There was a time when you could hardly step foot in a game store without finding several rally games vying for your attention. Rallying in the real world was at it’s peak of popularity in the 1990s and rallying games were a dime a dozen. Colin McRae and Tommi Mäkinen may not be household names anymore, but Polish dev team Pixel Perfect Dude want to take us back. Approachable rally with depth to keep you playing, Drive Rally is for the most part a pleasant way to revisit rally’s glory days.
The key to any rally game’s success is the driving experience. In this aspect Drive Rally excels. Each of the driving surfaces like dirt, snow and tarmac have a distinct feel. Driving in snow at speed feels exhilaratingly dangerous, your ability to slow down severely hampered by the near total lack of traction. Dirt isn’t quite as slippery, but still poses a challenge. Transitioning from a slippery to dry tarmac is a real test of good road-feel in a rally game and to me Drive passes this test swimmingly. It feels so good to slide into a corner and shoot out the exact direction you intended once the grip of bitumen grabs you.
Throwback games like this sometimes choose to go for a low-res, low-poly look reminiscent of the original hardware. Drive Rally instead goes an entirely different direction. It takes the best aspects of the flat-shaded look and combines it with some wonderful lighting and high resolution sharpness to great effect. Cars are bright and colourful with sharp shadows to make sure they look at home in their surroundings. The environment shares the well-lit flat look. On higher graphics settings, sunny tracks are bathed in a dreamy haze that really drives home the nostalgic feel the game strives for.
None of the cars are officially licensed, but I really enjoyed their designs. They are clearly modelled as tributes to rallying greats, and it’s fun to see recognisable design elements among the stylised cars.
Championship mode is where I spent most of my time, and it’s the primary way you progress through the game. Each championship is set in a particular location. Snowy terrain, arid deserts and dense rainforest are on offer. Each comes with an associated set of cars to gradually unlock and a co-driver to help you along the way. Championships are linear sets of races. As you progress you’ll unlock car customisations and new cars, and gradually ramp up the difficulty in both track complexity and vehicle speed. I found myself getting better at handling the vehicles in various terrains as I went along, eventually leading to me absolutely nailing sections of tracks that felt fantastic. It’s pretty bare-bones as far as a career mode goes, but does it’s job in letting the actual racing take centre stage.
The co-pilots however, drove me mad. Intended to bring a little personality to proceedings, I found they mostly detracted from the experience. You have four to choose from currently, each a paper-thin stereotype. From Hans who speaks like a Schwarzenegger impersonator to Emma whose personality seems to be ‘being an airhead’ and getting randomly angry at you while giving cornering advice – each of the co-drivers were grating in their own special way. Sometimes they even just straight up missed giving me the details of upcoming corners because they were too busy making some quip about Deutsche Electrik company. Comedy and character can come down to taste, but to me at least they were bad enough that I wished I could do without them.
I also encountered some display bugs, like the names of the championship stages showing up as placeholder text. The cornering advice I mentioned before could be improved as well. Even when they don’t miss them entirely, your co-driver doesn’t really communicate well when turns lead into one another. Even as simple as adding “Left 1 *into* Right 2” would make it so much easier to understand the upcoming twists – much like a real rally co-driver giving pace notes.
I’ve been assured by the dev team that the display bugs and pace notes issues are known and that they’re planning to tackle them before release. Given it’s releasing into Early Access, bugs like this are hardly unexpected. Aside from the aforementioned cornering advice issues and text issues, I had an overall stable experience with Drive Rally.
