Reviewed by CL on 5/28/2004
I'm so glad that this game exists; it returned my faith in the $10 games. I picked Turok: Evolution for GBA from the $10 bargain bin and hated it. I though that I was done with being cheap and getting junky games, but then Karnaaj Rally came along and renewed my faith.
At heart, Karnaaj Rally plays a lot like a souped-up RC Pro-AM II for the original Nintendo. You race around a track picking up goodies like cash and rockets. You can use weapons to hinder the progress of your opponents. This is executed very well and it is a lot of fun to try and shoot out your opponents with rockets of blow up pursuers with mines. The only drawback is that these are the only two weapons available in the game. With each victory, you earn cash that you can use to buy upgrades to your car or more weapons. You can even place bets on races in an effort to make more money.
The game has a very cool structure and you drive different cars through different time periods. In each time period, there are about 10 races to complete. You basically start out with no upgrades and buy them as you win more money. However, when you go to the next time period, you start out from scratch. In some games (such as Eternal Darkness), starting from scratch every 30 minutes is extremely annoying and takes a lot of the fun out of the game. However, this is most definitely not the case in Karnaaj Rally. In fact, this keeps it challenging. There is a tendency for you to soup up your car so much that you'd be lapping your opponents by the 7th or 8th race. It probably would take a lot of the fun out of the game if only the first 6 races were close, and the next 45 were complete blowouts.
The car physics in the game are done very well. The car will slide around and you have a true sense of speed when navigating the course. Although the physics of the car are probably not entirely accurate, they are at least fun as it makes the car drivable and maneuverable.
In conclusion, at $10, this game cannot be beat in terms of its great gameplay. It kept me busy for probably the better part of 5 hours trying to beat it. The game also has decent replay value since it is actually fun to play. For fans of the racing genre, I would highly recommend this game and even if you don't like racing, you should try this game out. For only $10, how wrong can you go?
