|| REVIEW || art of rally (PC)
Developed By : Funselektor Labs Inc Published By : Funselektor Labs Inc
Category : Racing, Sports, Indie
Release Date : September 23, 2020
I've always felt that racing games can be either the most relaxing things you play, or the most intense depending on your approach. If your goal is just driving to drive, things will be quite relaxing. However if you are stretching for that 1st place finish in every race, you might end up wanting to pull your hair out. The more complex the racing game, the faster you'll be pulling your hair out. Because let's face it, driving in circles on a NASCAR track is a lot easier to deal with compared to complex, twisting and turning rally courses.
art of rally is a simple and beautiful racing game that looks to take you through the glory and golden age of the sport. Through the game's very minimal story, you learn that rally racing was banned for being dangerous, but that you currently are in a realm where it was never banned. Now, you're tasked with racing through every era that made the sport as great and popular (and dangerous) as it is.
The game is broken up in a couple of different ways. First, by class of car. You'll start off with the lowest and slowest cars from the 1960's, progressing to cars from the 70's, 80's and up through Group B, S, and A. Each classification is then broken up even further by individual years which represent a full season for each year.
Each season can be made up of one or multiple events. In the early parts of the game you'll most likely participate in just a single rally event over a single stage. As you progress through the years you'll find the events getting longer, while the cars also get more powerful and harder to handle on the same tracks.
On the track, you'll be racing alone. Or at least it will seem like it. In truth, your time will be compared against a handful of other opponents racing the same event. You won't know how well you've placed until you finish the segment and check your results on the final screen. If you're curious about how far you've made it through the event as a whole, on the left side of your screen is a bar that fills from bottom to top to mark this progress.
At the start, you'll only have one group available to use, and one event to drive in. In order to unlock further events you'll need to race and complete previous seasons. Once all seasons are completed for a group you'll unlock the next group. I'm not sure if there is a minimum place requirement, but I had a couple of my first races where I placed in the middle of the field and still unlocked the next season, so it very well could be the only condition is crossing the finish line.
art of rally supports both keyboard and controller inputs. I used both, and while I obviously felt like I had a better handle on things with the controller, the keyboard inputs weren't horrible. If you have experience with racing games though you'll absolutely want to use a controller to be able to be more precise with your drifting.
There haven't been many indie racing games that I've been a huge fan of over the years, but this is one that I absolutely can't recommend enough. Graphically it reminded me of being a kid when games started shifting to using 3D polygons, but the levels are absolutely loaded with trees, buildings, and various things on and off the tracks. So don't hesitate, make art of rally a part of your game library. It releases today so don't miss your chance!
Game Rating : 9 / 10
Pick up the game HERE on Steam
A code for this game was graciously provided
to the site for the purpose of a review
