For people who worship at the glorious squelch of mud and the reassuring spray of dirt from a rear wheel, rally games are the pinnacle of the racing genre. Rather than your Forza Motorsports and your Gran’s Turismo, fans have enjoyed games like the iconic Sega Rally, Colin McCrae, and WRC series from a variety of developers, with the rally game becoming a grubby staple of our racing heritage. It’s fair to say though that it’s all got very serious, shifting away from arcade thrills to pure sim racing.
Drive Rally looks to forge a point between those two extremes, bringing chunky, retro-styled visuals together with a thoughtful, but not overly exacting, handling model. It’s doing something that no one else is right now – come on Sega, we’re waiting! – and in our early hands-on, it’s doing it very well indeed.
Drive Rally doesn’t feature any licensed cars, but it does feature cars that bear striking (but legally distinct) resemblances to iconic rallying legends of the past. There’s the Celestia doing it’s very best Toyota Celica impression, as well as a very Audi Quattro-esque little number called Das Sandstorm. Meanwhile, Das Bretzel is totally not a BMW. Definitely not.
While they’re not quite the real thing, they’re all very characterful, and you can upgrade their bodykit and various parts, adding increasingly outlandish spoilers, headlights and tyre mounts. Each car handles differently, with that profile changing as you alter its spec and upgrade, and while we only had a small selection to choose from, there’s going to be at least 27 different cars in the final version.
Much of Drive Rally’s attraction lies in its art-style, with a landscape that focuses on the key elements, and presents them in the same retro-infused 3D as the cars. It’s fun returning to a world where every tree isn’t a million polygons, and it allows you to concentrate on staying on the track, which, as you’d expect with a rally game, is not a foregone conclusion.
Drive Rally straddles the line between exacting precision and arcade-y floatiness, and once you get used to what it’s asking of you you’ll have the same edge-of-seat experience you’ll find in the best rally games. Hurtling along, waiting for a corner to leer out at you is tempered by one of the three enigmatic co-drivers and their relatively accurate pace notes. There is a strange drop-off in traction when you brake at the moment, and cars feel a little too sluggish to get going again once you’ve slowed, but I like the handling overall.
In true old-school fashion, there’s two options here, either a Quick Race or the Championship series. Each manufacturer has their own set of tracks within the championship, and you can unlock new car parts and new cars as you progress through the in-game scrapbook. It’s beautifully laid out, showcasing your times, rewards and a few other bits and pieces, though it could do with being a bit clearer about the race you’ve just completed. While there’s no online multiplayer, there are online leaderboards so you can compare yourself to the other Drive Ralliers out there.
There’s so much to like about Drive Rally. I love the visual style, and there’s a sense of fun that’s often lacking in modern racers. I like how focused it is too, and while there are some elements of the cars handling that that need a little tuning up, it’s in a great place as it heads towards an Early Access launch.
