Sega Rally 2006

Sega Rally 2006 is a great little game. It takes a little while to get into mainly because of the language problem. Unless you speak Japanese etc. But if you stick with it you can work out the menus after abit of trial and error. This problem is really confined to the career mode but as this is the main part of the game it is important to know your way around the various menus. But once you get past that and start wining a few races and upgrading your car it grabs you. They have included plenty of stages one of which is an updated desert track from sega rally championship with remixed music. Although if you are familiar with the dreamcast version you will have seen a similar update before. But it is still a nice touch all the same. One thing that did disapoint to start with was the fact you did not race against any other cars on the track like the previous sega rallys. Well I was wrong about that because although they have tried for more realism this time around than in previous rallys. Meaning there are alot of stages against the clock this time around. You do still get to race on certain stages against other cars and there are also some one on one races to. The graphics are quite nice some stages have better draw distances than others in fact later stages are more impressive with weather effects and some night stages particularly impressive. Another nice touch is the ability to turn on and off your headlamps when ever you like. I really like the music to which is a good mix of jpop, rock and dance. The handling is also great similar to previous rally games although tire choice is important and you really notice the handling difference with the wrong tire selection on a particular road surface. The rumble feature of the dual shock pad is equally well implemented and works very well.

This game is excellent value as there hundreds of stages to explore loads of cups to win and tons of upgrades for your car. I would recommend this to anyone who is a fan of rally games particularly the sega rally series and wants abit more depth and does not mind spending abit of time getting round the japanese heavy menus.