I thought I was a fan of top-down racing. Two of my favorite games on the Amiga, growing up, was Super Cars and All-Terrain Racing. I also had so much fun with Death Rally when I was a PC player. That’s why I was so excited for Circuit Superstars a couple of years ago, which was a total let down. And now this, Art of Rally.
For me, ”Rally” is Lombard RAC Rally. It’s much more about the relationship between the driver and the co-driver as for the driving itself. I want to hear someone yelling ”hard left” in my ear, causing me to blindly follow without seeing the turn he’s yelling about. That is rally for me – mud on the windshield so you can hardly see out.
This is a top down racing game with some very weird physics. When you first start playing, the biggest challenge will be to just stay on the road. Driving the car is very much like balancing a coin on a pin. Every correction leads to an overcorrection leading to another overcorrection. The car wiggle like a snake across the road and most of the time you’re not in control.
It took med half the game to get in control over my car and start feeling like it was me holding the wheel and not the car driving me. This was a very frustrating experience, which my whole family can testify to. ☺️
After half the game I started to get the hang of how to make the car behave like I wanted it to. How to put it in enough drift to get through some turns, when to break before a turn, when to power through a drift. It started to get fun, especially when you nailed that tricky turn or managed to drive slightly faster than safe through a curved path and stay on the road the whole time.
I think the game knows that it is hard. It doesn’t punish you too much from flying off the road. I played on Novice difficulty and managed to finish the whole game as number 1 in all the races.
The physics are a bit weird. I think there’s something wrong with gravity and weights. They wanted the cars to fly spectacularly on jumps but this caused some side effects. When you drive up a hill and there is a turn, you will just fly off the road even in low speed because your car doesn’t weigh anything. I also had problems with my car just tipping over at times, because there was a sideward momentum, even when standing still. It looked quite weird.
I could never understand how rain on tramac could become more slippery than snow. I actually enjoyed the gravel levels in Kenya the most. They seemed to have the perfect amount of slipperiness.
I had problem with lagging on some levels. That is not acceptable playing on a console where you absolutely can test this out. It’s also not a very graphically demanding game so it shouldn’t be lagging.
I rate this game as OKAY
Replay 