Sega Rally Revo review

Barring Gamespot's "history" lesson on the Sega Rally series, the
reviewer makes it abundantly clear that he thinks down upon arcade style
gaming. Having only a "scant" number of tracks and cars, when compared
to modern racers with entirely different focuses, is not a deficiency
for Sega Rally Revo. Reviewers have said in the past that a good game
manages 10-30 seconds of "fun" and then manages to repeat it over and
over. Similarly, while Sega themselves lost their magic years ago, Sega
Racing Studio clearly understands what Sega racers are supposed to be.

Sega racers, like all Sega games before the PS2's days, were
always easy to pick up and play and rewarding to master. Perhaps more
significantly, Sega racers always gave the player a feeling of being on
the bleeding edge of losing control, and yet you could control it all.
This is true of the Outrun, Daytona and Sega Rally games. The fact that
multi-player was always a component of these games was not lost on Sega
Racing Studio.

In Sega Rally, the game gives this dialectic of chaos and control
by means of the powerslide mechanic, and the unique physics of how the
tires interact with the road. While a driving simulation would punish
the player for oversteering by spinning the car and stopping the action,
Sega Rally emphasizes flow and speed. Gamers with a bent toward Gran
Turismo, Forza, and Toca will have a knee-jerk reaction to this and
assume that the gameplay is "shallow." This sort of narrow mindedness
is what makes modern gameplay so limited. It is possible to spin your
car in Sega Rally, but the player really has to screw up for this to
happen.

The game does punish the player for hitting walls, but it does
everything it can to keep the action flowing without giving the player
an easy road. Only a head on collision with a track side object will
result in a full stop. Otherwise the car will careen off the object,
and the player will have to struggle to regain control and down shift
one to three gears to get back into the race. Aside from steering clear
of the walls, Sega Rally adds the dynamics of traction with various
types of surfaces. So, while the player is attempting to make a turn,
or speed up on the straightaways, dodging water puddles or staying on
asphalt is also part of the game. The challenge comes in from trying to
do all of this while avoiding the other (ghost) cars. While the other
cars are not AI by modern standards, they do present a challenge by
being both obstacles and progressively challenging times to beat.

Failing to understand this gameplay dynamic will result in the
assumption that the "fun" that Sega Rally Revo presents is limited to
how many tracks and cars are available. The dynamic of differing
controls between cars and memorizing different tracks is, at best, of
tertiary importance to a proper arcade racer. In fact, adding more
tracks and cars can be a detriment to a game like this. DVD generation
game players are already predisposed to think that added content equates
to more enjoyment. In a game like Sega Rally it can be quite the
opposite, as the player will have to break the flow of the action and
speed to learn each new track and car. In a game that presents such a
great effort to *not* break the flow or the speed, additional tracks and
cars are of limited importance.

In article <2PrSi.191$_64.74@trnddc02>, Scott H <weaponx013 RemoveThis @yahoo.com> wrote:
> Barring Gamespot's "history" lesson on the Sega Rally series, the
>reviewer makes it abundantly clear that he thinks down upon arcade style
>gaming. Having only a "scant" number of tracks and cars, when compared
>to modern racers with entirely different focuses, is not a deficiency
>for Sega Rally Revo. Reviewers have said in the past that a good game
>manages 10-30 seconds of "fun" and then manages to repeat it over and
>over. Similarly, while Sega themselves lost their magic years ago, Sega
>Racing Studio clearly understands what Sega racers are supposed to be.
<snip>

This is your review, Scott? Good call on how Sega dishes out the fun
without breaking the challenge. I think it's worth mentioning that the
rally is a form of racing enjoyed more by Europeans and Japanese than it
is by Americans, since we don't participate in the WRC as a country. Which
is strange, since there are at least two American manufacturers who
compete (fielding a Spaniard and a Frenchman as drivers.)

How come there hasn't been more chatter about this game around these
parts? The UK groups have some small amount of conversation about Sega
Rally Revo, but everywhere else it's pretty dead silent.

-KKC, who owns an Impreza on the strength of his rally fanboy tendencies.
--
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