Power Drive Rally

Power Drive Rally is unique on the Jag as it's the only rally sim available for the console. It's also unique in that it's the only driving game that eschews a move into the 3rd dimension in favour of a slightly off, 2D top-down approach. And unlike most of its contemporaries in the genre, it also features fully licensed vehicles, so yes - you can drive Toyotas, Fiats and Minis on the Jag...it's not all anonymous family saloons (Club Drive) and square-wheeled pseudo F1 go-karts (Chequered Flag).

Power Drive features a few different game modes, such as a practice session where you can get to grips with the slightly confusing forward/reverse set up, and also have a go at driving some of the more powerful cars without first earning them. The main meat of the game though, is the career mode where you take part in rallies, earn cash (both through winning and driving over floating cash icons on the track) and carry out repairs to your ride between stages. If you've played any rally sim in recent generations, you'll be right at home with the setup here - race a stage, repair your car, have cash or time deducted, and move on to the next stage.

Occasionally a 'skill test' stage will pop up where you have to carry out various vehicular manoeuvres within a strict time limit (reverse into a bay, drive around cones, stop in a certain area etc) and to be honest, these suck ass. The cars have such massive turning circles that the cone challenges are extremely difficult to pull off and I almost gave up when I came to the first skill test stage, but perseverance is the key. Power Drive may look pretty shoddy on first glance, but the 2D graphics are very detailed and there are lots of nice graphical touches that make you take notice - the headlight effects are great and the mirrored skies in the water traps and rivers are a great addition. Cars handle well in races (apart from in the aforementioned skill tests!) and the fast, frenzied nature of the one-on-one races actually creates quite a tense atmosphere on those tight, winding stages.

Power Drive's a great racing game and even though it hardly pushes the hardware, it's probably the best car-based racer on the Jag. I say 'car based' because Super Burnout is the best racing game on the Jaguar...but this is a close second.










2 comments:

  1. The game is okay it started off great I was really enjoying it until I got to the skill stage which I had no idea what to do.
    Spent ages figuring that out realising that one of these stages would come again later. Also the game gets quite difficult later on you have to do perfect runs to get to the next level.
    I lost motivation to play at this point plus Burnout is much better so rather just play that

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    1. The last level is where you have to make a near-perfect run and that's something i've noticed with almost every Jaguar game...They're HARD.

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