One of the highly touted features of this iteration of Sega Rally is the terrain deformation. I certainly give it to Sega I initially thought it was a gimmick but it does have its nuances. Leaving grooves all over the course and ultimately racing lines that actually effect how your car handles and gives you a few choices. Do you follow the line set by your AI opponents or set a new course and risk slowing down in the untouched terrain? It does work to a certain extent but when you get really good, it won’t matter too much. The tracks are made up several types of environments you’ll be driving over beat up roads, smooth tarmac, snow and ice, gravel and careen down twisty canyon roads. In some races even multiple types of terrain. Once you get accustomed to the tracks and terrain they do little to hinder your progress. There are 24 total tracks, where 15 of them are unique and 9 are in reverse. It won’t take you long before you know the proper racing lines, brake zones and so on. As stated before the best way to experience this game is with a force feedback enabled wheel.

Now unless you’re playing in time attack mode you’ll be driving with AI opponents in Championship mode or Quick race mode. It seems that a lot more than the archaic arcade physics have been included this time. The AI drivers aren’t very good to say the least. And from what I recall about the AI in the original Sega Rally doesn’t seem like much has changed here. They stick to their lines and yeah that’s about it. You will be knocked out of the way and screwed several times over during a race. Especially during the harder tracks nothing will hurt your chances more if you miss the apex in a turn because the AI drove right into you. It is very frustrating but it just doesn’t seem like a lot went into the AI routines of your opponents. Luckily you can race against a friend in split screen mode or online via PSN. But don’t expect complex match making all you get is very basic multiplayer options. Nobody seems to play though! I have yet to play a multiplayer match, due to PSN network errors and just not finding anybody else to play online.

This brings up another point once you boot up Sega Rally you begin to realize how sparse the options are, even the menus are extremely basic and the postcard theme seems a little out of place. The option menu text is about as basic as you can get, I’m talking Times new roman font size 10 in white on a blue background.  Even the instruction book is made up of a few black and white pages. Not inspiring stuff by any means. Don’t get me wrong though there is enough to keep you playing for some time. You’ll unlock everything from newer cars, different liveries, and newer tracks and so on. These can be accomplished by obtaining points in the championship mode, time attack and just driving the cars themselves. There just isn’t a significant amount of game play here that you haven’t seen or played before.  

Graphics and Sound

The visuals and in particular the sound are definite highpoints in the game. Graphically speaking you get very clean looking cars, nicely detailed tracks and the real time terrain deformation. Each track has a distinct look and feel to it and even though you’re driving so fast it’s hard to notice at first. I found myself watching the run through of the course before the race starts to just enjoy the look and sounds of the various environments. The problem is there just aren’t that many to begin with. You have Safari, Alpine, Canyon, Arctic and Tropical environments. Each one looks great though and are very detailed my favorites being the Canyon and Safari levels. But with only 5 environments it can get old quick so your mileage may vary.