Slip Slidin' Away
SEGA Rally Revo revives the classic arcade racer while providing a racing experience unlike anything else on the PS3.
Published: November 4, 2007
Again, though, I want to stress that the actual racing is sublime, especially in how your racing line will actually change with each lap around the course, finding or avoiding the ruts the cars have dug in the various surfaces to gain traction or bypass speed-sapping water-filled sluices. The deep, pronounced changes to the terrain do indeed look great, but it's the game's rock-solid framerate and fantastic sense of speed that tie it all together. Mid-race, you'll be hard pressed to actually find the time to tear your eyes of the track, but in classic fashion SEGA Racing Studio sprinkled each track (and indeed each lap around the track) with little scripted events like jets flying overhead or people following along on snowmobiles.
There are instances here and there of some less than stellar texture work, particularly in some of the rock formations that line the course, but by and large the tracks look great, the cars accumulate dust and mud and snow with some great visual pop and there's tons of variety to the locales you'll race in and even in the different parts of the same environment. Clearly the developers prided themselves on throwing multiple terrain types throughout the courses, and it shows. Broken tarmac looks just as good as loose sand along a beach, and though there's no real car damage (which is a bummer, admittedly), the way cars will wear away at slush on tarmac or carve deep channels in fresh powder all look universally great.
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the game's music. It certainly gets the job done, offering basic guitars mixed in with driving beats and just a touch of electro splash, but to be honest I was more interested in hearing how the cars reacted with the road, and after killing the tunes a few hours into the game and jumping into the cockpit view, I was rewarded with a full, room-filling, head-wrapping cloud of noise that really did give the different surfaces in the game an aural punch. With only the occasional backfire pop and the indecisive navigator (seriously, who says "maybe" when calling out a corner's severity?) to cut through the sound of sliding tires and humming engines, the game's sound effects really can carry things all by themselves.
SEGA Rally Revo successfully updates an arcade classic and brings it into next-gen with a high-speed, slide-heavy bang. Moreover, SEGA's Racing Studio managed to build a game that, even without the arcade heritage, feels like a honest-to-goodness PS3 franchise. While we certainly wouldn't mind seeing a Super GT update in the near future (mmmmm... airport track...), we'll gladly take a Revo sequel too. Next time, though, the game absolutely must pack in a little more in the way of extras and a deeper online mode. Even as good as the racing is here, it's really not $60 good all by its lonesome -- well, not for most anyway. Give it a rent and see if the driving model clicks with you, at which point I say jump in and hopefully I'll see you online.
