Art of Rally is a modern racing game that feels reminiscent of the classics and is about more than just speed.
Starting off I don’t usually like racing games. That is of course unless they are unique variations like Diddy Kong Racing or Mario Kart. The reason this game appealed to me before playing it was because the look and the feel of the game seemed very reminiscent of old top-down racing games like R.C. Pro-Am (NES) or Top Gear (SNES) that I played when I was growing up.
That being said I really enjoyed the time I spent with this game. As of writing this, I have just shy of 11 hours in the game, and while that doesn’t seem like a lot, it was enough to complete most of the races in the career mode and give me a pretty clear indication for what the game had to offer. So let’s dive in.
Art of Rally is just as much of a history lesson as it is a game as it takes place during the golden era of rally car racing. Each season in the career mode gets you little snippets of history to help you understand the context of the time you are racing in, and with each year moving forward cars become faster, turn sharper, drift better, and allow the player more control of the car.
I feel like a lot of racing games especially in the modern era of games, have you white-knuckling every race in the hopes of getting first, there is no incentive to slow down and focus on precision. Speed isn’t everything in this game and you have to slow down around corners and pay attention to the road if you want to make it to the end, and I think this is where it starts to separate itself from other racing games.
Things I liked
- A large amount of level variation that will have you racing all over the world, in various weather conditions, with various road types.
- The game feels exploratory, unlike most racing games which make you feel like you need to memorize the courses.
- Huge variation in cars that you can play, as well as the skins you can apply to them to make them feel unique.
- Underneath the simplistic game style, you can add depth to make it more challenging, like car management, and increasing AI difficulty
Things I didn’t like
- Some maps you need to use the lower camera angle, as the perspective of the more top-down views makes it harder to see jumps or judge depth of turns.
- A few recurrent camera glitches as well as one specific glitch that I kept getting when “forced” me to crash my car and penalize my overall time.
- The online mode for the game was pretty basic and other than seeing the names of the people that you are playing against you will never see another racer.
- The music, while really catchy, eventually felt repetitive. I turned it down in the settings and settled for the ambient sound.
Art of Rally isn’t about you vs. 10 other cars on the race track as it is more about you vs. the open road. The game doesn’t have any maps as you play, you have to really pay attention and look ahead as much as possible to figure out how to handle the turns ahead. As you progress further in the career mode and cars become better the game becomes less about racing to the end, and more about understanding how to control your vehicle better, like knowing when to speed up, when to slow down, or when to start and end turns.
Overall I would definitely recommend this game to people who enjoy racing games and want to play a “get up and go” style game. This would be a great addition to the Nintendo Switch for that reason. The game is currently available on Steam, Epic, and GOG