Forget the Grand Prix, forget the rallying and forget your favourite sports cars, 4x4 Evolution is just around the corner and it's going to show us just how much fun off-road 4x4 vehicular racing can be. Just recently, Terminal Reality (developers of 4x4 Evo) released a public beta; showing off single-player and multi-player racing, a bold move from the developers that brought us Nocturne, Fly! and the first game based on the Blair Witch Project movie, this also shows the publisher is not scared that people will not buy the game based on what's in the beta.

While 4x4 Evo does not have a Counter-Strike sized following at the moment, the beta currently downloadable from FilePlanet is proving reasonably popular at just under 5000 downloads at the time of writing. Unfortunately I did get the feeling that this was going to be another run-of-the-mill, wacky racing game deciding to deviate from standard racing game procedures. But we are reassured that Terminal Reality are taking new steps, going where no developer has really been before and could turn out an original and excellent game, for this we salute them.

The Key To Success

Already seen in the Need For Speed series among others, you are given the opportunity to race for money, money that you can use to upgrade your truck to improve its performance. Your truck can be customised and tweaked in all manner of ways from the simple brake adjusting to suspension and steering. If you're the gamer that likes to tinker with your vehicle then you will definitely not feel left out.

Customisation and altering your game looks set to be very prominent, especially in the PC and Mac versions. There will be the option to "spray paint" your truck a la Viper Racing and hopefully import your own custom logos. A map editor will ship with the final version allowing players to easily create their own race tracks with a powerful program and soon after the games release we should see a flurry of new tracks appearing on the internet.

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