Don’t exactly know what to say about this game; its fun at first but it gets really annoying.
Star Wars Episode 1 Racer for the N64 and PC were fun and straightforward. Star Wars Racer Revenge proves to be as intense as the last game, but there are some things in the game that just doesn’t really make it worth your while.
Story: Sebulba, former champion of galactic pod racing who was defeated by his rival Anakin Skywalker years ago, urges for revenge. The next season for Pod Racing has begun and Anakin was invited to join the race, knowing Sebulba was out there urging for Revenge he decided to accept the challenge. Anakin enters the race with his new experience with vehicles as well as his average but gradually developing Jedi powers.
Game design: The game is sort of a spin-off of the 2nd movie (The Clone Wars). You will be racing at insane speed using these hovering vehicles called pod races. There aren’t really many modes to choose from. There is the single, multi-player mode and tournament mode. The only difference in tournament mode this time is that each racer can develop their own careers. That means to complete the entire game you will have to complete an entire tournament for each racers. Also deepening on which place you finish and how many other racers you destroyed Watto will give you free parts. You might think that this way you can save a lot of money when upgrading each pod races, but the cache is that you will get only one chance to earn cash in each races and one chance to reach Watto’s condition, so if by chance you didn’t get first place and didn’t KO many racers you will have to restart the race, otherwise if you go back to the menu you will advance and everything will be set, even if you go back and perform better you will not earn any money or parts.
Also to unlock other pod racers you will have to meet difficult to achieve conditions such as KO lots of pod racers or beating insane racing records (sometimes for each lap).
Game play: Game-play wise the game is pretty fun. There are many pod racers to select from, each with their own capabilities and properties. The PS2 controls are relatively simple. Each pod racer can do sharp turns, boost, can taunt and can repair damaged parts during race. You can have up to 4 different views during races.
The game doesn’t work well with KO conditioning since bumping opponents are the only way to damage them and it takes quite a while to KO them, on top of that if you ignore them they will gradually repair themselves and you will have to start over, baring in mind that other racers will come and further complicate things, as well as slow you down. This time once you die you will have to start the race all over again, as to why Lucas arts did this I’m not sure but it was definitely a big mistake, since you have to reach difficult conditions with minimum chances, but unless you know the tracks by heart and never fall down or crash you will hardly die, but will end up repairing your vehicle a lot.
Sound: Music only plays in the final laps like the previous game, but the sound effects have greatly improved. The sound of each vehicle is almost different. I can’t give any comment about the sound since all racers speak these weird alien languages. Anakin is the only understandable character but his voice cast is very limited.
Star Wars Racer Revenge isn’t really as great as the previous game since unlocking things have become quite annoying. The only things you will be able to unlock are artworks and concept arts for the gallery, otherwise getting bonus racers takes way to much time.
What is great about the game is its incredibly detailed graphics and just simple plane racing without any annoying conditions is plane fun.
The game is just too realistic with its “You’ve got only one chance” theme, you get only one chance to earn enough money to decently upgrade your vehicles and get only chance to reach conditions during races.
This game can be interesting for Star Wars fans but can also be interesting for racing fans that are looking for hard-core races. But honestly this game isn’t really what I thought it would be, it just looks good but plays very annoying, the many objectives are too much to handle.