#DRIVE Rally

Not long ago, I reviewed Desert Race Adventures, a strategy game with a real emphasis on resource management. While I appreciated what it was doing and liked the unique approach to the genre, it had the annoying side-effect of making me want to play a real rally racing game. And that’s when I remembered that #Drive Rally recently graduated from Early Access to a full release. What perfect timing. So, with my appetite whet for rally racing and a desire to catch up with one of the games I missed earlier this year, I’m excited to finally have a chance to review #Drive Rally, the debut racing game from developer Pixel Perfect Dude.

What we have here is a throwback game inspired by the overhead racers from the early 1990s. It’s the kind of game that is modern enough to take advantage of multiple camera angles and realistic car physics, but still with one leg firmly planted in the past. It doesn’t have a story, flashy graphics or a massive open world modeled off of some exotic location, instead trading all that for a simple, straight-to-the-point racer that looks good, handles well and offers a whole lot of fun content.

Instead of being a racing game that simply jumps from one location to the next, in Drive Rally the country is tied directly to the racing team. For example, if you choose Emma as your co-pilot, you’ll race through a snow-covered forest, whereas co-pilot Juan will help you out in a bunch of races set in Latin America. As you play through the six different campaigns, you’ll visit major cities, lush mountain ranges and small desert towns.

While we don’t get one massive open world, like the Forza Horizon series, you will find that each of the six settings are much smaller maps with all kinds of streets, intersections and surprises. I really like this approach, as it allows the developer to create a bunch of different races in what feels like a realistic map. Plus, each of these settings has enough variety within its borders to keep it fresh and interesting. For example, the Japanese map balances a large, concrete city, while also having enough room for green fields and multi-colored crops.

This variety is especially important given how much time you’re going to be spending in each location. Each of the game’s six race teams have their own set of events, each with their own cars and prizes to unlock. They all basically play out the same way, with the player going through a bunch of shorter, simpler CL stages, which are followed by the RS events, and eventually capped off with the longer and more complicated XR events.

What I like about this structure is that you can freely pick and choose how you want to play this game. If you want to play all the way through one race team’s campaign, then you can do that. Or, if you want to jump around and try out all of the different teams and locations, that’s a perfectly acceptable way to tackle it. No matter how you tackle the different campaigns, you are always earning more money and unlocking new cars, which you can drive in both the single-player and multiplayer modes. The only downside is that each of the different campaigns play out exactly the same way – going from CL to RS to XR -- so you may find the game becoming a bit repetitive after the third or fourth trip through the different classes.

That’s one of the problems that kept me from being more enthusiastic about Drive Rally, but it’s not my biggest concern. For whatever reason, I found that the game was shockingly easy, no matter the car, co-pilot or class. Even on the hardest tracks, I was beating the competition by at least ten, sometimes twenty seconds. And since this is a rally race and you never see the other racers on the course at the same time, it never feels like you’re blowing out the competition.

Another problem is that the game feels a little slow. On one hand, this helps fix a problem that a lot of overhead racing games have had over the years, which is giving the player enough time to react to windy and unpredictable roads. However, it could stand to be a bit faster. It is worth mentioning that we can change the camera perspective from the default overhead view to a third-person and inside-the-car mode. Unfortunately, those just compound the speed problem. And while I normally would use the more traditional third-person perspective, so common with racing games, it just felt like the game was made with the overhead camera angle in mind.

On top of the lengthy single-player campaign, there are a number of other modes worth talking about. One is free roam, allowing you to explore each of the maps at your own leisure. This gives you an opportunity to really appreciate the work that went into making each of these locations. There’s also a party mode that opens the game up for multiplayer chaos. There are a bunch of fun competitive modes here, though there’s no online play, which is a shame.

While it has its faults, I found myself drawn back to Drive Rally time and time again. Although a bit on the easy side, the races are exciting and there’s just so much to complete and unlock. Throw in some fun multiplayer modes and you have a solid throwback racing game that does a good job of blending the old and new. Drive Rally has a lot of potential as a fun franchise.