Introduction:

I consider myself a somewhat distant fan of racing sims until I got my hands on Re-Volt. Re-Volt is a Racing game but with RC remote control cars. You race through 14 tracks with 7 different environments with up to 28+ different cars from Electric to Gas powered. Game-play consists of 5 different modes: Single Race, Practice, Championship, Time Trial, and Stunt Track. In Championship mode you start off with access to 8 cars and 4 tracks as you progress, you unlock more and more cars to race and more tracks to race on. There are 5 levels of experience: Rookie, Amateur, Semi-Pro, Pro, and Advanced each with different access to cars and tracks. The excitement level heats up with the inclusion of power-ups, which includes: bottle rockets, oil slicks, and others.

The Graphics and the Physics models are excellent. Car handling is very believable and the Physics model can be seen in action when cornering and going over bumps and jumps. The Antenna sways and wags and the springs and suspension move as they should. You change a few of the settings on the cars through the use of an un-included car editor or by manually changing the settings in the Parameters.txt file and you can really see what the physics model is capable of. The graphics are gorgeous and smooth. I consistently got 50-60fps with 8 to 10 cars racing with my test system (see below).

Re-Volt includes a track editor, but I have yet to actually try it out. I have seen some user created tracks and they lack the visuals of the tracks that come with the game. One feature that would increased the life of the product and re-playability would be if Acclaim itself would post newly created tracks with the detail of the first tracks - something similar to what Blizzard does with StarCraft online for download.

There is no car editor that comes with the game (a Re-Volt car editor does exist although not supported by Acclaim). A car editor would have been nice - something along the lines of the Nascar editors which allows you to change handling and paint skins for cars.

Story:

Toy-Volt the makers of the Re-Volt cars have created their best product yet. These new RC racers actually have minds of their own!

Features:

· 28+ cars to find and control
· 14 single player tracks set in 7 different environments
· 5 single player game modes
· Racing and Battle multi-player modes (8 or more players on PC)

Pros:

· Great Physics Model
· Lots of Cars
· Great Graphics
· Re-playability
· Track Editor
· Serious Fun

Cons:

· Not enough unique tracks
· No car editor
· Not Compatible with True Speed CD-ROMS (Kenwood)
· No save game feature after each track has been completed (subjective)

PC Minimum Spec:

P200, 32 Meg RAM, Win95, 3D Accelerator

Test System Used for review:

Intel PII400, Abit BX6-2 MB, Voodoo2 8MB, Creative SB Live, 128 Meg RAM ECC PC100, 12x Toshiba CDROM, Win98

Final Comments:

Re-Volt is on my A list for the racing sims category for all time favorite games. This is a must have for anyone looking for a fun racing game or anyone who likes racing RC Cars. I give Re-Volt a "9". Re-Volt could have easily been a 10 if there was an included car editor and if the levels would have been updated online by Acclaim.

Tips:

My personal favorite car for first 3 levels is the RC Bandit. It handles predictably and is fast for the lower levels but a little slow for the Gold Levels. My favorite track is the Museum, the graphics are really cool.

You can download the Demo, Patch, and Car Editor from voodoofiles.com. I also have posted some custom cars I created on my site for download as well:)

- Archon
[email protected]
Voodoo Files
www.voodoofiles.com