But sadly, this means Sega Rally will never be the same again. The 1995 original was loved for many reasons. It was beautiful, yes. It handled perfectly, yes. But its long-term appeal was to be found in bettering your completion time across the game's three main stages (the fourth wasn't counted in your record). The brilliance of this was that everything was constant except you. The tracks were unchanging. The CPU cars were infallible and simply followed their lines flawlessly, every time. You could tell how you were doing by how soon you overtook each rival.
Above: Cover your car with flecks of mud - then gradually wash it off with water splashes
No longer will this apply. Invincible rivals may have been a necessity given hardware restrictions in 1995, but now there's no excuse for them. The new AI makes mistakes and take different lines each lap if it sees fit. Group testing resulted in notes such as 'they behave like human players'. Then there's that track surface. If the track itself changes as you drive on it, how will beating your best time feel as special? It wasn't the same lap, after all. It's going to make for a brilliant online-enabled racer, but it's nothing like the Rally we knew.
A 29-year-old PC racing game going cyberpunk anime with Troy Baker, Initial D drifting, and cutscenes from the Metroid: Other M studio sure wasn't on my Game Awards bingo card
A speedrunner just beat Need for Speed: Most Wanted's world record by 90 minutes - by using Half-Life's Gordon Freeman instead of a car
