After playing most of the PlayStation 2 racing games, all of which took themselves pretty seriously, RC Revenge Pro is refreshingly bright and silly. I'm a broken record if I get started on how much I liked Motor Toon Grand Prix for PlayStation, and RC Revenge Pro has two of the things that MTGP did best: Great graphics and great music. Now, when I say the graphics are 'great,' that doesn't mean perfect. Slowdown is a problem at times and many of the 3D perspectives make navigation confusing at first, but beyond these slight issues is a colorful world with enough eye candy to make Steven Spielberg do a double-take. Every level is built around a theme that parodies some Hollywood movie, 'I Know What You Drove Last Summer' being one of my favorites... The level of activity going on around the tracks is totally cool, and RC Revenge Pro is at least as much fun to watch as to play. The music never gets old, mostly because it has a great acoustic quality. I'll never get tired of J-Pop and 8-bit synth tunes, but hearing real horns and drums is a treat.

I'm not exactly sure where the Kart Racing genre ends and RC Racing begins. Maybe it's got something to do with having wacky characters versus wacky cars. RC Revenge Pro is low on characters, but makes up for it with silly cars, trucks and boats. Yes, there are boats. Recent takes on RC Racing have been quite different. RC de Go, f'rinstance, took the top-down approach and showed almost all the track at once. RC Revenge Pro is more traditional, but gives away the RC angle by scaling everything up around the cars, making for a 'Honey I Shrunk the Car' type of action.

If the track editor that comes with this game were the only thing available, RC Revenge Pro would still be worth a rental. I found the limit on how much track you can lay down irritating and artificial - let me decide if I want to fill up a memory card! - but not so bad that Track Editor Mode isn't a complete blast. 2-Player split-screen on any single track is fun, but as in most racers, Championship Mode is where you'll find The Beef. With 6 stages (not including Track Editor) and mirrored, reverse and mirrored-reverse tracks, there's so much driving here it's silly. Championship Mode takes a scheduled course through each of the stages, but features different variations on tracks to avoid boredom. After opening up a track, Single Race Mode or Time Trial lets you go back and find all the many shortcuts, opening up even more secret options in the game.

This is a 'no-rules' game with not much concern for anything but a tight power slide and good choice of weapons, and it also has a sense of humor that makes anything possible. Cars drive through warp-gates and morph into boats; UFOs, Dump Trucks and Tanks becomes playable; tornadoes, milk puddles and scampering rats block your path; and I can't even begin to describe all the funny, weird stuff going on throughout any single level. Again, well worth a rental.

I know you're asking, 'Why does Fridtjof keep saying rental all the time?' I'm glad you asked. The problem (and it's deadly) with RC Revenge Pro is some very ill-balanced difficulty. Most racers start you off with a puny car and tough enough opponents to provide a challenge. Work your way up, and you not only earn better cars but improve your skills enough to wipe the competition off the face of the Earth. Well, in RC Revenge Pro you start off with at least 2 or 3 vehicles that have maxed-out stats. If you choose them, you win. It's that simple. As the Championship goes on, cars around you take more shortcuts and become more vicious with their weapons, but not enough to make a huge difference. Because it's easy from the start, and because you don't have to earn a good car, RC Revenge Pro goes from too easy to too hard in 1 or 2 levels. It's nice to watch the pretty levels as you win race after race, but don't come to this one expecting much challenge.

Even though RC Revenge Pro supports analog, the default control setup is a combination of stick-and-button. I quickly moved to all-analog control, which I love for racing. Especially with all the driving controls on your analog sticks, working the weapons is much easier. Weapons aren't so completely over the top, but play on themes like electricity (remember, these cars run on batt'ries) and car-related hazards like oil slicks and water bombs. Guided missiles, mines and shields can also be picked up off the track, or you can disable weapons altogether and just race. Powerslide is easy and necessary, except in the boats, which control differently. I like that Acclaim didn't neglect the boating races, even though they don't come along as frequently. If anything, the water effects are the most beautiful part of the game, and riding the waves or turning with a boat feels very different than the on-road portions.

Although the Track Editor is too complicated to go into great detail abouts, if you've worked with any kind of level editor before in a game, you'll know it at sight. Basically, you have different track pieces you can place along a grid, with consideration for height, structure and memory use. Each track piece uses up a little bit of memory, so don't expect to fill up the whole grid. Once your track is complete you can race it, save it or scrap it. The finished product is not as glorious as the Acclaim levels, but only because the window dressing is missing. As I said before, playing with the editor makes RC Revenge Pro more than worth it for any race fan, and checking out the cool visuals is also great. But, even my favorite silly racers have some solid race action, and RC Revenge Pro falls short of greatness due to weak pacing and no sense of conquest or development.