3D (RMP from now on) is a true rally game, as opposed to a racing game with a rally theme (such as Sega Rally), which means that in RMP you're racing against the clock on roads and dirt tracks, rather than against other cars on a circuit.
There are three events in the game which are basically easy, medium, and hard difficulty. Each event gives you a different car to drive (slow, medium, and fast, respectively) and is comprised of nine unique stages in which you drive from point A to point B as fast as possible. The objective is to finish the event in a lower overall time than your unseen competitors.
RMP features relatively realistic handling, with different road surfaces and weather conditions offering varying amounts of grip. There's also a cool-looking damage model that allows the car to deform in real time whenever you crash into stuff, and the damage isn't just cosmetic; the performance of your car will degrade as your damage meter goes up, and damage is carried over from one stage to the next, so you're not likely to win if you take corners by bouncing your car off of walls. Fortunately you get to make repairs once every two stages, but you can only ever repair some of the damage, so the incentive to keep your car in shape is ever present.
Repairing the car between stages can be done in one of two ways: you can let your mechanics do it by just pressing a button, or you can do it yourself by playing a mini-game. If you play the mini-game then you can repair more damage than your mechanics would, and as an added bonus you get to spend thirty seconds or so being extraordinarily bored.
To help you get around the courses you have a co-driver. He sits next to you in the car, map in hand, and tells you before each corner what to expect by saying things like "hard left" and "hairpin right" much like they do in real life. This information is also shown using icons that appear in the top-centre of the screen, which is not really like real life at all but it's a good feature. Not that this game is really anything like real life, you understand. I said the handling is relatively realistic, and it is, but this is no simulation. And that's a good thing. I'm a fan of realistic driving games on the PC, but I wouldn't want to try to play one on my iPhone. The thing about RMP is that it is realistic in spirit. You get the feeling that the developers may actually have at least a passing interest in real life rally driving.
It's a shame that this interest wasn't enough to inspire them to make a good game, for RMP is actually a rather poor game and one that you should probably not buy. Even if you're a graphics whore like me, and your device meets the steep hardware requirements, you should probably not buy this game. Let me explain why.
I'll start with the smaller problems, like the controls. You can use the accelerometer to steer, or steer using buttons, but seeing as the accelerometer works fine I didn't even try the latter option. You can also enable horizon tilt (hurrah) and choose between a chase camera or an in-car camera. Except it's not really an in-car camera, it's an over-the-bonnet camera, and the bonnet inexplicably disappears if you have horizon tilt enabled. This isn't a major problem, but it would have been nice to have a proper driver seat view like you get in other games.
Acceleration and braking are handled using on-screen buttons. You can choose to have both buttons displayed, or use auto-accelerate in which case only the brake button is displayed. This would be fine except that the buttons are tiny and are positioned in the bottom corner of the screen, and if you have them both shown (which would normally be my preferred option) then they're positioned about two pixels apart from each other. A setup like Real Racing, in which the whole left side of the screen is a brake and the whole right side is an accelerator, would have been a lot better. As it is, it can be easy to press the wrong button (or no button at all) in RMP.
Oh, and then there are the force fields...
At all times in RMP you have a road of some description in front of you, which is just wide enough for the car, and outside of that you have some dirt or some grass or whatever. Veer off the road and on to the verges and your car will slow down so rapidly that you'll think you're accidentally pressing the brake button again, except you're not. Welcome to RMP's invisible force fields.
The problem here is twofold. You can see a difference between the surface of the road (which, let's say, looks like dry dirt) and the verges on the side of the road (which look like slightly wet dirt) but the graphics show this visible line positioned way outside of where the actual line is between the road and the verge. Furthermore, the difference between the two surfaces just isn't enough to justify the extraordinary reduction in speed. It's all completely counter-intuitive. You'll wonder why the hell you're slowing down so much because (a) you're nowhere near the edge of the road and (b) even if you were on the edge of the road you wouldn't be slowing down so dramatically just because of some wet dirt. And as if that wasn't bad enough, driving on the wet dirt damages your car! It's just a little bit of damage, but, well, it's just some wet dirt! And this is supposed to be a rally game?
But even that is not the worst part of the game. It's a terrible bit of design, but in truth you do quickly learn exactly how far outside the centre of the road the invisible force fields are and how to drive in such as way as to avoid sliding into them. I'd rather they were not there, but I could just about tolerate them if the game was fun...
...but it isn't. The real problem with RMP is that it just isn't any fun. Each stage is really short and mostly dull. The entire first event consists of a lot of long straights and a handful of simple corners, and has to be driven in a car that moves slower than your grandmother. I pushed through it thinking that the intermediate level would be better and it is a little bit better, but only a little bit. You get a faster car and the stages are a tiny bit more challenging, but it's still pretty basic stuff and remembering to avoid the invisible force fields is much more key to success than good cornering. I won both of the first two events within an hour of buying the game, which meant I was two thirds of the way through the game and I hadn't had any fun yet. Well, okay, I admit that one or two sections of the intermediate event did briefly put a smile on my face, but such moments were too few and far between.
The third event had me driving a fast car on snowy/icy roads, but I knew I was only twenty minutes away from completing the game, and I just wasn't having any real fun, so I didn't even finish it.
The tracks in the game are too few, too short, too easy, and too boring, and as a result the game just isn't much fun to drive. It's not completely terrible, and I suppose some people might have a little bit of fun with it, but even they will likely scoff at it's short length, especially given the relatively steep price of the game. The App Store is full of driving games, and many of them are unquestionably superior to this one, so why buy bronze when you can buy gold at the same price?
Rally Master Pro 3D is, by iPhone standards, a gorgeous game. Unfortunately the engine that renders the lush visuals is not really up to the task, so let me state this plainly and up-front: if you own an iPhone 3G or lower then do not buy this game, as it just doesn't run at a playable frame rate on those devices. If you own a 3GS or better, read on.
Rally Master Pro 3D (RMP from now on) is a true rally game, as opposed to a racing game with a rally theme (such as Sega Rally), which means that in RMP you're racing against the clock on roads and dirt tracks, rather than against other cars on a circuit.
There are three events in the game which are basically easy, medium, and hard difficulty. Each event gives you a different car to drive (slow, medium, and fast, respectively) and is comprised of nine unique stages in which you drive from point A to point B as fast as possible. The objective is to finish the event in a lower overall time than your unseen competitors.
RMP features relatively realistic handling, with different road surfaces and weather conditions offering varying amounts of grip. There's also a cool-looking damage model that allows the car to deform in real time whenever you crash into stuff, and the damage isn't just cosmetic; the performance of your car will degrade as your damage meter goes up, and damage is carried over from one stage to the next, so you're not likely to win if you take corners by bouncing your car off of walls. Fortunately you get to make repairs once every two stages, but you can only ever repair some of the damage, so the incentive to keep your car in shape is ever present.
Repairing the car between stages can be done in one of two ways: you can let your mechanics do it by just pressing a button, or you can do it yourself by playing a mini-game. If you play the mini-game then you can repair more damage than your mechanics would, and as an added bonus you get to spend thirty seconds or so being extraordinarily bored.
To help you get around the courses you have a co-driver. He sits next to you in the car, map in hand, and tells you before each corner what to expect by saying things like "hard left" and "hairpin right" much like they do in real life. This information is also shown using icons that appear in the top-centre of the screen, which is not really like real life at all but it's a good feature. Not that this game is really anything like real life, you understand. I said the handling is relatively realistic, and it is, but this is no simulation. And that's a good thing. I'm a fan of realistic driving games on the PC, but I wouldn't want to try to play one on my iPhone. The thing about RMP is that it is realistic in spirit. You get the feeling that the developers may actually have at least a passing interest in real life rally driving.
It's a shame that this interest wasn't enough to inspire them to make a good game, for RMP is actually a rather poor game and one that you should probably not buy. Even if you're a graphics whore like me, and your device meets the steep hardware requirements, you should probably not buy this game. Let me explain why.
I'll start with the smaller problems, like the controls. You can use the accelerometer to steer, or steer using buttons, but seeing as the accelerometer works fine I didn't even try the latter option. You can also enable horizon tilt (hurrah) and choose between a chase camera or an in-car camera. Except it's not really an in-car camera, it's an over-the-bonnet camera, and the bonnet inexplicably disappears if you have horizon tilt enabled. This isn't a major problem, but it would have been nice to have a proper driver seat view like you get in other games.
Acceleration and braking are handled using on-screen buttons. You can choose to have both buttons displayed, or use auto-accelerate in which case only the brake button is displayed. This would be fine except that the buttons are tiny and are positioned in the bottom corner of the screen, and if you have them both shown (which would normally be my preferred option) then they're positioned about two pixels apart from each other. A setup like Real Racing, in which the whole left side of the screen is a brake and the whole right side is an accelerator, would have been a lot better. As it is, it can be easy to press the wrong button (or no button at all) in RMP.
Oh, and then there are the force fields...
At all times in RMP you have a road of some description in front of you, which is just wide enough for the car, and outside of that you have some dirt or some grass or whatever. Veer off the road and on to the verges and your car will slow down so rapidly that you'll think you're accidentally pressing the brake button again, except you're not. Welcome to RMP's invisible force fields.
The problem here is twofold. You can see a difference between the surface of the road (which, let's say, looks like dry dirt) and the verges on the side of the road (which look like slightly wet dirt) but the graphics show this visible line positioned way outside of where the actual line is between the road and the verge. Furthermore, the difference between the two surfaces just isn't enough to justify the extraordinary reduction in speed. It's all completely counter-intuitive. You'll wonder why the hell you're slowing down so much because (a) you're nowhere near the edge of the road and (b) even if you were on the edge of the road you wouldn't be slowing down so dramatically just because of some wet dirt. And as if that wasn't bad enough, driving on the wet dirt damages your car! It's just a little bit of damage, but, well, it's just some wet dirt! And this is supposed to be a rally game?
But even that is not the worst part of the game. It's a terrible bit of design, but in truth you do quickly learn exactly how far outside the centre of the road the invisible force fields are and how to drive in such as way as to avoid sliding into them. I'd rather they were not there, but I could just about tolerate them if the game was fun...
...but it isn't. The real problem with RMP is that it just isn't any fun. Each stage is really short and mostly dull. The entire first event consists of a lot of long straights and a handful of simple corners, and has to be driven in a car that moves slower than your grandmother. I pushed through it thinking that the intermediate level would be better and it is a little bit better, but only a little bit. You get a faster car and the stages are a tiny bit more challenging, but it's still pretty basic stuff and remembering to avoid the invisible force fields is much more key to success than good cornering. I won both of the first two events within an hour of buying the game, which meant I was two thirds of the way through the game and I hadn't had any fun yet. Well, okay, I admit that one or two sections of the intermediate event did briefly put a smile on my face, but such moments were too few and far between.
The third event had me driving a fast car on snowy/icy roads, but I knew I was only twenty minutes away from completing the game, and I just wasn't having any real fun, so I didn't even finish it.
The tracks in the game are too few, too short, too easy, and too boring, and as a result the game just isn't much fun to drive. It's not completely terrible, and I suppose some people might have a little bit of fun with it, but even they will likely scoff at it's short length, especially given the relatively steep price of the game. The App Store is full of driving games, and many of them are unquestionably superior to this one, so why buy bronze when you can buy gold at the same price?
