My Diaries

A Lurid Tale of Obsession, Depravity, Wits and Attempted Wit

Tuesday March 12, 2002

I Finally Dig Up V-Rally 2 Again, and Manage to Finish It

I dug out my V-Rally 2 game save again, and went on to finish it.

Getting on for two years ago now, I had completed much, but not all of it. I had unlocked all levels except for the top level of trophy, and used the 10,000 point bonus to gain the "cheat" prize car (Peugeot 405 T16). That is, I had four levels yet to complete; expert level of all three modes, as well as the intermediate ("World") level of trophy mode.

Well, I took it out of retirement and fairly quickly and methodically finished it up, completing the expert arcade mode last night. Playing Ducati World Racing Challenge had helped.

In fact, I now realize that Gran Turismo is in many ways very easy. When initially playing the demo, so many years ago now, I had trouble keeping the car pointing forward. However, once you learn that basic skill it then seems Gran Turismo is tolerant of quite a lot of sloppiness. Penalties for missed braking spots, etc. tend not to be severe and the physics model gives lots of feed back and room for recovery. The mere fact that you cannot roll the car helps an immense amount.

In contrast, in V-Rally 2 and Ducati World Racing Challenge a total wipe-out is a common occurrence. To do well you must drive cautiously but quickly.

Eventually, too, I caught on to the fact that in V-Rally 2 your navigator is none too reliable. He makes mistakes. Quite consistently, if two corners are joined by a jog, the navigator never announces the jog. So learning all the places where these occur is very important to arranging to keep control on the courses, even though, in general the navigation cues are helpful. (Okay, so the navigator is reliable in that he makes the same mistakes on the same courses all the time).

When I restarted the game I went after the intermediate trophy level ("World Trophy") right away, using the Peugeot T16. I methodically won it. I then went on to the Expert Trophy, and won that too. In both cases I did not actually reload the trophy to win it, but won legitimately in a single try. An interesting point, though, is that my World Trophy total time was not as low as the record time I had previously set??? In any case, I had now won the Audi Quattro, arguably a better all-round car than the T16. So combining some of my now-acquired cautious driving technique with the "save-and-reload" trick for the Expert Championship, I finished that using the Quattro.

That left only Expert Arcade Mode, which I found tricky to finish. It is so frustrating to be only a second or so late for your checkpoint and therefore lose. I initially tried using the Audi Quattro for that series, and its smoother feel did help me learn my way around the tracks, but to get right to the end it seemed to help to use the T16. I mean, when I finished the last Indonesia, it was on my last replay chance ("credit").

I had acquired over 14000 "performance points" at that point. You get a point for each second's worth of records you achieve. I made a mistake, actually, early in the game by earning 400 points with another driver. That is not a good thing to do, since one driver must win 10,000 points in order to get the T16.