Sebastien Loeb Rally Evo – Review

It’s typical isn’t it! Just like waiting for a bus and then three arrive all at the same time, it’s the same with Rally games on current gen. All in quick succession, we’ve just had WRC5, now Sebastien Loeb Rally Evo, and soon to arrive, Dirt Rally.

Italian developers Milestone have quietly put together a nice portfolio of racing games, with the hugely underrated and in my opinion, best “pure racing experience” on current gen consoles with the Motogp 14 and 15 games. This time however they have turned to the 4 wheeled variety of Rally cars, and what better way to dive into this genre than with the face and name of arguably the best rally driver ever seen, Sebastien Loeb.

Kicking things off, you get to create your own team to run and names of co drivers etc, before you can actually get to race anything. It’s a lost art these days, with overly complicated games, but the menu system of SLRE ( Sebastien Loeb Rally Evo ) is as easy as pie!

Once done, you can dive straight into a quick mode, career mode, SL history, or multiplayer. Career mode is the main staple here and you frankly get a stupendous amount of content. 5 decades of Rally cars, 8 venues each with 8 stages ranging from 4.5 km to over 10 km long, with some Rallycross and elimination races thrown in for good measure too. On top of that there are some special stages like Pikes Peak. You also get to re live the moments in SL’s career from the SL History section, where a short introduction video from the man himself explaining, why the race you’re about to take part in was so important to him. You get to find out he grew up in a small town where all the boys wanted to be gymnast’s ?!?!?

In the main single-player game though the venues themselves vary from the snowy cold of the arctic Swedish trails to the desert hot, red dusty outback of Australia.

Each setting, is extremely authentic, and mapped from the very real sections of the real rally courses themselves. The graphics do let things down though as it hardly looks anything more detailed than last gen, not current gen. So much so in fact I popped Dirt2 back in the PS3 to compare, and it’s shocking how little things have improved from that game to this, if at all. Dirt2 ran better, looked better, sounded better. There is a god awful amount of texture pop in before the race gets going here in SLRE, and the replays stutter awfully. Be that as it may the artwork makes up for it and when blasting through close overcast roads at various times of the day or night, the lack of detail is lost anyway, in a blur as your whizzing past.

Normally graphics or lack thereof don’t bother me as graphics are not the be all and end all of a game. However, when the control of the car differs depending on the type of surface you’re driving over, and you can’t tell by looking that you’re now running on wet tarmac or mud because the graphics don’t help, then yes i do have issue.   

Let’s not beat about the bush, the game is bloody difficult and not just because of the odd graphical let down. Rally enthusiasts rejoice because your boat has come in. If you wanted a hardcore rally game then this is it. Gameplay is rock solid hard, like no other experience.

The tracks themselves are extremely thin at times, undulate in many different directions at once, twist and turn and are frankly a nightmare to navigate. It’s an achievement to get to the end of a section let alone post a decent time! The key to this game though is the physics and the gameplay with them. This game is a simulator through and through and for the most part the physics are very good but there are times where you sit back, watch your car tumble and smash to bits and think, that shouldn’t have happened. A slight graze of a barrier sometimes explodes you off it like a cannon ball. At times your suspension absorbs a bump, other times they seem to launch you like a bouncy castle!

Braking was also a bit random, and at times the brakes work too well, others it’s like they haven’t been applied at all. This could be down to the surface of the road, but as has been mentioned before, it’s hard to tell what surface you’re driving over at times.  

Then there is the multiplayer… sigh… If you’ve not gathered so far, the game is hard enough as it is to keep the car on the track and post a decent time. Multi-player though frankly is a harsh unforgiving beast. Praise be it does actually work really well ( something Milestone games have issues with, looking at you Motogp games ) and the main events on multiplayer are point to point racing.

Players meet up in a lobby, vote for the region to play, and then vote for the section to drive. The issue comes from two things. One being the scoring system that rates driver’s skill and the other is the races themselves.

In the race themselves, other players ghost through each other, but, and this is the big issue here, because the graphic of the ghost car is so solid, you can’t actually see through them, and therefore can’t actually see the road ahead! When the road is tiny enough as it is and then add on top you can’t see through the supposed “ghost” cars, this just makes it impossible.  You can just follow the car in front to know where to go, but of course if you do that and they come off, then so will you!

The second issue, is how demoralizing the points system is. You start off with 1000 points to show your skill level. If you win races that goes up, if you don’t it goes down. If you disconnect or leave a lobby then it goes down a lot.

My issue with this is, there were many times in a field of 6 to 8 drivers, i actually came 2nd or third, and thought i did well. But because i was so far behind the person who won the race, i actually LOST skill points still! Another time my car came off the road and got stuck off the track so i left the lobby. That cost me a huge amount of points. All the multiplayer is telling me is win, or get hammered !

You can also race normal Rallycross races in multiplayer too, but these are standard fare.

There’s more things i could point at that weren’t right with the game, like the annoying co driver voice and the fact his notes didn’t always add up to what was coming up ahead, a left 4 actually being an left 3 ( this makes a big difference believe me ) and that his timing, which you can and absolutely must adjust, wasn’t great.

So you might think with all this nitpicking i’m going to hammer the game overall. Well i’m not, in fact far from it.

Conclusion

So why after all the negative comments before is this a must play, must buy game for any rally fan. Well, consider the issues i’ve mentioned. Random physics, inconsistent driver notes, unable to see what surface you’re driving over. Aren’t these issues, deliberate or not, that REAL rally drivers have to cope with ?

Then when you add to that, the gaming sensation of actually nailing a section in a race, in singleplayer or multiplayer, where it all comes together, is utterly thrilling. It’s thrilling because you know the elements the game threw at you are hard, yet you mastered it. Never before have i felt a hell yeah moment just by nailing down a section of 4 turns in 50 yards. Then multiply that over a course 10 KM long, the concentration and energy it took, and you win the race by less than a second !  Quite simply you are exhausted from concentrating so hard for so long, but exhilarated all the same.

This game has opened my eyes up to just how incredibly difficult the real ability to Rally drive competitively is.

It’s a hardcore Rally game for rally enthusiasts, that is difficult to master, hard to pick up, hard to play, but a thing of absolute beauty because of it. Milestone have created a love letter to the genre, in the same vein Polyphony Digital have with the GT series or Turn 10 have with Forza.  

SLRE is like that girl you didn’t fancy when you were young, but when you see her 10 years later find she’s turned into an absolute stunner. Yes SLRE is rough around the edges in many places, but, at it’s heart, where it counts, and if you give it enough time to come to you and show you all it has to offer, it’s the most gorgeous thing you could have wished for if you wanted to experience the thrill of Rallying. SLRE is THE Rally game for the true Rally enthusiast.