Star Wars Racer Revenge

"Good, but not great. One of the best, but not even close to the best. Hmm, we’ve got a quandary here."

The latest in a long, seemingly never ending, line of Star Wars games. This could easily have been the greatest of them all, although it’d be pretty hard to top Starfighter, with just a little more spit and polish. As it is, it lacks a certain element that holds it back.

Premise: It has been eight years since Anakin Skywalker defeated Subulba in the pod-racing championships; now both of them are back and rarin’ to go. The pod-racers are bigger, faster, and more deadly. Apparently Subulba also has sadistic henchmen and a murderous vendetta.

GRAPHICS: 7.8
After hearing all the fanfare of Racer Revenge, when I took it out and saw the blue back (not DVD) I knew I was in for a graphical downfall.
It seems like Lucas Arts is having a tough time using the amazing power of the PS2. This might have passed for acceptable last year, but we’re entering the big leagues now. Play time’s over and it’s time to get with the program.

All the terrain that you race over is ordinary generic skins, there’s no depth or detail. The sun glare effect was cool in 2001, but isn’t amazing anymore. The dust trail from racing over sand is all right. The smoke trail from damaged engines is kinda cool since you don’t see too many smoke trails in video games, but it gets old after a while. The shadows are pixilated, what’s up with that? The whole thing has a very limited draw distance, it’s kind of annoying when a thousand feet down the track a mountain will suddenly morph into being.

The only good things about this are the water and the characters.
The water looks great, even though it’s only used twice in the game. Then the mist that flies off when a racer goes over it is even better. If you’ve got several racers in front of you, the mist gets blinding and it’s mainly guesswork as to which way you’re going, which I think is just the coolest, game makers sometimes make things like that too easy, but not here!
The characters look just like their counterparts in the movie, even Anakin looks great. If I wasn’t paying attention I might mistake him for the actor from Episode 2.

SOUND: 7.0
Remember the pod-race in Episode 1? The roaring engines? All the excitement?
Well, in here the pods sound more like my neighbors Volvo then anything else.
The only time music appears is when you ram into someone, but when you’re way ahead of the pack that’s kind of pointless, and it makes it extremely boring.

The announcer makes the most ludicrous comments, and even at that he doesn’t talk often enough!
There was this one racer whose laugh was driving me crazy trying to figure out where I had heard it! I finally watched the movies again and found out it was that stupid laughing thing that sits next to Jaba in Return of the Jedi! Now, ripping stuff outta the movie I think is just inexcusable considering what they have at their disposal.

The metal crunching sound and the cheering is good, but that’s about it.

GAMEPLAY: 7.6
In one game Lucas Arts tells us pod-racing has been outlawed and has disappeared, in this one they tell us it’s continued to grow in popularity, what are they tryin’ to pull?

Something I was shocked at after hearing all this talk of evil henchmen and murderous plans is that there wasn’t even ONE cut-scene. What’s the point of mentioning it if it’s not brought up after that?

The play itself is the same tried and true formula that’s been done a hundred times.
Win races to earn money, earn more money by knocking people out of the race. Use money to buy upgrades to your pod-racer at Wato’s Junk Shop after each race. Finish third or above in each race to advance, finish first in the last race to win.

Finish first in races to unlock new drivers and art galleries. Anything you don’t unlock the first time through you do the second. They really should have spread out the unlocking opportunities instead of bunching them together. Like rewarding you with an unlocked item for finishing first in a series of races instead of individual ones.

The pit droids are up to their usual antics in Wato’s shop, and just as cute as ever. There are plenty of shortcuts in the tracks, but after you learn them all it makes the races super simple and easy to win.

You can use boost to easily get ahead of your opponents, but if you use to much you can quickly overheat your engines and blow up. You can repair your engines from overheating or from ramming other racers at any time you wish, but it slows you done a lot.

The blur effect from using the boost is… interesting. When you’re going into a tight turn at 400mph with five other racers trying to ram you to pieces, this is not the time for things to go all blurry.

However, the best thing about the whole game is the control scheme. You can change it so that you use both Analog sticks to control the pod-racer just like you would if you were actually driving one, the left stick controls the left engine and the right sick controls the right engine. That is just SO much fun!
The next best thing is the camera angles, being put in the drivers seat is a rare treat in video games. You can also position it between the engines or up behind the racer at two different heights.

This is pretty much just a once through game, the playtime is only limited to how long it takes to race 13 races with 18 different drivers.

REPLAY VALUE: 6.4
Like I said, this is a once through game, unless you’re crazy about pod-racing.

In fact by the third career it gets out and out boring since there’s absolutely no variation other than the driver you pick.

OVERALL SCORE: 7.2
This is a rental without question. In fact, you might want to avoid this one all together.

If you really want to buy it, don’t spend any more than $15-$20 for it.

***maybe I shoulda rented Batman Vengeance instead of this after all***

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/20/02, Updated 02/20/02