Rally Master Pro, one of 2008’s finest mobile offerings, is available for free from fishlabs.net, at least the first 9 races. Whether or not you will want to pop for the full games depends on how much of a challenge you want on your mobile phone. Nevertheless, don’t pass up this opportunity if you’re interested in mobile racing.
Without having to worry about having other racers on the track with you, Fishlabs was able to use the extra resources to thoughtfully fine tune other areas of Rally Master Pro and give us features not found in any other mobile racer.
The first unique feature is a fantastic interactive replay after each race. When your trying to shave a half second off your time, the cool replay and multiple camera angles can really help. Rally Master Pro, so easy to pick up but hard to master, lets you use this replay feature as a tool to improve. It looks so good you’ll wish you could save.
On top of that, Fishlabs has added the finest weather effects ever seen on a mobile device. The flash of lightning blinds you, the clap of thunder startles you and rain and snow sends you sliding all over the road. More than a mere display of graphical goodness, the weather effects deepen the game play.
Also adding to the game is the real time damage modeling. This game is all about making precise turns without drifting into the sides. The damage all around your vehicle and crunching sound give you feedback as to how well or poorly you’re driving.
The first 9 races comprise the amateur rally of the career and they will give you a good challenge. Once you advance to the professional and expert levels you’ll wish you had a large screen monitor and a Logitech G25 steering wheel and pedals hooked up to your handset. You can’t afford to clip a wall or forget and upcoming turn without ending up dead last and if you don’t finish the cumulative 9 race rally in 3rd place you can’t advance your career. So expect to run a lot of the races numerous times until you get it right! It’s a little disappointing that the new tracks you unlock going from amateur to professional are largely the same - just much harder! By harder I mean the time bar is lowered even though you do get a better car.
With the inherent limitations of mobile devices (small screens, controls and processing power) the question arises as to how hard we want mobile games to be. After one hour of staring intently at Rally Master Pro, my throbbing head and sore thumb told me to go back to Sega Rally 3D where I could adjust the difficulty, race against dumb AI and not have to work so hard.
Beyond the career there are mini games to repair your car, time trials and an adrenaline mode where you can adjust the weather and run quick races against the clock. All these extras can be unlocked by your career results.
You’ll need a high end phone to get the most out of Rally Master Pro. In the races with a lot of weather effects my Nokia N73 lagged even with the sound turned off. This makes it difficult to execute perfect turns on the winding roads of this demanding title. The loads times are somewhat long especially the last load.
If you’re looking for a challenging mobile game with top notch graphics, sound, control and unique features and you possess a high end phone check out Rally Master Pro. For free you can’t go wrong.
Download this game for free at http://www.fishlabs.net/
Reviewed by Goyami