Sega Rally Revo for PSP Reviews & Ratings by IGN

One of the most venerable and beloved racing franchises in arcade history is no doubt SEGA Rally, the offroad racing series that has you traveling sideways just as often as you are straight. While rally racing games, in most cases, have a much steeper learning curve than standard racing titles, SEGA's series has always been readily accessible while also being difficult to master, drawing in both the casual and hardcore gaming crowds.



The franchise has now been revitalized with the release of SEGA Rally Revo, the first stateside appearance of the series in years. The game is a tried-and-true arcade racer through and through, with simplistic menu selections and a "keep going" attitude to pretty much its entire layout.



Let it be known that although the game also hit the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC this week, and though the fundamentals and general setup are pretty much identical, the PSP version is a different game in that it features entirely different tracks and a much more forgiving control scheme. This makes sense as the PSP version was outsourced to Bugbear Entertainment, the studio behind the technically-impressive FlatOut series. Regardless of differences, the result is that this is a refined racing experience, one that is visually quite impressive and makes damn fine use of the PSP's hardware.



Control-wise, this is very much like SEGA Rally titles of the past in that you'll find yourself sliding around turn after turn. However, the PSP version doesn't require the skill level that the console titles do in that while your car will lose traction and you'll skid through turn banks, you still have quite a bit of steering control and aren't simply working to keep your car on the track. It's also quite forgiving, as bumps into walls don't mean a detrimental loss of speed. In fact, you can hug the outside rails of turns a fair bit without giving up too much placement, though you'll need to steer clear of these in order to gain placement.



As we mentioned, this is about as classic a SEGA Rally game as could be, which applies to how the AI works as well. When a race starts, the AI jets ahead and completely burns you at the start. As the race progresses, you'll catch up to them, usually one at a time, and work to overpower them. Once they're behind you, they'll fall off rather quickly, meaning that you rarely have to fend off would-be passers and only focus on doing the passing yourself.



The result of this is that the game is generally quite easy. Once you've made it past one car, the next seems to slow down to allow you to catch up, and once you're past him, you're home free. We would generally win races by a good five seconds or so, sometimes even 10 seconds or more, and usually we'd be untouched and leading the pack during the final lap. That doesn't mean that it isn't fun, but we do wish there were more of a challenge to be found.



What's fun here is that the track design is great and goes very well with the controls, featuring plenty of widely banked turns mixed with tight runs that'll have you snaking in and out of curves. The tracks themselves all feature rather unique scenery, providing for plenty of variety and how and where you'll be racing. There's a lot of character to the tracks, which is rather important in a game like this.





Unfortunately though, we have issues with a few of the presentation aspects. Firstly, the load times are rather long. Once you're in a race, you won't have to reload if you wish to restart the competition, but getting in there can take a good 30 seconds or so. But more so than this is the method of car selection. You'll be able to choose from anywhere between four and a dozen or so cars at a time (depending on how many you've unlocked), though there are no stats to be seen anywhere. Were the cars all roughly the same this wouldn't be a problem, but some of them are noticeably better than others. We'd enter a race and have a problem catching up to the leader, but then try again in a different ride and take him over halfway through the second of three laps. It's all a bit of trial and error, unfortunately.



On a similar note, you can choose between three different types of tires before each race, one for pavement, one for gravel or compact dirt and one for the loose soil. While there are obvious differences in their performance levels, there's not much of a reason to choose anything other than the tires designed for pavement as they're easily the fastest and you're still able to take turns perfectly fine. And as we mentioned, even if you can't quite hold on to the really tight turns, you don't wind up losing a lot of speed when you hit the rails.





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