My Diaries

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

Tuesday March 26, 2002

I Finish V-Rally 2 Again, With A Little More Finesse

Having finished V-Rally 2 by using the Peugeot 405 T16, I felt I should try and redo it without using such a blatantly cheating car.

I kept a reasonably complete log this time, so can verify my strategies and results. The log was on paper, not computer, so I can't right now share it directly with you but eventually maybe I will type it in!

I wanted to use the small cars for the easy levels. They do seem like "starter cars" after all. So I used the Nissan Micra to win the now amazingly easy Arcade Level 1. That won me the Ford Escort. Using the Peugeot 106 for the first-level European Trophy, however, took me three tries (I did each series straight though, with no reloading). (Results: 18:22.18(-9), 18:18.41(-13), 17:54.37(+18)). I won the FIAT 131 Abarth for that. In the first-level European Championship, however the Citroen Saxo swept it on the first try, winning all eight rallies, by a healthy margin in most cases--Portugal and Italy being the only ones that were at all close. This unlocked the deadly-fast and steady Toyota Celica GT4.

After that, I attempted to use the prize from each mode to win the next level of that mode.

Completing Arcade Level 2 with the Ford Escort was relatively easy, although I actually finished only third, by over a minute. In Arcade Mode, however, it is only required that you finish the events, not win them, so that finish still won me the distinctive-looking Lancia Stratos.

Winning the second-level World Trophy using the FIAT 131 Abarth, however, proved somewhat difficult.

I tried twice and came second and then third, with a nearly identical 29:16.XX each time. So I tried a few time trials of the trickiest stages; New Zealand SS04, Italy SS07, Indonesia SS01 and Sweden SS02 and seemed to learn a few things and improve my times on the first two, but not the last two.

But I tried again and managed first place, beating my own previous two times but not the winning times of the cars in the first two times. But there are a couple of factors in Trophy Mode which might explain this. First of all, the AI cars seem to go slightly slower when behind you; perhaps they have trouble passing. Also, when you are close to them you can nudge them into a wipe-out if you are careful (and you keep your springs on the soft side so you don't flip easily), and that causes them to lose time.

Winning the World Trophy unlocked the wonderful Audi Quattro.

Using the Celica in the World Championship was very easy. I did not reload the series, and, although I got off to a mediocre start with a second-place finish at Sweden SS04, I won the next 7 rallies in succession. After that, though, I for some reason had a bit of trouble--finishing 5th, 2nd and 3rd in the last three events. However, that was still good enough to win the championship by a healthy margin. And so I had the Renault 5 Turbo.

Now it was time to do the Expert Mode events. First I tried the Audi Quattro in the Expert Trophy and it was a walk-over. I won all events except Indonesia and Corsica--and those were very close losses (and I flipped my car in Corsica), and I won by 98 seconds, winning the peculiar little Renault 8 Gordini.

The Expert Championship, using the Renault 5 Turbo, of course, was challenging. It took me two tries and even the second time was a close, not totally convincing, win; I won 79 to 71 over a Stratos. The first time I had lost with 65 points to a Quattro's 75. But at least my total time in the second try was faster than the Quattro's in the first series, so it seemed a reasonably valid win, unlocking the Alpine Renault A110--which I'm not positive I'll ever try.

That left the deadly frustrating Expert Arcade Mode. First I tried the Lancia Stratos, consistent with my intended pattern. I think I could win with it if I tried; I did get to the last rally, but not with very many credits in hand (I think you start with three credits, and earn one extra credit for each rally you win; I won only the first rally, and appear to have used up four credits, according to my records). Even though I did not finish Expert Arcade Mode, I did by racing it earn the 10,000 performance points necessary to unlock the Peugeot 405 T16; I really wanted to resist using it, however.

Well, I felt I couldn't stand the frustration of driving the Stratos again, so I tried the Audi Quattro and not only finished, but finished first. I won all the rallies except for Sweden (4th) and Indonesia (2nd). Prior to Indonesia the only rally I had had to retry was Sweden, only once, so I entered Indonesia with 8 credits to waste. I only needed to use up 2 of them. however, and then I finished the rally, finishing first by 42 seconds with a time of 32:37.96

So I had completed the game, though not minimally. I had taken 11:02 time and driven 755 miles, earning 10618 performance points. My peculiar driver code was D554A4D03B.

One challenge I think might be theoretically interesting, but am not sure I will actually try, is to try and complete all the events without winning 10,000 points so that you don't unlock the Peugeot 405 T16. You'd have to drive the Arcade Mode as slowly as you could but still finish, and try and slow down in the other events and yet still win. (In the championships you could wait until you'd won on points and then lose the rest of the races really slowly). But I'm getting sort of bored with this game now, so I'm not sure I'll try that strategy.

One thing I remember someone else saying, I think, and that I've finally realized for myself, is that in V-Rally 2 the cars flip over very easily if you set the springs too hard. In general, it seems best to never put the springs above the initial default mid-way point. For the very soft and/or slippery surfaces, it seems very soft springs work well, but a little harder works better for the hard gravel such as Finland or England. But still, in general, never put the springs above half-way, even on asphalt. The one little looped road circuit from Italy, (SS06) however, is very bumpy towards the end. Strangely, stiffer suspension seems to reduce the tendency to flip out-of-control when going over those bumps, so you may want to go one notch above half-way. Maybe. All-in-all it seems the handling of a car over those bumps depends mostly upon the inate characteristics of the particular car as modeled by the game. High ride-height does not, as far as I can tell, increase the tendency to flip as much as stiff suspension does.

I now present a little prize chart, since the game does not make it easy to check which prizes were for which events after you have won them.