PixlBit

I definitely liked this offroad racing/adventure game but it's hard to stick to something that looks so bland compared to today's racers like Forza. Plus I had a few tiny issues with the map screen and the driver views. 

You can choose from many actual trucks from manufacturers like Toyota and Ford. These are, of course, 2000 models. I wanted to try a Rav4 because I used to own a 2004 Rav4. But I chose a Toyota Tundra 4x4 instead because I saw a real one the other day and thought I wouldn't mind driving that. You get enough money to buy one truck at the beginning of the game. 

There are various modes. There is Series in which you race multiple races, Qualifiers, which are single races, and Adventure. I, of course, chose adventure and did three missions. One has you find some dinosaur bones for an archeologist and another has you bring food and supplies to a remote town. I liked the maps because they have fairly realistic contours. Hills are sometimes too steep to climb and so it's wiser to try and stick to the dirt roads. I had a problem with the map screen though. The explorable areas are large and you can get lost pretty easily. You have a bird's eye view you can choose while driving but it doesn't show enough to really navigate the map. Then you have your mini-map on screen but it also doesn't show enough. You can go into the menus and bring up the entire map but it doesn't show your location, only the starting position for the level. That was not very helpful. Without showing where I was on the larger map, I got lost and had to start over several times. I, however, got the missions done by just remembering which direction to head from the start. The missions usually give you a good clue as to where to go. 

Then I tried a single race. Races are on dirt tracks and are pretty long. Three laps took me a good long while against a group of AI racers. The track isn't that well marked though so I crashed on the first lap on a tight turn, going over the edge of a steep slope because I couldn't see how far the turn was bending. It was fun though. Would be more fun against real players. 

I didn't have much interest to continue after that but it did make me look up some new games that might be similar. Gravel was one. I may try that sometime when it hits the right price. 

Oh, and Evo 2 was made by Terminal Reality. They've done a lot of games like the BloodRayne series (recently remastered both 1 and 2) and Ghostbusters: The Video Game. I'm interested to play their Roadkill game that came out a few years after Evo 2.