Oct. 9, 2007

Way back in 1995, Sega Rally Championship's innovation was its varying friction on the different surfaces. It's a gimmick Sega Rally Revo (plain old Sega Rally in the UK) has run with, with a dozen different surfaces, all of which can be torn up, making subsequent laps entirely unlike the first. Like Motorstorm on the PS3, tracks made by the cars remain in the mud - but unlike Motorstorm, those tracks can be dug deep, leaving whopping great trenches all over the place if you rack up enough laps on the same racing line. A lot's been made of the terrain deformation, but that's not what makes this game so very good.

Proving that the world is a weird place, Colin McRae: Dirt offers fine rallying, while Sega Rally is far better at the dirty business. As you tear up the track, much of it ends up coating your car - mud and dust clinging to your bumpers, with trips through the wet washing the grime off. It's the slick design that makes Sega Rally look so seamless, rather than just a hundred billion polygons - but although a lot has been made of the graphics, that's not what makes the game, either.