RC Revenge Pro

"Wow. They had a winning formula with Re-Volt. So what the hell went wrong here?"

Introduction
First things first. I've never been a racing game enthusiast, but a quirky little toy car racer name Re-volt on the Sega Dreamcast captured my attention. Re-volt was a brilliant little racer with plenty of value for money as well as being extremely fun right up until the end. Then they made RC Revenge Pro and I knew that I had to get it. It was a game made after Re-Volt so I thought it was bound to be better........ Man, was I wrong.

Visuals 3/10
For a PS2 game the visuals are abysmal and aren't much better than what a Ps1 could produce. They seemed to place a cartoony emphasis over the more realistic and sharper looking environments they did in Re-volt. The colours clash all the time and sometimes it's hard to see where you're meant to be going next.

The car models are poor and none of them stand out when compared to its predecessor. I remember the likes of even the weakest cars in Re-volt (Phat Slug), but even the best cars in RC Revenge lack originality.

Visuals are unappealing and bland. They tried to do so much more with the themed levels, but they just felt wrong. RC Revenge is one ugly ducking.

Audio 3/10
Poor, forgettable and weak. They tried to fit each tune with a tracks certain theme, e.g. Horror World will have a spooky theme with evil laughs to boot. All themes are lame. Believe me you won't even care.

Gameplay 2/10
Re-volt played extremely well. RC Revenge has shocking controls. Touch a wall and you'll turn, are caught in a wall, ride up a wall and land on your back. Make one mistake and you'll end up coming last. RC Revenge also has lengthy loading times, they aren't huge, but with a game with so much already going against it, you think they would have gotten this right.

As mentioned before the hideous track designs make it hard for you to work out where you are going, add frustratingly AI cars and you have an all round nightmare shocker of a game. How they managed to mess up a perfect formula is beyond me, but they managed it.

Replay Value 4/10
If you manage to get past the first few races ( not just because they're hard, but also because the game is just so very bad) then you can unlock a few more cars and tracks, race in time trial, against another player and then there is the track editor.

Conclusion
I loved Re-Volt so they already had me buying RC before it was released. I don't know why they changed the formula, visuals or the controls. They took everything that was great about Re-volt and threw them in the bin. Then they created this horror. RC Revenge is bad on almost every level that it becomes unplayable. It's ugly, has horrid controls, the computer cheats and the background are just very boring. If you must have a RC racing game, get a Dreamcast and a copy of Re-volt because that is a brilliant little racer with plenty of replay value. Even if you see this for a pound or a dollar, just ignore it, as you'll be having a terrible experience.

Pros and Cons
+ There are no redeeming qualities present.
- It's ugly.
- It plays really badly
- It really isn't very much fun

If you liked this (highly unlikely) you'll like :

Re-volt (Dreamcast Version (don't get the PS1 version as it fails in comparison)

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 05/18/09

Game Release: RC Revenge Pro (EU, 12/01/00)