Milestone, the developers behind Sébastien Loeb Rally EVO are very known for their race game simulators. Over the years they released popular race games like RIDE, MotoGP 13 & 14, MXGP and WRC 4. For the record: everything you see/ play is all developed by Milestone: the artwork, design, R&D, … etc. under the supervision of one of the most successful WRC driver of all times namely Sébastien Loeb.
Can a professional rally racer make its way to the top charts of rally racing simulation games? Let’s find out!
Can his experience bring everything to the table?
This successful WRC driver of all time was very happy to be the face of this rally game. He really hopes to bring a realistic rally experience to gamers based on his own know-how. Thanks to Milestone, he can bring his ideas to the table and the developers can convert his understanding into digital and yet real rally simulations. People who enjoy watching rally and ever hoped to become the driver behind this mean machine on the dirt road, will experience this first hand in the real world throughout this game.
Milestone really sees the big picture with this game and they want to cover almost everything of this rally world to give you the full experience. The game contains over 50 car models from over 20 manufactures and all these cars are perfectly created replicas of existing power beasts. There’s room for all the “keen on the eye” kind of cars like the Citroën C-Elysée WTCC or even the Audi R8 LMS Ultra. All these cars ready to burn some rubber on a collection of tracks which can be spanned over a distance of 300 kilometers.
Be your own Rally race legend…
When you start up the game, you’ll be able to choose from 3 distinctive game modes: career, LOEB experience or quick mode. Career is all about making your own career in other words start from the bottom and earn your way to the top”! This mode contains different race categories to choose from. There’s Debut, Junior, Masters, Vintage, New era, Iconic, Open and Extreme. Most of these categories are self-explanatory. Each category can only be played with a certain selection of cars based on their performance. You start off with a simple “wanna be a rally car” kind of vehicle. As you progress, you’ll earn credits and reputation which allows you to buy new cars and climb your way up on the world ranks. All these tracks take you around the world like Australia, France, Mexico, Finland, … and a lot more for you to discover. There’s also a “LOEB events” section which can be entered when you’ve reached enough reputation on the world ranks. This is all about racing and beating the scores of your fellow rally racers with special events.
Stand out in your own career or relive his!
If previous mode doesn’t do the trick, you can always quit your own career and relive this 9 times World Championships legend. This experience makes you re-race his tracks and feel his thrilling victories from 1998 to 2013. The mode has different episodes, kinda like a campaign mode, where you get to race all of his tracks and BE ” Sébastien Loeb”. Each episode contains a bit of information about this specific period of Sebastien’s life. This mode tries to give his view on certain things with the help of interviews and old photos. Race with replicas straight out of his own garage. May the Sébastien Loeb be with you!
The last mode is “quick” mode which let’s you start up a rally race with one of your own vehicles in a certain race mode. You can choose between rally, rallycross, Pikes Peak or time trial. Rally contains different competitions like single stage, single rally or rally championship. Some competitions take longer to complete than others, so it’s totally your choice. Choose a competition that fits your mood.
Finally on the road!
When you start your first race, you’ll be asked to customize your team. You’ll have to manage your team members (insert the name/ region of yourself and co- pilot, the car’s number plate, …), second step is customizing the looks of your team members. By look I mean suits and helmet, not your physical appearance. Last but not least, update your team’s information (team’s name that can be customized with colors and fonts). A rally game plays different from a normal race game. You need to understand how your machine drives and know its weaknesses. Only by driving and playing the game, you’ll gain experience and perfect your driving skills. You’ll have to know how to maneuver your car correctly in sharp and difficult turns. One mistake can be enough to get your car off the tracks and lose time. This can be frustrating when you’re trying to get the best time. Before you “the real start” of the race you can customize your race options and technical specifications of your car.
Your race options is all about customizing your driving profile before the race. These options vary from “car damage” to ” brake/ stability assistance”. This driving profile makes your game adapt to your play style. It’s perfect for novice racers to turn off car damage and boost their”rewind” option. The rewind option is one of my favorite options in the game. It allows you to rewind the last seconds before a crash and rectify the mistake. There’s no “unlimited” use of this option, so be careful when to activate this beautiful trick and time saver.
Next to the race options, there’s the opportunity to optimize your car settings to make your car rally ready. You can adjust your front and rear suspensions, transmission, brakes and camber/ toe angle. If you have a good technical background, be sure to use it. It gives an extra sense of immersion within this rally race simulation. Although it’s not a very deep customization, it’s a big plus for racing fans.
May the Sébastien Loeb be with you!
A few seconds before the race, the game gives you a quick view of the racing track. After this, there’s the standard countdown and you’re off racing. Your co-pilot does an excellent job to give you a heads up on turns. If your not familiar with this information, be sure to check out the tutorial. The tutorial tries to explain rally racing in a nutshell. The driving really feels realistic since you have full control over your car. It takes some time getting used to but the buttons and the gaming software are very responsive. The rewind button is a nice added feature and will help a lot of novice racers. The mini map on your left gives you a simple overview of the length of track but it doesn’t give any information about the shape. The force feedback of this game is great: you feel the difference between driving on a wet/snowy track and a dry one, the bumps in the game makes your car go a little bit wild, driving besides a pavement or on top of it can make a big difference, … It gives you a realistic experience and that’s what its all about. You can switch between third person view and first person view, which is standard but always a must in this type of game. Physics wise, it’s a good game. There really is a difference in weight difference of your car between a snowy road or just the pavement.
I do like to mention that the game does have some issues when it comes to riding off track. Most of the time, you can save your car by redirecting your car, other times the game just lets you re-spawn on the road but there are also some frustrating moments when your car is stuck in the woods/terrain off-road and the game doesn’t recognize it as a fault. In other words, you can still drive but you’re just stuck and the only option is to restart the whole track. Hopefully they fix this issue because it’s a game breaker. The graphics are also not mind blowing, the graphics look like they’re made on a Playstation 2 console, that’s two generations before Xbox One or PS4. The game fools you by showing a nice graphical in-game intro but once the tracks zre loaded you’ll be disappointed and it’s a shame. The graphics aren’t necessarily bad but I expected a bit more since the graphical technology in this market is constantly moving forward and in race games you really can show off the graphical capacity of certain consoles.
Other features worth mentioning…
… is the”camera” mode. This allows you to instantly stop the game, get a certain camera angle and capture the moment. People with consoles or PC will be able to screenshot one of those lovely race moments in-game. You are able to view all cars and customized cars from different angles in the showroom which can be found in the “garage” section. Cars can be purchased or even rented to perform on different tracks. The “garage” section also offers an appearance customization for all your cars: choose stickers, colors and decals.
Conclusion:
Sébastien Loeb Rally EVO is a decent rally simulation that offers a lot of customization options and game modes to get the ultimate rally experience. There’s a large amount of cars and tracks that will keep fans busy for some time. There’s a certain addiction when it comes to improving your track time and perform better than your online friends. The physics of this game are very well designed, it gives the game a bit of a learning curve in the beginning but once you get to know your car and drove different tracks, it’s a fun and rewarding racing game. The rewind and camera option are fun features to work with but don’t expect a rally game with amazing graphics. If you can look through the little bugs and the graphics, the game is worth a try.
