![]() The structure of each race event is unforgiving – each is comprised of three courses, with points awarded based on your place in each, and no restarts. ![]() It’s an approach that doesn’t quite work. Instead, the challenge is in escalating difficulty and in adjusting to the different styles of rally cars across the different classes. Each of the five settings (Safari, Alpine, Canyon, Tropical and Arctic) only has a handful of courses, each of which can be raced forwards and backwards. ![]() There’s a lot to be going on with, in other words, although it’s a little deceiving. Within each of those are four leagues and within each of those are three sets of three races. Revo makes a strong first impression, then, and follows up on it with a daunting-looking Championship mode, which is broken into three broad classes: Premier, Modified and Masters, each of which has its own sets of cars. It also has a direct impact on gameplay, as sticking to the ruts theoretically means you have more traction and are thus faster. The cars carve out paths in the dirt, mud and snow, which – MotorStorm aside – was a pretty mindblowing effect at the time and still looks good today. Revo has another technical wow factor, and that’s deformable terrain. Some of the courses in this game look impossibly good – I particularly love how well SEGA Rally Revo realises its Tropical and Alpine environments. The handling is immediately accessible and fun, the sense of speed is excellent, and the visual design is just fantastic. It’s clear that SEGA Racing Studio had a very clear vision for how this game should look and how it should feel, and it really captures the essence of the series. Kick it in the guts, Barry!SEGA Rally Revo may have ultimately been an ill-fated project, but it’s probably my favourite game in the series. The days of paying full price for slight arcade thrills, after all, were long gone. It was a busy time for racing fans, and while Revo actually tried to package up a pretty sizeable offering, its arcade heritage meant that it was very much reliant on gamers being willing to take a leap of faith in the game’s value. Arcade racing, then, had morphed into something more involved (and open-world in many cases), while series’ like Forza and Gotham had set high standards for content. Burnout Paradise was just around the corner too. In terms of the racing landscape, SEGA Rally Revo was going up against the likes of Test Drive Unlimited, Need for Speed: Carbon and MotorStorm from 2006, and Forza 2, Colin McRae: Dirt, Project Gotham Racing 4 and Need for Speed: ProStreet in 2007. SEGA Racing Studio was the first of several high profile studios to close or collapse over the next three years, including Free Radical (which was acquired by Crytek), Bizarre Creations and Realtime Worlds. The closure was a rude shock, and reflective of both the competitive climate for racing games and of the development scene in the UK. A small team also stayed within SEGA, becoming a Technology Group. Shortly after SEGA’s announcement, Codemasters acquired the studio, keeping on 40 of the 60+ staff members. Reviews were generally favourable ( I gave it 8.8, saying it was “close to a perfect reinvention of the series.”) but sales figures mustn’t have been, as SEGA announced the studio’s closure in April 2008 – before SEGA Rally 3’s arcade debut in late June. Revo was developed in tandem with SEGA Rally 3 for arcades and was released in late 2007 on PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and PSP. “Sadly not, but they gave it a good crack.
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