vrallypeople

[vrallypeople]

Get ready to race from the dusty mountains of America to the snowy valleys of Siberia, to the lush jungles of Malaysia and Kenya. From the land of the rising sun in Japan to where you can dance with it in the twisty roads of Mount Reiner. And from the awe-inspiring backdrop of China to the dams of Romania and the familial grounds of the UK.

V-Rally 4 has arrived. Do you got what it takes to be a real champion?

For more news and competitions in V-Rally 4, follow our blog and on on Twitter to receive the latest news on V-Rally 4, or join our V-Rally People Discord Server and Facebook Group, and chat and compete with people who play and the game!

[vrallypeople]

A Career Retrospection

Good afternoon folks! This past week over on our discord, we had an interesting discussion regarding the career mode of various racing games, including V-Rally 3. Since the release dates for V-Rally 4 have been confirmed to be September 6th for PS4 and XBOX ONE (September 11th for North and South America), and September 25th for PC, and the career mode for the game is set to be revealed later on, the members of the community got into a discussion about what we would like to see in the game, based on our expectations, what other racing and rally games have been doing, and what its predecessors did.

Contemporary racing videogames have featured a career mode which acts as the main course of their gameplay serving. The player is tasked with working their way up the ladder, usually with underpowered cars at the beginning. Through racing and winning at events, the player earns money to upgrade and purchase better cars and progress to the next category, which feature even faster cars and even bigger prizes.

As the difficulty of the events ramp up, so does the intensity of winning; the rivals prove a challenge, mistakes cost a lot more time, and victories over races are fought and not just awarded for playing. It is also at the same time that the career is nearly over. After the completion of the career, the player is free to race again in past events to unlock extra cars and prizes. However, by and large, the gameplay plate has been exhausted, and these extra prizes serve more of a dessert to an often very satisfying main course.

And it is a proven formula too; games from as far back as the 90s, with titles like Gran Turismo, used the same kind of progression system with an eventual ramping up of intensity and of rewards. The model has largely remained the same, and for good reason; not only does it provide a bigger sense of engagement, but it also adds a very personal stake to the player’s progression.

Comparing the GT career model to its contemporaries from the era, it is clear why it had such an enormous and lasting success; racing games from the 90s and the early 2000s, especially ones representing an official sport like Formula 1 or the World Rally Championship, had a largely static championship mode. The player was able to choose amidst their favourite driver, or create their own in some cases, then choose their preferred car, and then compete with all the official drivers in a season-long championship. The championship mode of these games was a more gradual approach, where whilst each win was a big positive, what ultimately mattered was scoring enough points to win the championship. There was a lesser emphasis on winning every race, and a bigger emphasis on strategic finishing in order to maximize the points gained.

The two approaches have positives and negatives, of course. A big positive of the GT model is the gratification and satisfaction the player receives from unlocking new races and prizes with each victory. There is a clear progression that is visible to the player, and it makes goals clearer for the player to follow; where to race next, where to win afterwards, etc. A thing, however, that this model teaches is to rely upon exclusively on victory as the only viable outcome of a race. The GT model can make losing dull and something to be avoided entirely.

On the other hand, the championship mode does make amends to the faults of the GT model, simply by making losing fun and part of the grander game. Obviously, losing is never gonna be welcomed with delight by the player, but by allowing them to make mistakes and have a larger goal to work towards is a net positive towards enjoying the entirety of the game. The fault of these is that this has a defined end state and the player has only one chance across a championship to get it right, otherwise they’ll have to restart the whole championship. It too suffers from the GT model’s issue, one of losing being made not fun, only it is more gradual as a championship features a lot more races.

V-Rally 3, on the other hand, had an offering quite different to what was seen before, or since...

The famous and legendary V-Rally Mode of V-Rally 3 was a different breed of career mode, unlike what had been seen at the time. Unlike other racing games of the time, V-Rally Mode pitted your created driver as a rookie, beginning their career from the junior 1.6L Front Wheel Drive category. At first only the lower teams of the junior championship offer contracts, but as the player drives and complete their objectives and excel, the top tier junior teams gather interest and offer drives in their cars. Winning the championship leads the player to have access to the big league: the 2.0L Four Wheel Drive championship. Once again, the player starts from the bottom and makes their way up in a considerably harder environment, contracting the teams they’re interested in, conducting mid-season tests and achieving the team objectives. In the end, they can be crowned champion of the big category... and they can continue the next year into keeping their title!

V-Rally 3′s major innovation in the career mode was decisively the fluid nature of the championships. The player has a lot of chances to prove themselves in the rallies, and even if they fail miserably, there will be a lower team that will offer them a seat for the next season, where they can pick up again and go on to prove themselves. The same also applies for the other drivers the player races against; not a single team remains the same after each season, especially if better drivers from the junior category make it onto the big league.

This leads to situations where the player’s goals align with a team and it is both in their best interest for the player to just try their best, and see if they can achieve that miraculous 10th place finish the team can never seem to afford. Then, as the seasons progress and both the player and the team become more focused and experienced, they can aim for 5th place, or even the podium.

This natural progression follows the player and motivates them to keep on playing and achieve even greater things with their career. It is a very natural way of portraying how the actual WRC works, better than single-season championship system of officially licensed products, or the loose GT model career of other racing games, where only the player’s progression matters.

So, did the industry collectively forget about V-Rally 3′s innovations? Not quite!

The games that better depicted a version of this mode are the modern Formula 1 games developed by Codemasters. Those games offer multiple seasons within their career mode, in which the player begins from a smaller team as a promising rookie and ascend through the ranks and the teams. However, those games never quite achieved the same level of interaction as V-Rally 3 did, simply because the focus is exclusively on the player, and the rest of the field remained stagnant and locked into place because of existing licenses.

So, that leads us to V-Rally 4, and its promised career mode. Honestly, this is a shot in the dark, mainly because we have no idea how it’s gonna look or play. Chief suspicions from the E3 demo booth and the overall look of the game so far indicate V-Rally 4 is gonna have a career similar to DiRT 2, one where the player will hop across multiple disciplines, unlock cars, and race them to unlock more cars and tracks. However, it is possible that V-Rally 4 may follow a different approach. V-Rally 4 features a lot of rally and v-rallycross events, 6 and 5 respectively, enough to create a main championship around those two; V-Rally 3, after all, had two championships, one ran with 4 rallies for the entire season and the other with 6 rallies. Thus, the other disciplines could serve as extra events the player could tackle to increase their worth, similar to how V-Rally 3 had the mid-season tests for teams interested in the player. That is, however, speculation on our ends, as nothing about the career mode of V-Rally 4 has been revealed yet.

It is important to note that Alain Jarniou, the project lead of Kylotonn, was the project lead and chief designer of the V-Rally Mode during the production of V-Rally 3. This is a big reason why here, in V-Rally People, we believe that the promised mode of V-Rally 4 will, indeed, be quite special.

This about wraps up today’s article. What are your thoughts on the subject? Do you enjoy the career mode as presented in games like DiRT and Gran Turismo, or do you prefer a good championship mode like it is found in the Formula 1 and MotoGP games? Let us know in the reblogs, or by joining our V-Rally People Discord Server and Facebook Group, or follow us on Twitter to receive the latest news on V-Rally 4!

[vrallypeople]

Part 2: The Machines

Last Saturday, we took a look at all the locations that V-Rally 4 has revealed to have so far, and the events they could include. Today, we are looking into the cars you will use to drive through the stages, the ravines and the dense forests that V-Rally 4 has to offer!

Screenshot courtesy of Gamersyde Official - link to video here

V-Rally 4 features 5 different disciplines that the player can tackle and race with. Those disciplines are Rally, V-Rally Cross, Hillclimb, Buggy and Extreme-Khana. We will go through each discipline now.

RALLY

Rally is the main discipline and focus of V-Rally 4. The discipline itself is split into 2 categories, historic rally cars and modern rally cars. Historic cars include legendary vehicles such as the Porsche 911 Carrera Safari (pictured above), the Alpine A110 of the 60s, the Lancia Delta HF Integralle that ruled the 90s Group A, and even some of the early modern WRC machines, such as the 2004 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII.

Modern cars meanwhile seem to include an equal variety of modern machinery. Cars that we have seen in action and promoted by the V-Rally 4 page include the Porsche 997 RGT, which took part in the FIA Group R-GT championship, and the Skoda Fabia R5 participating in WRC-2. We have no word or confirmation on if V-Rally 4 will include the modern WRC cars which were introduced last year though.

V-RALLY CROSS

V-Rally Cross is the second main discipline of V-Rally 4. It has been promoted excessively in trailers and footage, and gameplay footage indicates that the modern rallycross stage format will be used. Drivers race around a closed dirt circuit over a number of laps, and during one of the laps they have to perform a joker lap. Joker laps use a different sections of the circuit which are usually slower to the main circuit.

The car roster for V-Rally Cross includes a lot of the cars actively participating in the modern WRX championship, such as the Ford Focus RX and the Honda Civic Red Bull Rallycross. Additional cars that have been observed in the recent trailer include the Volkswagen Beetle, the Ford Fiesta ST and the Renault Alpine 310. More cars will be revealed at a later date.

Players can expect very fast cars in very fast and flowing stages, going through jumps and tight hairpins, as they race to the finish line.

HILLCLIMB

The hillclimb discipline includes state-of-the-art hypercars specially attuned for great speeds exceeding 300 kilometers/hour. The cars participate on a timed trial to reach the peak of a mountain in the lowest time possible, without the aid of a co-driver unlike in the rally discipline.

V-Rally 4 once again displays a variety of environments and cars to select from for this discipline. The flagship of this discipline has been the Suzuki SX4, which can be observed tackling the Mount Rainier course in the pic above. Not much else is known about the cars of the discipline.

BUGGY

Buggies are a new addition to the franchise. Like in similar games, the buggies will be able to tackle extreme situations and tracks with lots of jumps and obstacles, whist offering quick acceleration and good control through any of the surfaces. So far, only one buggy has been revealed for use in the game.

EXTREME-KHANA

Extreme-khana is a unique version of the gymkhana events that were made popular into the gaming world thanks to games like DiRT 3. Unlike other games, however, extrme-khana focuses on completing a certain number of laps around a technical circuit, situated in various locations, from parking lots to abandoned airfields. Those technical circuits are tough and twisty, and mistakes can cost the player dearly.

In order to tackle those, the player will have in their disposal specially modified cars with lots of torque and drifting capabilities, such as the Ford Mustand Fastback. Not much else is known about the cars included in this discipline thus far.

THE MACHINES THUS FAR

As with Part 1, we are going to present now the various cars that have been revealed by Kylotonn and which will feature in V-Rally 4 in greater detail.

First car on the list is the Porsche 997 RGT

The 997 Porsche RGT was amidst the first holomogated car for the newly-established FIA R-GT Cup. The rules for the cars were established in 2011, whilst the first proper chamionship was ran in 2015. Using GT Rear Wheel Drive cars specially attuned for rallying, the championship has been active since then, and includes racing in various WRC and ERC events alongside the main categories.

This particular Porsche variant has been a very popular choice with R-GT cup drivers, along with the Abarth 124 R-GT, and has won the majority of the events ran in the R-GT cup so far. Players should expect high power delivered to them from the back wheels once they hit the accelerator, and a lot of sideway action as they tackle in the corners of the RALLY events. A car of high demands, and high results indeed.

For the next car, we go back in time with the Alpine A110

The Alpine A110 had been one of the most famous cars of the last century. First manufactured in 1963, this Rear-Wheel, Rear-Engine rally car rode to victory in the 1970s in the rally world. During the inaugural IMC (International Manufacturers Championship) when it first began in 1970, as well as the inaugural WRC in 1973, the Alpine A110 won the manufacturers championship in 1971 and 1973 in the IMC and the WRC respectively. Throughout its participation, it earned the prestige reputation of one of the strongest rally cars of its time.

The Alpine has a rich history of tackling the harshest roads and coming out victorious on top, and the player can expect to do the same with this awe-inspiring legendary car. 

Next on our list comes the Tatum Super Buggy

The Tatum Super Buggy is one of the various buggies the player will be able to use for the buggy discipline. It is one of the most successful buggies in its category, largely preferred by amateur drivers and professionals alike. Highly modifiable to suit the needs of each individual driver, the Tatum Super Buggy can tackle any terrain and obstacle it comes across. The question then becomes: Can you?

Final on our list is the Suzuki SX4

The Suzuki SX4 hillclimb was used for the 2011 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. Piloted by Nobuhiro “Monster” Tajima, the 910HP beast finished the course of the Race to the Clouds and smashed the previous record, becoming the first driver to finish in a sub-10-minute run.

This awesome power is now available to the player, who can take it and command it through the narrow corners of China and the dense forests of America. With so much power and speed, make sure you don’t run off the track!

And that about wraps up the second part of our analysis! Tune in again this Friday for Part 3: The Driving, where we’ll take a deep dive into the gameplay of V-Rally 4!

So, what do you think of the cars V-Rally 4 has to offer? Which car is your favourite, and which vehicle would you like to see in the future? Let us know in the reblogs, or by joining our V-Rally People Discord Server and Facebook Group, or follow us on Twitter to receive the latest news on V-Rally 4!

[vrallypeople]

We’re back, and we’re packed!

Good evening folks! As we had mentioned in our last post over two weeks ago, we were busy preparing an analysis of all the pictures, videos, and gameplay segments Kylotonn has shown about V-Rally 4. Due to the amount of information having been released already, as well as the V-Rally 4 gameplay videos that have come out from various news sites and YouTubers, this analysis will be split into three parts. Part 1: The Events will cover the countries, stages, and environments the player will find themselves in when racing in V-Rally 4. Part 2: The Machines will cover the known vehicles and disciplines that V-Rally 4 has. Part 3: The Driving will be an attempt at analyzing as much of the gameplay as possible from all the video footage available to us and on the internet.

Part 1 will be published today alongside this post, whilst Part 2 and Part 3 will be posted later this coming week.

Part 1: The Events

V-Rally 4 was long confirmed to be a world-trotting racing adventure, going from the heart of Africa in Kenya to the peaks of Asia in China and the forests of the Midwest in the United States. Since the reveal, showcasing 3 distinct locations, including an abandoned airfield, a rallycross circuit and a rally stage running through the Sequoia Forest in California, USA, we have gotten confirmation and pictures on a variety of locations that we will be able to race through in the full release!

The biggest confirmation of the variety of locations, however, came from the demo booth V-Rally 4 and Kylotonn had on this year’s E3:

Screenshot courtesy of Team VVV - link to video here

Though this map is in and of itself interesting, its gameplay significance will be analyzed in Part 3 of this analysis. What we can take from this map is that there is a big emphasis on events in the United States. This is from a pre-beta build, and the locations chosen are very limited. compared are lots more locations to be discovered and lots more places for us to go throughout our tour.

An interesting feature of the world map from this early footage that we have is that there aren’t a lot of traditional European events marked on the map yet. The only one that can be spotted is the UK, and the event there is a V-RallyCross event. This is a pretty big departure from previous V-Rally games, which featured a very large amount of European events, with the most egregious example being V-Rally 3; the last entry in the series featured a total of 6 events, 5 of which were in Europe.

Speaking of events retained from the last entry, Kenya makes a return, both as a rally event and a buggy event. Alongside Kenya, newcomers include a possible event in Thailand (at the time of writing, it has not been confirmed if it’s Thailand or Malaysia) and two events in China. Finally, there are several events in the Americas - one in South America in Bolivia and 4 in North America in the United States. The States in particular have the most type of events, including rally events, extreme-khana and hillclimb.

Whilst we await further news from Kylotonn, it is time to go on a tour across the different locales V-Rally 4 will take us through!

Our first destination is Monument Valley

Monument Valley is a red-sand desert region found right between the borders of the states of Arizona and Utah, and is characterized by its awe-inspiring sandstone buttes. Monument Valley, or Tsé Biiʼ Ndzisgaii (Valley of the Rocks) in the native Navajo language, will let the players tackle this cornerstone of the American West, racing through the narrow, sand-covered roads in entangling stages to the top and the bottom.

This location was also featured in the recent E3 demo booth V-Rally 4 was showcased in. You can see it showcased in gameplay videos here and here. The stages featured follow the Rally Discipline, indicating the event may be exclusive to rally. The stages themselves seem to be loose and fast, leading into very fast flowing sections with some occasional slower technical sections. We could consider it a rocky Finland, going through breath-taking and heart-stopping backdrops, maintaining your car across long straights and turns whilst the cliff lies only 5 meters to your side.

Important note: the footage and the demo were taken from a pre-Beta version of the game. It has been confirmed that the co-driver voice as well as the pacenotes and a lot of other graphical and gameplay things have been fixed in the current build the devs are working on.

The next location our globe-trotting rallying adventure takes us are the Bolivian Rainforests

Bolivia is located in South America, neighbours Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Chille and Paraguay, and is home to several different biomes, from the mountaintops of the Andes to the lush forests of the Amazon. Its rich geographical beauty lends a stunning locale deep within the Bolivian forests for V-Rally 4, where the players will be able to take their vehicles and race around and across the Amazon, surrounded by the rich fauna and flora around them.

The Bolivian Rainforest seems to be geared towards the Buggy discipline. Players can expect a lot of rocky rides going up and down the streams of the river trying to get an edge on their opponents. Just remember to mind the trees when you go through the big jumps!

After Bolivia, we head back to the States and into the much acclaimed Sequoia Forest

The Sequoia National Forest is located in Southern Nevada, California. Home to the impressive giant trees of the same name, the Sequoia National Forest is a host to a number of recreational activities and several thousand miles of road, perfect for any aspiring driver to blaze amidst trees several thousands years old.

Little is known about what type of events the Sequoia Forest will include, but it is safe to assume a lot of dirt roads will be utilized sideways as the players will be racing against the clock in modern and traditional rally cars.

Our final destination for tonight will take us further north to Mount Rainier

Mount Rainier is the highest mountain of the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, and an active stratovolcano too. Found deep in the heart of the state of Washington, the volcano is known as Tahoma or Tacoma in the language of the Salish peoples, and is also on the list of the Decade Volcanoes, volcanoes under watch by the international community due to their dangerous proximity to populated areas. A pretty fitting explosive combination for the players to blast their vehicles along the winding roads at 300 kilometers per hour.

Mount Rainier has been confirmed to include the Hillclimb Discipline, and the wide roads going through the forest definitely have a hint of modern Pikes Peak to them. As footage of it has not been observed to be online as of yet, we are going to assume that you should expect a lot of fast flowing sections with some technical sections thrown in for good measure.

And that about wraps up the first part of our analysis! Tune in this Tuesday for Part 2: The Machines, where we’ll analyze all the cars that have been confirmed for V-Rally 4!

In the meantime, what do you think of the locations so far presented by the V-Rally team? Which rally are you the most excited to race at? Let us know in the reblogs, or by joining our V-Rally People Discord Server and Facebook Group, or follow us on Twitter to receive the latest news on V-Rally 4!

[vrallypeople]

V-Rally 4 is at E3 this year!

Hey folks, the Kylotonn Booth at E3 has a fully playable demo ready for anyone who visits their booth to try and play! You can visit booth #5412 starting today, June 12th, and up until Thursday, June 14th and try the new exciting entry of the longstanding V-Rally series.

There have been lots of news and developments since the last post we put out, and we’ll have an article that covers them this Friday; apologies for our silence, this blog is ran by a single person and time was extremely short. We have all the new info, however, on the two new locations advertised for the game, the two new cars that have been revealed so far, and the trailer showcasing the V-Rally Cross and Buggies disciplines! Expect a more comprehensive read, along with gameplay analysis as taken from E3, starting this Friday and in the coming days!

Wanna chat with us? Join the V-Rally People Discord Server and Facebook Group, or follow us on Twitter to receive the latest news on V-Rally 4!  

[vrallypeople]

It’s rally time this weekend!

Seeing as the French round of the World Rally Championship on this weekend, we figured we’d take this time and talk about a lesser known fact of rally Corsica, that being V-Rally’s involvement with the official rally!

Did you know for instance that V-Rally was the chief sponsor of rally Corsica during the 1999 and 2000 seasons? It is true, and along with PlayStation, one of the few official videogame sponsors of any rally event of the World Rally Championship!

Photo credit: juwra.com - Independent Rally Archive

Here we see Philippe Bugalski and Jean-Paul Chiaroni standing atop the Citroen Xsara Kit Car in the 1999 closing ceremony. Philippe and Jean-Paul had taken their second victory this season, following the rally of Catalunya, showcasing just how powerful the kit car category had become that challenged the much more powerful world rally cars of the 1999 season during the tarmac events.

The involvement of V-Rally was a result of Infogrames, then a much more powerful and prospering French videogame company, being amidst the chief sponsors of the rally. The sponsorship continued into the 2000 season, promoting the V-Rally brand again.

1999 and 2000 was a significant time for the V-Rally series, as it saw its most profitable and beloved release, V-Rally 2. V-Rally 2 launched a month after the rally of Corsica, in October, for the Sony PlayStation, and releases and ports for other systems and PC continued well into 2000.

Rally Corsica is a crucial part of the V-Rally DNA, having appeared in all the official releases of the series. From sandy beaches taking you up to the rocky and forested mountains of Corsica, with fans cheering you on as you zoomed right past them, the rally played an integral part of the V-Rally series throughout its games. Whilst still unconfirmed, we believe that Corsica will make a triumphant return to V-Rally 4, along with its 10′000 corners!

Do you got what it takes to tackle the swinging roads along the isle of Corsica? And who do you think will win Corsica this weekend?

Wanna chat with us? Join the V-Rally People Discord Server and Facebook Group, or follow us on Twitter to receive the latest news on V-Rally 4!

[vrallypeople]

You can find us on other social media too!

We got:

a Twitter page, where news and updates on V-Rally 4 will be posted!

a Facebook group and a Discord server, where you can hang out with other fans of the series and discuss various topics!

Come join us and follow us! :D

[vrallypeople]

Hello and welcome from us at the V-Rally People!

The next exciting entry in the V-Rally series will launch this September, and we could not be more excited about it!

We are the new kids on the block, this blog only recently set up to follow the development and news of the latest release in the classic rally racing videogame series V-Rally. So, as is tradition in the pre-season, we got some time to chill, evaluate where we stand, and what we will do in the future! This blog will be a fan page for V-Rally 4 and the V-Rally series in general. We’ll be working to bring out the latest news on the development of V-Rally 4, as well as provide some speculation on the game and create conversation topics for it. We will also be talking occasionally about real life rally and motorsport events, with emphasis on WRC rounds.

The schedule for the page will largely depend on news updates for the game. We aim to provide new content and to post every weekend, the prime motorsport time, and to engage with the fans at least on a weekly basis! If there is any week without news from Kyloton Games on V-Rally 4, we will provide alternative content, such as coverage of past V-Rally titles or of real life rallying and motorsport events, or even other racing games that are on the horizon and we think deserve mention.

So, gentlemen, ladies, and all distinguished guests, start your engines, get comfy and enjoy your time as we all await the next release of the legendary rally series after 16 years!