Here are the stats:

• 78 rally stages
• 558 km of varied road conditions
• 13 countries to race in
• 50 trophies to compete over

WRC will be released in the UK on October 8th, PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. Track news on the official WRC game website or follow the Milestone’s developer blog.

Screenshots:

What is it?

Arcade style rally racing.

Is it fun?

Yes.

Is it worth the money? £39.99

Yes.

Why?

I almost need to review Sega Rally twice. Once with the standard 360 controller and once with the set-up that Sega provided us when we visited them in August. Why? Well, playing Sega Rally whilst sitting in a Sparco racing seat, with force-feedback steering wheel (and pedals) I was in driving heaven. It’s perfect. You can feel every bump as your car drives over all the track deformations and as it power slides around another lovely corner.

Unsurprisingly, without the steering wheel you do feel a little bit more disconnected from your car. The 360 controller is never going to recreate force-feed back, so its really a minor gripe in the scheme of things. But now I’ve tasted Sega Rally force-feedback style I want more. Lots more. Now if only I could persuade Sega to lend me all the kit….

Anyway Sega Rally is really fun to play. All the cars handle well and look beautiful. Mmm, car pr0n. There are plenty of tracks spread over a variety of different environments to test all your driving skills. There are 5 other AI cars in each race to fight with, and Gran Turismo style driving (i.e. dive down the inside at each corner) proves surprisingly effective. So they aren’t too hard to beat, but will put up challenge if you don’t drive well. In particular there are a couple of Alpine tracks that look absolutely stunning whilst your driving, something I never really experienced with DIRT (Sega Rally’s closest competitor).

Whilst on the subject of DIRT they are quite different games. Yes, they are both “rally” games, but Sega Rally is all about the arcade experience with its quick pick-up and play ideology. Where as DIRT is a more nuts and blots rally game, with damage, accurate stages and 1 car vs the track gameplay.

As far as multiplayer is concerned, I thoroughly enjoyed racing against other people via Xbox Live. The arcade style game play works really well for those quick 3 lap races with up 5 other people at once. It’s also very easy to find available races, something that I found much harder to do in DIRT. As all the cars are nicely balanced in terms of power and handling it really is a test of driver skill and not machinery.

In summary:

It’s a fun, pick up and play arcade racer. What more could you want?

Screenshots:

Sega Rally is out now on PS3, Xbox 360, PC and PSP.

There’s a Sega Rally demo available on the Xbox Live Marketplace right now (unless you live in Japan). It weighs in at 692Mb.

The demo consists of:

• 2 tracks – Canyon 2 and Tropical 2
• 2 cars – Mitsubishi Evo IX FQ3 and Subaru Impreza STi Spec C type RA

These are 2 out the 4 tracks that we got to play at Sega’s HQ last month. I’m happy to report that the handling of the cars still feels pretty good when using the 360 controller. Also they’ve sorted out the AI as I snagged 1st place on both tracks. Last time I played, the first 2 cars were impossible to beat.

Check out the demo and let us know if you agree (or not) with our 10 things you should know about Sega Rally (Revo) post. Oh, and there should be a PS3 demo coming out in the next few weeks, minus rumble but with SixAxis control.