Off Road

An article that i found on a land rover fan site:

Land Rovers are featured for the first time in the new Ford Racing Off-Road game, which is scheduled to hit shelves next month. It'll be available on multiplatforms such as Playstation 2, PSP, Nintendo Wii and also for your PC. All of Land Rover's new models are featured in the game as well as the Range Stormer Concept and Defender SVX Concept. You can watch the official trailer below..

[youtube]g7yHNcyJppQ[/youtube]

Features:
  • 18 officially licensed Ford & Land Rover off road vehicles.
  • 24 detailed tracks spread over 3 different environments.
  • Multi-player racing; PS2, 2 player split-screen and PSP, 6 player Wi-Fi.
Offical site

(source: the land rover chronicles)

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I find it a good game but i think its to acrade
 
First impression:

I've just started the game, and did a quick race. This means no car/track choosing but immediate action.

First thing that I'm impressed with are the Graphics. They look really sweet. And the framerate is high enough for decent racing. I didn't experience any lag during the race. The psychics of the car, look at first hand realistic. The car (Ford Explorer in this case) went over bumps in a realistic way, causing the car to bump some further when back on the road.

1 less good point I encountered during the race I've driven is that there are virtual barriers. I mean that the track is barriered at the outsides so there's no cutting and such.

If it's an arcade game or a sim game, I'll tell after more intense testing this night :) So stay tuned :)
 
Review: Off Road

Empire Interactive has been running the “Ford Racing”-series for several years. Form there we knew that the developer owns the license of the car brand. Empire now asked Razorworks to help them make an off-road title with the Ford cars in the picture. On top of that, they also obtained the license of Land Rover. This all resulted in their new game, that is released under the Xplosiv label, uninspiredly named Off Road.

Off Road on its best, or not quite...
With “Ford and Land Rover Off Road”, as the game is fully named, Empire is going off-road with their Ford license. All all-terrain vehicles made by the car builder are off course integrated in the game, from the Ford Ranger until the Mighty F-350. Next to that, almost all of the Land Rover vehicles are inclusive. In total there are 18 different cars to race with.
All cars are modelled after their real life representatives. Colour choice is also included, with 11 different colours to choose from, each car. The brake lights work, just like the “backward-driving” lights. In each good race game there is a damage model, well that is also included in Off Road. But don’t expect miracles here. The only thing that you will see changing on the car, is the bonnet which gets a slight scratch or the tail lights which have broken. Even at 100% damage there is nothing more to see. On the performance, the damage doesn’t change anything.
How the cars handle is easily called bumpy. It seems like the springs are set on their lowest setting. Your car jumps to all sides after you’ve got a little bit airborne. When turning the handling is a bit better. When approaching an hairpin, you need to brake heavily to not damage your car (but there is no damage, so who cares ??).

Ice, water & desert
That said, you have the three main ingredients of this game. The locations are divided into these three categories. For each location there are four different tracks, so with some easy mathematics we get 12 tracks, or better said 24 circuits because each track is also reversed. The difficulty rating of these circuits is easy at the start. Just flooring the pedal and drive the whole race doesn’t seem that challenging. But as you get faster vehicles, the difficulty rating rises.
The tracks that you will encounter in the game are off course all detailed, but not extremely. The water flows gently downwards, sometimes even over the track, and sprays up when driving over it. Another point, which might be a disappointment for an off road title, is that there are invisible borders at the road. If you go too far off the track, you bounce onto a virtual wall, which makes the “off-road-feeling” unreal. The scenery is also just standing there. Smaller stones and trees are drive-throughable. Only the huge trees and stones give your car damage.

Become Off Road Champion!
There are enough game modes in Off Road to keep you busy for a while. Quick Race, Arcade, Multiplayer, Tournament and Career to be exact.
When choosing a Quick Race, it is really quick! Just click it and the game starts loading a random track and random car. The choice of the car and track isn’t connected to your Career progress, so it’s realistic that you get dropped on the most difficult circuit with the most powerful car. The Arcade gives you the opportunity to choose these settings, but this IS depending on your Career progress.
The Career mode forms the most important thing of the game. There are 7 locations where you need to prove yourself, each one followed by a little tournament which exist of two or three races. During your career you will also get familiar with the different types of races in Off Road. First of all there is a Race Challenge, which is the basic race option. Drive a number of laps around a track and finish first to pass. Next to that there is an Elimination Challenge, where at the end of every lap the last 2 drivers are eliminated. Damage Control Challenge is also included. Here you need to finish with a damage level lower than the set amount. Good thing is that there are so called Repair Pods on the tracks. These lower your damage every time you pick them up. These Pods are in place during every race by the way. For the adventurous drivers between us, there are Gold Rush Challenges and Expedition Challenges in place. To make the list complete there are: Seconds Out Challenge, Checkpoint Race Challenge, Slalom Challenge, Point to Point Challenge, Gauntlet Challenge and an Overtake Challenge. Most of these names say the most of the type of race.
In the Career Mode you earn each event an certain amount of money, with which you can buy a new car, or repair your current car. To buy a new car, you need to unlock it first. After each race you get a nice little overview of all the things you have unlocked. But before each race, you can check out what you can unlock by winning the race. So if you want to cruise around in the Land Rover Freelander for example, you can see which race you need to complete.
Next to the Career Mode, there is also a Tournament Mode. This exists of six championships of 4 races. Off course, you can also buy vehicles here, separate from the ones you bought in the Career Mode. But the cars you’ve unlocked in Career Mode, you can also buy in this mode. The logical explanation for this, is far away for me, but whatever.
About the multiplayer options I can be short: The PSP-version supports up to 6 players in WiFi (Ad-Hoc). The PS2 version supports split screen for 2 players. The PC version at last, doesn’t have any multiplayer modes.

Sound and things...
A short word to end this article. First of all the sound, which is truly bad. Each car makes the same sound (more or less). This could have been better in my personal opinion, but keep in mind that it’s a budget-title. The music is also always the same. In the menus you always hear the same melody, and during the races there is no music.
The settings that you can modify are also not that extended. Your standard Point of View, unity of the speed indicator and the auto-save function are in fact all that you can modify, next to the sound levels. Manual transmission is not available by the way...
Which brings us to the controls. As for each race game on Sony’s consoles, the X button is meant for accelerating and the square-button for braking. The triangle-button is then again meant for changing your point of view (bumper, outside near, outside far), and the circle-button just stands there for nothing. The right shoulder-button is then again for hand braking and the left one to zoom in on your map. De directional buttons are for eventual steering (left/right) and to look backwards (down). Off course it’s also possible to steer with the analog stick.

Off Road is a nice effort to give the Ford Racing-franchise a new touch. Pity that Land Rover is torn into this. Graphically, everything is looking fine, but with that, all is said. The sound is bad and the controls are too simply (which can also a positive point). If you are a fan of arcade games or like instant action, Off Road is a title which can keep you busy for hours.

Screenshots:
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Note: Review is for the PSP platform, Screenshots are from the PC version.

[Copyrighted: Sven De Nys & 9lives, 2008]​
 

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