Dakar 2

GameCube, Dakar 2 (2003) game

I don't know what happened to 'Dakar 1,' presumably that was a PlayStation game whose success led to the sequel going multi-format. It wasn't that this game had great reviews or had been lauded, but I had the impression it wasn't the standard racing game that most of the genre turn out to be. For that intangible reason I was expecting this to be a bit different and was a little bit disappointed that it was the usual kind of game, but not very disappointed as I only paid £2.99 for it on eBay! I imagined it was going to be more of a 'Smuggler's Run' affair with wide open spaces, not knowing anything about the real world Paris-Dakar race. To an extent it did contain free and open expanses, but only on the few desert courses, the rest were set tracks with so low a threshold for exploration that even driving a couple of metres off track could sometimes be enough to force you into the 'Recovery' position, a safety feature designed to stop you getting trapped on the scenery.

'Recovery' bears a little more discussion because although it's there with the best of intentions, it can be extremely annoying when it works in the wrong way (as mentioned above), but even more so when it doesn't work at all. I've been trapped inside a skeletal tree a few times and not been able to escape except by reversing for ages until I eventually break free, by which time any hope of completing the course in the goal time is lost, or when I've gone careering over a sand dune, flipped onto my side and been rolling around trying to get back up and even though I'm pressing the 'Recovery' button itself, it doesn't do anything! So there were problems with that. Another annoyance is that the 'Restart' option is clouded out during the Championship racing so if you mess up you have to either finish the race or quit - no quick restarts in this game! The graphics aren't bad for the time, but don't compare with some of the better racing games of the period such as 'Burnout 2.' Functional is the best way to describe them, although there are occasional flashes of beauty such as the sun blinding you as you turn a corner up in the mountains.

Collision detection can be as erratic as the 'Recovery' feature. Hit a rock or a sand mound and you can get stuck and at the very least it stops you dead whereas it really should be possible to bounce over such obstacles at the risk of damaging your vehicle. On the subject of vehicles there are three types to try out: Bikes, Cars and Trucks. Bikes are certainly the most agile, Cars are a bit average, and Trucks I was warned against in a review, for reasons of lack of control, but found them to be the easiest to use as they have so much power they can barge through other competitors, rarely tip over thanks to their weight, and even corner pretty well because of their great power.

Another missing element were the other competitors. There are supposedly over a hundred teams competing according to the end of race times, but you only get three opponents to actually race against (one of each vehicle). It would have been a bit beyond the GameCube to cope with a hundred racers, but a few more wouldn't have gone amiss and might have injected some degree of excitement into proceedings. Because the tracks are mostly okay, but once you've raced to the end and reached Dakar, and done the courses in reverse, the only incentive to race again is to unlock all the blacked out vehicles. This is fine and you do get into a rhythm and enjoy some tracks more than others, but there's nothing worse than getting to the end of the entire length of the race to find that for some reason you haven't been awarded one of the vehicles. I haven't worked out what criteria it is you need to meet for that to happen - is it overtaking the three opponents, coming 1st in the ranking, beating a certain time? Not having the booklet I don't know, hence frustration.

The difficulty level is a bit unbalanced as I would consider one of the most difficult tracks to be the second one, with its mud-filled course and tight bends, whereas the last track is very easy. My favourite is the Ahaggar Mountains course which is so difficult at first, but once you get the hang of speeding round cliff-top paths becomes quite a joy. I wasn't so keen on the desert tracks and their empty stretches, and ultimately I'd rather go and have the variety and excitement of 'Smuggler's Run' than this straightforward, competent racer. But there's still that one last vehicle to unlock…

I should also mention that this is one of the few games to actually use the Game Boy Advance link-up, something Nintendo hoped to get most games to do at the time to add functionality, but was often ignored or used weakly. The way it's used this time is middling to good, as there are a host of unlockable tracks to play on the GBA adding incentive to replay. The thing is, and this is probably why the GC-GBA link failed to excite the public, is that there's little point sitting there connected to your big screen with the GameCube whirring away, just to play some basic 2D tracks on your handheld! You can't download the tracks permanently so you have to stay connected, and there's no way to save your scores or times, so although the GBA tracks look fine, there's little point in doing anything more than sampling them and giving yourself another reason to keep playing the 'Cube game. Good to have extras, but not worthy of an extra star.

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