![]() ![]() Knowing that you're not going to roll the car, plunge to your doom down a ravine, or spin out every five seconds encourages a fearless approach. You can finally drive how you've always wanted to in a Rally game: without fear, and with the sense that you're fully in control. With such a responsive, drift-happy handling model, you can afford to swing out your back end and launch yourself at hilarious angles into hairpins and blind 90 degree turns with thrilling abandon. As you return on your second or third lap, you'll not only notice your own tracks (doubtlessly where you veered wildly off), but notice an appreciable handing difference, both in the amount of traction afforded to your car and the vibration transmitted through the pad. Whether you plough through the mud, churn up the snow, scatter the sand, or coarse through the loose shingle, your tracks are laid down - as are everyone else's. As SEGA has been at pains to point out ever since it first demoed the game, dynamic track deformation is The Big Thing about its next generation reinvention of SEGA Rally the premise being that as you churn up the course, it willl affect the handling conditons for when you return for the subsequent lap.Īlthough the tech demo certainly looked impressive, to a degree we couldn't help wonder whether it was a spurious PR claim as to how much it affects the driving. Of course, purists have every right to whinge about this (purists always whinge about everything - damn you purists!), but SEGA Rally isn't a simulation: it's an arcade racing game which focuses on the furious charge of forward momentum, and how well you can read the ever-changing track conditions. Inspired in no small part by Criterion's school of thought, crashing into the side of the course invariably bounces you back into play, and this crucial, fundamental piece of design keeps you moving forward, keeps you at high speed, keeps you in the race even when you're driving like a complete psycho. That's not a dirty word you just read: it's an absolute piece of piss to play - not because it lets you win (it doesn't), but because the handling's so bloody intuitive, and because you're not constantly being penalised for snagging your car on a pebble-sized obstacle on the side of the track. Reading between the lines, one of the main reasons SEGA Rally works from the off is that it's really easy and instinctive. Easy like a Sunday morning Aw, it's our old friend Mr jaunty camera angle again! A driving game that's not a complete slog to get into? A game which places fun front and centre from the moment you pick up the pad. Die hard, old school veterans will be astonished how well SEGA's new UK studio has nailed what was required, and newcomers will admire how fresh it all feels. It really is the perfect quick-fix driving experience that anyone can play a fabulous looking game which requires zero explanation, with short, furiously intense three lap races that keep you coming back for more. That last paragraph neatly sums up why this modern reinvention of SEGA Rally works so well. SEGA hasn't.Īrcade games should be about providing the perfect quick fix to the passer-by easy to learn, hard to master, pick-up-and-play goodness with a single line of explanation and a hungry coin-slot. All too often it's lazily bandied around to sell new console games by people who seem to have forgotten what it actually means. Arcade gaming: it's an evocative term loaded with promise and suggestion, yet one that's long since lost its cutting edge relevance and magnetism since its heyday.
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