Players enter into the Paris-Dakar rally, one of the longest and most dangerous races in the world. You need to strategically adjust five different components of your car in order to stay alive to compete in the various heats. Each of these will affect the on-road performance of the vehicle so you need to make sure you use your points wisely and have enough to advance should you have a bad segment.
Scaling here is done the old fashioned way; everything is done by hand with no special hardware tricks. The view of the track is awfully low and can obscure oncoming traffic (which there is plenty of). Tight turns can be hard to see, but it does keep you fixed in your chair anticipating the hazards. Unlike numerous other racing games of this style, you really do need to break and even avoid hills in the road. It adds another layer to what could have been a fairly generic car game. Switching gears is also manual. There is no option to make it automatic.
There are a few nice touches graphically, mostly the time of day change. As the race progresses, the background will shift to reflect time passage and it even tints the road. It's a nice little touch that really adds to the atmosphere. Elsewhere, you'll see the same traffic just about anywhere you go and your car never changes or shows any signs of damage (even after a really nice crash animation sequence).
Music of course accompanies the races and it's very energetic. You have to wish for more. Engine sounds are standard fare while the tire squeals are annoying. Of course, it you're good, you shouldn't hear them anyway.
It may not look like anything different and may not even play that different at first, but it only takes one crash for the lesson to be learned. It's not a game that set the racing world on fire, but for its time, it really does a lot. There is still some room for improvement in a sequel that never came out, but this is probably the best racer for the console.
