SEGA Rally 360 demo

By Tom Bramwell Published 17 September, 2007

Two tracks, two cars.

SEGA has released a demo of SEGA Rally for Xbox 360 owners, weighing in at 691.82MB and available everywhere except Japan.

The demo consists of a pair of quick-race tracks - one from the dusty Canyon environment and one from the sandy and, er, woody Tropical one.

You can drive around them using the Mitsubishi Evo IX FQ3 and Subaru Impreza STi Spec C type RA to get a feel for the game's dynamic track surfaces and handling.

If you like it, you'll be able to pick it up on 360, PS3, PC or PSP on 28th September. Watch out for our review in the surprisingly near future!

And in the meantime, why not snack on our SEGA Rally PS3/360 first impressions or our SEGA Rally PSP first impressions? They ought to keep you going.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (33) Latest comment 4 years ago

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  • yegon #1 4 years ago

    Ooh, lets hope its better than the tawdry PS2 effort.

  • kissthestick #2 4 years ago

    60FPS?

  • Vroom #3 4 years ago

    Good team working on this. Should be good.

    The handling is the key.

  • The_Inquisitor #4 4 years ago

    It's got a lot to live up to. I can't wait to find out if it does.

  • le_Matt #5 4 years ago

    Downloading as i type this now...lookin forward for taking this one for a spin

    RIP Colin Mcrae

  • Darren #6 4 years ago

    I think the game is looking very, very promising from all those videos posted on the Marketplace and a couple of direct feed PS3 ones I've seen... definitely excited about this game. The early videos looked a bit rough with lots of tearing and slowdown but the later ones seem much more polished (obviously). Here's hoping the final game turns out as good as it undoubtedly looks...

  • seldom #7 4 years ago

    Jesus fluffytucker.

  • evild_edd #8 4 years ago

    ^^^
    Think you'll find his second name was actually Christ
    Jesus Fluffytucker doesn't quite have the same ring to it... ;0)

  • Stiggy #9 4 years ago

    @FluffyTucker

    Either you haven't heard the news or you are sickly ironic.

    I hope the former...

  • Lebowski #10 4 years ago

    Slip and slides like a giraffe on a frozen lake. Good once you get a handling for the controls though.

  • Caimbeul #11 4 years ago

    verdict on the demo yet anyone?

  • Darren #12 4 years ago

    @FluffyTucker - Why?

    PGR 4 runs at 30 fps and if it's anything like PGR 3 it won't make any difference to how it plays but the trade-off against 60 fps means that the devs can add lots more detail and make the game look prettier/do more effects. Ditto for SEGA Rally. Personally I'd rather have more detailed visuals in a racing game since it doesn't bother me whether they run at 30 or 60 fps. Take Forza 2 for example, it's a great game but the visuals are very underwhelming and it doesn't feel all that different to play from the first game to me despite the fact its framerate has been doubled.

  • Brogan #13 4 years ago

    evild_edd

    biggest laugh of the day s far, thanks.

  • woodnotes #14 4 years ago

    Doesn't feel at all like Sega Rally :(

  • T-Bag #15 4 years ago

    Well I can't even make the car go forward. It revs before the race starts then it wont move, it will only reverse?!

  • jiveguy #16 4 years ago

    "PGR feels like it's in treacle after playing Forza for a few hours, 30fps sucks"

    I don't get the 30/60 fps thing in driving games. In the game, surely you travel the same distance in 10 seconds if it was 30 or 60 fps. They just render half the frames. So how can it feel like treacle if you end up traveling the same distance over the same time? I'm in now way a driving game expert, so I've never felt any significant difference in the controls between two similar games with different frame rates.

  • Caimbeul #17 4 years ago

    "Who gives a fuck if it's 30fps or 60fps, get a fucking life and just play the game."

    Any racer worth his/her salt will appreciate the difference between 30 & 60fps. You say get a life but when it has an impact on how the game plays and indeed feels it is something to go on about.

    Take Madden 08 as an example previous iterations have run at 30fps. This year it is 60 and the difference in feel and in gameplay is noticable.

  • monkie_king #18 4 years ago

    The real eye-opener for me on the 30/60fps thing was Gran Turismo on PS1. When you completed it, it unlocked a special stripped-down version of one of the nighttime tracks that ran at 60fps (ok, 50fps as it was PAL). Felt very nice., very fluid and smooth.

    But the real shock was reverting from that to the normal 25fps tracks--really juddery and horrible.
    You feel disconnected from the action, somehow.

    I agree that it's not make or break for every type of racer, it depends on the feel of the game. For instance, I spent a good chunk of the weekend playing VC Wave Race 64, which runs at about 17fps in PAL, but is still fantastic fun. But other stuff, like the FZero series, and slick Sega racers, really demand the full framerate. It's what gives that "arcade" feel--see Outrun2 for instance.

    The dodgy framerate was death for Dreamcast Sega Rally 2 (though there was a cheat to lock it at 60 at the expense of most of the scenery). Fingers crossed this new one does enough elsewhere to get away with it.

    (edited a typo)
    Edited by 1 at 17/09/07 @ 12:49

  • Darren #19 4 years ago

    @Jiveguy - I'm the same, to me most racing games don't feel any different whether they're 30 or 60 fps. If I look hard enough, I can tell the difference in the speed the graphics update but it isn't particularly noticeable for me. PGR 3 felt slick and fast anyway despite being only 30 fps (I think the motion-blurring helped).

    However, I can feel the difference between 30 and 60 fps in sports game, i.e. EA's 360 sports games all run at 60 fps this year whereas they were 30 fps last and I can feel this in the game with the animation looking particularly smoother and more realistic. When it comes to racing games though, it is less apparent for me as it still takes me 1' 45 (or whatever) to complete a lap of Laguna Seca in Forza 1 and Forza 2 despite the higher framerate in the latter. ;)

  • BadBoyBonner #20 4 years ago

    Caimbuel - my review of the demo

    Graphics = Somewhere between Quantum-Redshift and Rally Sport Challenge 2 but at 720p

    + fear not, all the shots on EG that purported to be from the 360 with no antialiasing (where the PS3 had it an 360 didn't did seem strange) were either wrong or early build shots as it is anti-aliased.

    The graphics themselves seem to be hardly pushing the 360 at all, I do wonder why it is not at 60fps; hell even the Dreamcast could have a stab at 60fps while trying to run the game through some sort of horrible MS powered library.

    Seem to have taken a leaf out of the dev who did Excite truck on the Wii and used a kind of strange scan line (or stretch) on vegetation where every other line seems to be missing (perhaps it allows you to draw twice as much?) only really notice it at the start - once moving you can't tell.

    Rear-view mirror has a very weird vanishing perspective, seemingly to pinch the pop up that would have been evident into the centre of the screen - can't imagine you use it too much against CPU but may become invaluable on-line.


    Handling - hmm, maybe it's just me and my tastes in driving games have changed as I have become older, or they have changed as more takes on driving based physics engines become available; either way, it is an acquired taste, I’d best describe it as, ONE OF THOSE DRIVING GAMES WHERE INSTEAD OF SLOWING DOWN YOU JUST TURN A LITTLE MORE TO BLEED A BIT OF SPEED OFF - true to it's arcade roots I suppose.

    In fact if they had not of done it as they have I guess they would have just been using the Sega Rally name without making a Sega Rally game!

    While the rut's do make a bit of difference, it is not so pronounced as evidenced by me to myself, by selecting the car setup for tarmac and going a little faster than I did in the off road setting (obviously this was mainly off road otherwise there would have been no surprise at going faster!).

    Plus (in the demo at least) the ruts seems to be based on the course being at two surface levels. So it does not wear down to the point where your car may have gotten stuck or start to ground – which to me would have been far more interesting – where you could up it to say 20 laps an parts of the course became effectively unusable requiring a radically different driving line.

    Competent, as a demo strong 6 or just about crawling into the 7/10 category.
    Edited by 5 at 17/09/07 @ 14:20

  • mono_eric3 #21 4 years ago

    Its just amazing.

    Feels good, runs smooth as silk.

    Its just as much fun as the original but with extra stuff to keep you on the edge.

    Pure Bliss.

    OH, but the soundtrack is a wee bit sucky.

    Definitely a purchase.

    : D

  • Scrumhalf #22 4 years ago

    How many tracks does the full game have?

    The only thing really stopping me getting excited about it is the fear that there is only a limited number of tracks and cars.

  • mono_eric3 #23 4 years ago

    30 Cars

    16 Tracks across 6 Environments.

    [link url=http://rally.sega-eu rope.com/en/
    ]http://rally.sega-eu rope.com/en/
    [/link]


    : D

  • FooAtari #24 4 years ago

    Downloading now. But any racing fan, especially someone taht races simulations knows fps acutally does matter. It has an actual effect on the game technically.

    I'll see if I can digg some stuff up about it.
    Edited by 1 at 17/09/07 @ 13:55

  • tiddles #25 4 years ago

    Where does it say it's 30fps? The demo seems pretty slick - looks a lot like 60 to me...

    Plays really well, although I find the exterior view hard to control. Certainly going to keep the "blue skies in gaming" lobby happy!

  • brooza #26 4 years ago

    If only my 360 worked :(

  • Greebo #27 4 years ago


    "If only my 360 worked :("

    I'm with you there . . . feeling all left out now.

  • smurphs #28 4 years ago

    I had high hopes for this, but on the basis of the demo I'm not convinced. It definitely lacks the sense of speed of the original, they should have cut out some of the trackside detail in favour of this.

    The essence of ye olde sega titles was graphical simplicity - bright colours and simple textures. Just because the machine can handle this much detail doesn't mean a game like this should use it.

    The deformation is good, and has a distinct effect on handling, but the visual cues are useless - the car seems to glide over the track even as the handling bucks like a bronco. After Flatout UC the lack of damage seems a real step backwards too (I can't believe licensing is still an issue, Dirt didn't have any problems in this regard).

    The engine noises are pretty feeble too, especially when using bumper/bonnet-cam.

  • Darren #29 4 years ago

    @Smurphs - Which "original"? The Saturn original, which ran at 25 fps, or the inferior Dreamcast sequel, which ran (or rather attempted to run) at 60 fps? ;)

  • yegon #30 4 years ago

    I like!

    Chunky, colourful graphics, nice weighty power slides - Ill deffo be buying this. Some have said it doesn't feel like Sega Rally, I disagree - this feels more like the Arcade original and Saturn version than it's follow ups to me. A good thing since the original has always been my fave.

  • polymorph #31 4 years ago

    Any good with a wheel?

  • Jel #32 4 years ago

    Sorry guys, it's absolute rubbish. My old gamecube looked better. I appreciate rally games and arcade racers and I know this isn't supposed to be a sim like Dirt. Simply it just isn't fun, leagues away from the game I used to love in the arcade - perhaps a wheel would make all the difference?

  • Yaz #33 4 years ago

    30fps or 60fps isn't as important as some make out, and as some here have mentioned, it depends on the feels of the game.

    And this feel is reflected MORE by how often the controls are sampled and the rate the game runs internally rather than how often the visuals are updated. Naturally, the physics and controls run at least as fast as the framerate, making a 60fps game 'feel' smoother than a 30fps game, but this isn't always the case.

    In Forza for example, whilst the graphics were rendered at 30fps, the physics and controls ran at 180fps internally (180Hz). For Forza 2, the graphics are 60fps with the physics and controls running at 360Hz internally. Hence your controller is sampled 360 times per second and this is fed back into the game which is also running at 360 times per second. Hence the smooth 'feel' of the game, including Forza despite it's 30fps.

    For PGR3, the game ran at 30fps and the physics at 60Hz (I believe), and it's probably higher for physics and control in PGR4. Again, contributing to the 'feel' and responsiveness of the game.

    I'm not sure about Sega Rally, but if the game is running internally at 60Hz or more, then visuals at 30fps wouldn't really matter.
    Edited by 2 at 18/09/07 @ 12:14