What truly shine in V-Rally 3 are the gorgeous car models. They are superbly detailed, built with an extremely high number of polygons and they boast real-time reflections on their bodies. While they look just a tad less real than those in Gran Turismo 3, they have the important addition of real time damages. Yes, as you would expect from a rallying game, the cars take damage during the course, and in V-Rally 3 this is done like in a few other games on the market. Every angle of the car seems breakable, from headlights to mudguards, and the bodies get dirty proceeding in the track. Through the life-real windshield, you'll also see all the little details into the car.
The environments pay part of the fee of the processing power used to render the wealth of details and effects of the cars. Don't get me wrong. Each of the 24 tracks is detailed, unique, long, and well designed. Adding to that, lighting effects and weather effects are the best you could expect in a racing game. More than once, you'll awe in front of an exotic sunset or in the middle of a pouring rain. Problems start when you take a closer look at the textures, which often look blurry, and even the terrain is away from providing the same effect of what you've seen in the rally races of Gran Turismo 3. Objects like trees, grass, and all the nice stuff you think should look good in a rallying game, look poorly realized, especially if you try to race through them.
Pop-up problems are not too frequent but evident, and even if they don't affect the gameplay, they look just bad in a game released at this point of the Ps2's lifespan. What's worst, the framerate drops noticeably in the most detailed tracks, and that's a flaw that could annoy many and many players.
On a note, the PAL version runs only at 50Hz. When the game will be released in North America, players could see some improvement in the framerate.
