4x4 EVO 2

Career

The goal of career is to build or buy the fastest off-road vehicle possible. The player does so by purchasing their first vehicle, and then placing well in races to earn money, which is spent on better vehicles later, and various modifications. All races in career are organized into a large number of series of varying length. Certain series also require certain prerequisites, such as a specific vehicle type, or completion of a qualification event. The player is free to complete the series in any order, and can enter multiple tournaments at once without losing progress in the other. Joining a team is not a requirement, but grants various benefits that allow the player to build a faster vehicle.

Teams

There are a total of 9 fictional teams in career mode, one for each vehicle manufacturer. To join a team, a player must place well in career races to improve their reputation. Doing so in a team's sponsor manufacturer will improve the player's reputation even faster with that team (for example, winning multiple races in a GMC will quickly improve a player's standing with Drehkraft, their sponsored team). Another way is to race in qualifiers, because the game counts each qualifier as an entire series. Each team has at least one team racing vehicle, which is already heavily modified, as well as covered in various sponsors and vinyls. To purchase most team vehicles, the player must be a part of the vehicle's team. Teams also possess team parts, modifications applicable to any vehicle that usually offer a substantial performance boost. As with vehicles, the player must be part of a team to purchase their parts.

Missions

The player may also play through missions set in various locations, which typically revolve around locating various objects in the area. Each location has multiple missions, which revolve around a single profession or storyline. Missions between areas are not intertwined, however, and are unrelated to the racing portion of career.

Tracks

Every track houses a circuit made up of checkpoints and a start/finish line. The rest of the environment is free to be explored at any time by the player. Tracks do not have any boundaries, either, and reaching the edge will repeat the area again, with the player at the opposite side of the map. A majority of the tracks are real world races and locations, including Costa Rica, the Tri Baja 300, and Egypt. Certain tracks also contain a hidden treasure chest, that awards the player a certain amount of money when driven through. Once collected, they will disappear permanently. There may be a glitch/bug where objects do not align with the graphics, causing your vehicle to seemingly crash into nothing.

Vehicles

There are a total of 112 selectable trucks and SUVs ranging from compact to full size from the following manufacturers. Ford was pulled from the game after licensing issues (present in the original 4x4 Evolution and the beta version of the sequel). Ford is said to have wanted too much for the use of their vehicles. There is a user-made pack available that includes these vehicles converted from 4x4 Evolution. Even though the game was released in 2001 for PC, there are still new people starting to try out Truck Making and Track Making.

Trucks in Multiplayer: If you downloaded a modded truck that another player does not have, they will see the vehicle that is on top of their POD.INI list.

Outside of career, the player may choose pre-modified vehicles from a set list.

4x4 Evo 2 Made Free

In late 2007, Terminal Reality's contract with the car manufacturers whose vehicles were used in the game expired. Thus making it illegal for them to sell the game. That made it so that the only way for 4x4 Evolution 2 to legally be gotten unused was by downloading the game from somewhere for free. The only catch was that the stock licensed vehicles could not be with it. So, TRI gave KC Vale exclusive rights to host the game on his website for free.

Multiplayer

Despite having been released over a decade ago, the online community still exists, with a fair number of players, and some moderators who manage chatrooms. Dedicated servers are long gone, but it is possible to host games over the internet, and join other player-hosted games. There has been a known issue with the multiplayer feature where it will read "missing *.sit" There is no known fix.

Tracks/Terrains

Team RCG (Really Crazy Gamers) have some of the most well known tracks for this game made by some of their members. RTMAC (Road To Max Air's Cabin, or Return To Max Air's Cabin) is probably the most well known track made by a player by the name of [RCG] Max Air. There are several ways to download tracks. The widely used way is by downloading them from a website. The more less used ways are by downloading ingame via direct link (e.g. http://site.com/track.pod). The two types of tracks are .POD and .LTE.

Jeep 4x4 Evolution 2

Jeep 4x4 Evolution 2 was a special demo/contest version that was available free on Jeep's website in 2002 for download near the time of release of 4x4 EVO 2. It contained a fairly restricted version of the game with loose recreations of real world off-road locations. Such as the Rubicon, and Moab. Codes were sent out by Jeep on a weekly basis in order to unlock new tracks, vehicles, and parts in the game.

This version did not have official custom track/vehicle support.

Of note this version did include features that did not make it into the final game. Features such as:
-Switchable diff locks
-Improved object collision detection
-Improved simulation of mud
-Proper simulation automatic transmissions (Torque converter, proper gear counts, fixes issues present using it in Evo 1, and 2)
-Buggy usage of winches in multiplayer

In 2006 or 2007, Jeep's contract with Terminal Reality whose game components used in Jeep 4x4 Evolution 2 expired. This shows that it was making it illegal for them to keep the mod up for download.

Reception

4x4 EVO 2 was met with mixed reception. GameRankings and Metacritic gave it a score of 65% and 69 out of 100 for the PC version; 61% and 59 out of 100 for the Xbox version; 56% and 56 out of 100 for the GameCube version; and 53% for the PlayStation 2 version.