[General Topics] Menneisyys:
Bets

You will be offered bets several times during championship (example here). In most cases, I was able to win these bets. Don’t forget to select the largest available bet by pressing the Right arrow on D-Pad. Don’t be afraid of the tip “Don’t bet too much, otherwise, you may get into debt” too much – you'll never have negative balance because you can't bet more than your currently available cash.

Sometimes you’re even asked to kill another player. In these cases, as this task isn’t very easy, you’ll be offered ten times more money and the target car will always be denoted with a red arrow so you'll always know what car to shoot rockets at / drop mines in front of.

Playability, chances

Without any hacks, I had no problems (I didn’t need to restart a league) up until the sixth league (there are seven of them) of the hard level. I, however, had to restart these two leagues several times to get thru (particularly the last one). They are really though – even with money hacks. Without them, it’s almost impossible to remain the first.

Hacking

It’s possible to hack the save file to increase your money (yeah, it’s sometimes VERY handy to have a very strong coder / programmer background ;) ). Then, it’ll be possible to buy all the upgrades at once as can be seen for example in this screenshot. I don’t, however, publish how this should be done as I don’t want people upload “hacked” results to the online high score ranking. Don’t e-mail me on this matter either – mails asking for the hack will end up in the bin :)

Path finding algorithm – some minor flaws

Unlike most other racing games, there are no natural (terrain) barriers between (even close) roads. Therefore, the game has some built-in protection against users that want to cut corners to gain some advantage. This, in cases, can cause some problems because of a small flaw in the algorithm. You must be aware of this flaw to avoid being placed back on the road, which, in some case, when every second counts, can even lead to your losing a race.

The algorithm works as follows: when you just leave the road (not very far) but there isn’t anything between you and the road, nothing happens. However, if there’s a terrain obstacle (except for the three flags, which can also be seen in the bottom right corner of this screenshot) between you and the road, independent of its size, you’ll be replaced on the road. This may be somewhat annoying on straight roads where you drift off the road, without any intent to cut corners. The iDreams people may want to consider reviewing the algorithm or completely getting rid of it and implementing terrain obstacles to avoid players’ cutting corners.

Note that, before I’ve found out how the algorithm works, I’ve only had two or three cases where it caused some headaches; therefore, it’s not that big a problem. When (and if), however, the multiplayer add-on arrives, this may become an issue – after all, in multiplayer, even the slightest algorithmic flaws can be deadly. (See the example of, say, Blizzard’s Starcraft on the desktop PC, Mac and N64.)

Best strategy?

You can gain some REAL advantage if you always make sure you have at least one mine before starting a race. Then, just drop it, right after starting and getting in front of (some of) them, to get rid of at least one of your opponents for the rest of the game because opponents you take out so early in the game will battle with other opponents (which slow them both considerably down) to get further, not you.

After that, if you do maneuver well, these opponents won’t cause you any problems. Also try to put mines in front of the car that is just behind you.

The same stands for rockets – try to shoot them from as close as possible. For example, if a faster car has just overtaken you, you’re still very close to him to shoot him. The same stands for when you run into him: you can even use rockets while your cars are connected.

Using this strategy, I’ve managed to defeat many opponents even when I used much slower cars than theirs.

As far as the career mode is concerned, the best startegy to follow is just staying on the easy levels (you won't be able to beat almost anyone on Normal / Hard maps with the default car, not even fully upgraded) until you collect 25000 bucks to buy the fastest, most expensive car. With that, even Hard maps / races will be a breeze and you'll be practically unbeatable, even with a non-fully-upgraded car.

To effectively collect money on the Easy maps, I recommend either the $50 map or, if it's offered (sometimes only a $300 race is offered, which isn't as lucrative as the $50 / $100 / $200 races), the $100 / $200 races. They offer the most for the first place-winners.

Boss levels, game state backup

There are boss levels at the end of all the three difficultly levels (that is, after the first 4, 6 and, finally, 7 leagues). As far as both the easy and normal bosses are concerned, I’ve found them pretty easy to defeat. If you, however, are afraid and don’t want to replay the entire easy / normal / hard league (if you lose three times to the boss in turn, you will need to restart the entire set of leagues - nt just the last one, as is the case with not being the first after a standard league), you may want to consider backing up the profile0X.sav file (where X is the number of the used profile; 0 if you use the first profile in the row) in the home directory of the game (\Program Files\ Games\KRally if you install the game to the default built-in storage) before the game and, if you are defeated and would need to replay the entire league, just copy back the file.

Documentation

The game has an excellent online documentation. It’s really worth reading.

The game, as has also been pointed out, also has a(n obligatory – you must make it through in order to start earning Experience Points) built-in tutorial (screenshot 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), which explains the basics.