After leaving Steam Early Access last year, the arcade-inspired rally game is reaching a broader audience on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Switch. For collectors, a special edition boxed version is even available for PS5 and Switch. Yes, unlike the monumental Grand Theft Auto VI, #Drive Rally can be played on a physical disc.
Developed by Polish studio Perfect Pixel Dude, #Drive Rally is the successor to #Drive, an endless runner-style driving game inspired by 1970s action films. Played from a top-down perspective on mobiles and Switch, the goal in the original was to simply drive as far as possible without crashing.
By contrast, #Drive Rally is a traditional rallying title with point-to-point stages that ditches its predecessor’s assisted acceleration and mobile origins. While it can still be played from a top-down perspective, it also incorporates a chase camera and multiple cockpit views but, oddly, no bumper camera.
Team spirit
The main campaign sees you drive for six rally teams, with each featuring a unique car lineup and championship location.
One of #Drive Rally’s main gimmicks is that each team is run by a voiced co-driver with a distinct personality. As you navigate a stage, they react to your performance, offering words of encouragement if you’re in the lead or lambasting you if you crash.
However, each character sounds like a regional stereotype. Hans, for example, is clearly meant to sound like an angry Arnold Schwarzenegger, while George is an American cowboy. More problematic is the Asian co-driver’s broken English, which borders on offensive.
Then there is the insufferable Emma, who continually shouts inane lines like “it’s like we’re racing to a shoe sale” and “if racing was dancing, I would totally win.” It’s a noble attempt to add some character and humour to the teams, but they quickly become grating.
Rally aficionados will appreciate unlicensed homages to real-world cars like the Group B Audi Sport quattro S1, Renault 5 Maxi Turbo and Subaru Impreza S5. These are accompanied by comically unsuitable rally cars, including a Dodge Charger-style muscle car and a boxy American SUV.
Easy right
Progressing through the campaign unlocks faster cars, cosmetic parts and longer stages, but #Drive Rally never feels challenging. Like the original #Drive, this is an intentionally casual experience best played in short bursts.
The arcade-style driving feels snappy, with most vehicles boasting generous amounts of grip and short stopping distances. Applying the handbrake to throw a car around a tight turn sideways is enjoyable, but the overly forgiving physics makes catching the slide feel effortless and uninvolving. You feel like a rally driving god as a result, but some optional assists would give the driving some needed depth.
Crashing is inconsequential too, thanks to the uneven AI difficulty. Even after making several mistakes, it’s possible to finish a stage over 10 seconds ahead of the competition on the hardest difficulty setting. In some cases, the gap increased to 30 seconds on the regular difficulty.
There’s certainly room for an accessible rally game in a genre renowned for its steep difficulty, but, coupled with the lack of visual or mechanical car damage, #Drive Rally is simply too easy, with no sense of reward.
Presented as an interactive log book, each championship features a multi-stage rally, with the six locations taking you through snowy forests, sandy deserts, sweeping jungles and tight tarmac roads. With a whopping 180 events to complete, the campaign is lengthy, but with every championship following the same format and no weather or time-of-day effects, the stages start looking too familiar and blend together.
What helps ease the repetition, however, is that every team is unlocked from the start. This means you can tackle each location in any order, whether you want to swap between teams or stick with the same one and complete a full championship from start to finish.
Like many indie rally games, #Drive Rally is presented in a retro style evoking the PlayStation 2 era. The chunky vehicles look charming and performance is smooth, but some noticeable visual pop-in hampers the presentation, resulting in a low-poly art style that looks flat and uninspired.
Outside the campaign, a Free Roam mode lets you explore each environment’s interconnected stages and hunt collectable letters, aping the superior Art of Rally.
While there’s sadly no online multiplayer, stage times can be compared with other players in online leaderboards. This provides a better sense of competition than the passive AI opponents, but the leaderboards are limited to the top 12 players. In place of local split-screen multiplayer, a party mode also lets players take turns to set the fastest times.
Overall, #Drive Rally is a casual alternative to Assetto Corsa Rally, ideal for drifting away a Sunday afternoon. Its accessibility is welcome, but its uninspired presentation, repetitive campaign and overly forgiving vehicle handling and AI prevent it from reaching the same heights as Art of Rally and Super Woden Rally Edge.
Score: 5/10
“Simple, pick-up and play rallying that lacks depth”
Discussion