One of the cooler graphical features is the amount of dirt and grime your cars build up over the course of a race, generally by the 2^nd lap they are quite filthy and driving through water will actually clean you car. But weirdly enough your cars never get dirty past the beltline (everything above the door handles). With all the dirt and gravel it would have been nice to see some dust, mud whatever appearing on your car. It’s almost too extreme. The top of your car is spotless at the end of the race while the bottom half is covered in mud. It’s just another one of these things that from the looks of it, was rushed. Another fairly glaring omission is an in car view. You’re limited to chase, hood and bumper cams, hood cam being the best one by far. With most racing games offering full detailed interiors these days it’s a feature that this game is sorely missing. The car exteriors are quite detailed and in general the color palette is bright and vivid. The frame rate is pretty solid I have run into a few instances where I encountered slow down but nothing that would detract from the game play. It’s a very pretty game but a lot of corners were cut unfortunately. The game looks very impressive at 720p HD resolutions though.

After the force feedback offered my next favorite feature is the sound in this game. I can tell a lot of effort went into it. Your ears will get a very nice aural experience if you have a 5.1 or even 7.1 surround sound setup. Everything in Sega Rally Revo has its own distinct sound and come across very lifelike. You can clearly hear your cars turbochargers and each car sounds different.  The environments each sound distinct from one another and in the safari levels in particular the various animals lining the track provide “colorful commentary”. In the canyon level you have jets flying over the course, very awesome indeed! Every terrain type has a distinct sound effect that’s very convincing. So when you’re in the safari stage for example and driving over that water filled mud bog you’ll hear the water splash under your car and then as soon as you hit dirt road you hear the rocks and bits being kicked behind you. If you are fortunate to have a good surround system, each wheel is represented by each of your 4 surround speakers so this will help you realize where exactly on the track you are it definitely adds to the overall experience. There is great separation in the audio the developers went out of their way in this respect.

Conclusion

So I’m sure you can tell that I’m on the fence about this game. There are some highs but they are balanced out due to some definite lows. I’m quite surprised that this was released at full retail price when clearly it’s not a “complete game”. You would have a much meatier experience playing DiRT but that’s a sim and this isn’t. With its minimalist approach with very few racing types, even fewer options there just isn’t much here to be honest. The game is fun in spurts, but it’s hard to imagine somebody playing this non stop for hours on end. It’s even more depressing to say that to get the full experience and to really enjoy Sega Rally Revo in its current state you should really invest in a force feedback wheel and a surround sound system. The PS3 version suffers due to the lack of rumble. It’s a shame this games predecessor is as just about as advanced as its successor, unfortunately not a real revolution as Sega would have liked you to believe.