A League of Your Own

When it comes to racing games, I’m kind of picky.

I’m not impressed by exotic, over-the-top locales and complicated gameplay scenarios. I’m a simple man with an even simpler goal when it comes to racing titles: I want to drive. I don’t want to mix shooting guns, launching missiles, robbing people, outrunning the police, or becoming a criminal kingpin with my racing experience.

The racing and driving games I love are the ones that drop me head-first into a super-competitive world of racing, offer realistic graphics and precise controls, and are drenched with pure racing action.

That’s why I’ve gone off the deep end for RalliSport Challenge 2.

Race anywhere in the world online.

It has all the ingredients I look for: great graphics, tight controls, and globe-spanning competition of the highest order, thanks to Xbox Live™.

My favorite way to compete is online in RalliSport Challenge 2 leagues. League competition has helped me to find other racing enthusiasts who share my passion for reality-inspired gaming. Competing in a league enables me to race against people with similar RalliSport Challenge 2 backgrounds as mine and makes it possible for me to have a ton of fun, while getting better at driving the rally cars.

It’s really easy to gain access to a RalliSport Challenge 2 league from your personal computer. First, you need to go on the Internet and visit www.XSNSports.com, where you can register your Gamertag. After you’ve registered your Gamertag on XSNSports.com, you can create a RalliSport Challenge 2 competition of your own. Or, you can join one that has been set up by someone else. It literally takes seconds to get connected.

Choose your own track, your own conditions.

To set up a league, you need to make the following selections:

• Choose a competition format: Round-Robin Tournament, Season, or Team Season.
• Select the number or players: 8, 16, 32, or 64.
• Pick the round settings: type of race (Rally, Ice Racing, Hill Climb, etc.), car class, number of laps, location, and track.
• Choose the overall settings: collision type (Ghost, Solid), and car damage level (Light, Normal, or Heavy).
• Choose a name for the competition: For example, “The Gnarly Northwestern.”
• Create a competition motto: For example, “Seattle Never Sleeps!”
• Create a competition statement: For example, “Calling all speed demons, kustom rats, and horsepower hounds! Enter The Gnarly Northwestern … if you dare!”
• Decide whether the event is open to the public or invitation-only: Set a Sportsmanship Rating (a rating that attempts to predict how likely a player is to complete the competition).
• Set the start date, the end date, and the duration of each round.

Choose your car and get ready to race!

Once you’ve entered or created a league, you have to arrange times to compete against other league members. But, word to the wise: Unless your schedule is incredibly flexible, try to populate your league with people who live in your own time zone. It will make scheduling matches much easier. I had difficulty scheduling and completing races against the other players in the first league I joined because I live in the Pacific time zone and most of the others lived along the Eastern seaboard. We just couldn’t find a time that worked for all of us.

I had more success when I used my Xbox Live Friends List to recruit members to a league I created. I met most of them playing Project Gotham Racing® 2, so I knew a lot about their racing preferences and their availability.

In the league I’m currently involved with, we race mostly on Tuesday evenings after 7:00 P.M., although some matches are not completed until Wednesdays or Thursdays. All races must be completed before the next round begins. We try to keep things simple, which is just the way I like it.

By Keith Procter