#DRIVE Rally Review

#DRIVE Rally currently in Early Access and available through GOG, Stream or Epic Games.

After the fairly successful #DRIVE for mobile, Pixel Perfect Dude brings a bigger experience to PC in #DRIVE Rally. It sets out to bring us an “arcade-inspired rally-driving experience set in the golden racing era of the ‘90s.” While I’m by no means an expert on the rally sport or its games, I do fondly think back to titles such as SEGA Rally, Top Gear Rally or, one of my personal favorites, Rally Cross. Somehow this game reminds me of none of those, it does its own thing. It does offer a solid racing experience, but it’s dressed up in such a way that it leaves me a bit confused who this is really for.

Two-Speed Transmission Only

The game offers two different modes, quick race and championships. The quick race is pretty self-explanatory, pick a car and a track and set the best time possible. For the four championships on offer, it’s honestly kind of the same, though you don’t actually pick the track. It’s a weird, oversimplified, experience that’s honestly not very rewarding to go through.

Each is tied to a team, represented by a navigator or co-pilot. I suppose these form the real heart of the game, but more on them later. When you’ve picked your buddy, you are racing through a set sequence of events through their location, as each championship is tied to one particular map containing many different stages to race. Each completed stage gives you a reward in the form of a cosmetic car part, unlocks one of the three available cars, or one of its class upgraded counterparts.

You can’t lose!

Note that I said ‘after completing’ and not ‘after winning’. To be frank, there is no actual opponent, apart from local and global leaderboards. So it doesn’t matter how fast or slow you are, as long as you cross the finish line your current local ranking is recorded and you get your price and move on. Based on that ranking you are also rewarded some money, with which you can unlock parts or higher class cars as an alternative way. You can’t retry a race you’ve already completed, short of deleting all game progress. It’s a weird system that kind of serves to get you used to the different cars and locations I suppose, but feels underwhelming.

So far, next to the free stuff you win through the championships, there’s not much on offer yet to further customize your vehicles yet. Which is only possible for the quick races by the way. There is also no way to tune your vehicles in any way. All customization is purely cosmetic by changing spoilers, hoods and other such parts. There’s not even an option for changing the colors. At least, not yet. It is good mention that this is an Early Access release, so we should see more features added over time.

Navigator or Backseat Driver?

As stated, the co-pilots form the heart of the game, as each of them have their own personality. Which is an interesting idea, yet it doesn’t fully land for me. The first issue is that they’re very one dimensional and heavy stereotypes. While some of their remarks might be fun for a bit, soon their repeated and limited banter gets old.

The bigger problem these personalities introduce, is that it makes them pretty bad at their actual job! Often a remark about you hitting something or making good time actually causes them to miss calling out turns. The call signs they use are also much simplified. Of course you can turn the voices off, but what’s really baffling, is that the game completely lacks any visual indicators for upcoming turns. A staple of rally games for over 30 years!

Basic But Pleasing Visuals

So it’ll be important to judge corners yourself at all times. Some of the cars, or their cosmetics, can make this a bit difficult though. The chase camera is a bit low to the ground, so particularly high vehicles can obscure the view. There is an option to alter the chase cam, but I didn’t notice a difference. The cockpit view can kind of work too, but it’s not a very pretty one. It’s very static, with the exception of the very loose steering wheel that’s spinning all over with the slightest touch, which is pretty distracting. And the mirror is basically a big gray area on your screen, as the game doesn’t do reflective services. Which does fit within the visual style of the game, but perhaps just getting rid of the mirrors would be the better option in that case.

The whole game has a semi-cell shaded style with flat textures. With its saturated colors and some neat lighting effects from the sun, it still manages to look pretty nice and catch its own style. The menus are clean and basic, but have some oddities that I hope will be worked out soon. For example, setting descriptions are just listed below as a sort of legend in the options menu and when using a controller you can lose focus of menu elements on occasion.

I am hopeful in that regard though, as the dev team does seem to be actively chasing after bugs coming up to the release next week. For a while, when I restarted a race my car was hilariously dropped right on top of the starting gate, unable to move. Or would even fall straight through the floor. This has been completely fixed in the last day it seems. I’ve also run into some game crashes, but my last two sessions I have been able to play without issue.

Full Speed Where It Counts

What the game arguably does best, is the actual driving. Which is quite important and I can definitely see this being enough for many racing fans. Though I do need to stress that this is not intended as a sim racer. What it does do well, is allow you to feel like a bad ass driver as you skillfully drift through some tight corners. Cars feel a little different too and you’ll quickly find a favorite, if you don’t already have some as their real life counterparts these are bases on. The game offers, in the highest classes, a great sense of speed too.

As for the audio, the car sounds and especially the crunchy sounding gearboxes sound pretty neat. The music though… is not there during gameplay. Which is common for rally games, but again, since this is supposed to offer more of a fun arcade style racing game, it feels kind of missing. The audio lines of the co-pilots are there to keep you company if you wish. These are a bit to repetitive and one dimensional for my liking and also sound pretty flat. They lack any urgency that one would expect from a navigator who’s getting shaken silly during a wild ride.

Cleanest Rally Ever?

The game is pretty forgiving. Other than corners, there’s basically no obstacles. There’s no weird rocks, bumps, tree trunks, slopes, jumps or water hazards to be found. Which is a bit of a shame, but at the same time it allows one to just focus on racing and get those best times. What will really send sim drivers recoil in disgust is that the game is so forgiving, it actually rewards poor driving habits.

Going off road barely slows you down. Plowing through some objects will add a small time penalty, but it’s often faster to incur that and cut a corner completely, than actually follow a proper racing line and lose more time through breaking. It even features that old school, dedicated reset button to get you on track again right away. There is no damage model at all, so there’s no fear of retiring thanks to vehicle abuse. The complete lack of any visual damage, even if not impactful, is disappointing. Your car will always drive over the finish line in pristine shape, which in rally racing just feels wrong.

It’s all about that speed and getting those best times on the leaderboards. Many of the achievements are also tied to getting good times. I can’t find any indication of there being weekly or monthly times. Which is a bit worrisome, as this could greatly alter the experience new players have as the game ages. Right now it’s still fairly easy to grab a number one spot on the local leaderboards. I fear that after a month it will instead show that a new player is always like 40 seconds late in each new run they attempt, depending on where they live. Which again, for unlocking stuff doesn’t matter, but for those lovely little organs that release our dopamine it does. I hope they have a solution ready to avoid this.

There are currently four maps total, but each is visually quite different and big, offering many point-to-point stages. There are no night or weather effects, but the stages can be driven in reverse. What is kind of weird is that the locations are tied to the co-pilots. So for the desert maps, you’ll always have the Texan guy as your navigator, no matter which car you select. It’s another odd choice in the game.

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