Art of Rally Review

It seems pretty obvious that Dune Casu, the founder of Funselektor Labs, is a huge car enthusiast. Based on the two games he’s released it seems there are two sub-cultures that he’s particularly fascinated by: Drifting, and Rallying. His first game, Absolute Drift, is a drifter’s dream. It’s a physics-based arcadey drifter with a sleek, low-poly, minimalist art style that truly stands out because of the art style and sky-high camera views that show it off. Not only is the game stylish but it also has loads of charm, with many nods to drifter culture and Japan – the birthplace of drifting. Funselektor’s new game, Art of Rally, uses many of the design elements found in their first game. An elegant, minimalist art style that has a hand-painted quality that overall has a more realistic look than his first game. The up-high camera angle is also there but is more conventional. Charm, humor, and love for the sport are also as present as ever. This time though, instead of an arcadey drifter, he veered off-course and went down the rally sim trail.

You might be asking yourself how could this low-poly, fun-looking game be like a rally sim? But it has much more in common under the hood with the Dirt and Dirt Rally games than it does with an arcade racer like Mario Kart. The camera angle might make you think of Absolute Drift or one of those classic top-down racers like Micro Machines, but it’s actually slightly more conventional. The angle always remains behind the car – which is great because I always get confused about which way to steer in top-down racers. There are a few different angles you can choose from in the settings, none of which get as close as you might be used to in racing games, but the high-up camera works really well and accomplishes a few things. Firstly it allows you to take in more of the game’s amazing art design, and secondly, it allows you to see the upcoming turns. Dune Casu was asked if he’d ever considered implementing co-driver navigation call-outs. He said that it would be too costly in both money and time to record and input all the directions for all the different stages, but he also said that they’re unnecessary, which is true in this case. In the time I’ve been playing I’d say that 95% of the time you can clearly see what’s coming up.

Funeselektor did a great job balancing fun, accessibility, and forgiving gameplay with racing and rally-specific physics. There’s oversteer and understeer depending on the car you are driving, and you can make use of counter-steer while maneuvering the turns. Many of the techniques found in rally racing and rally videogames have also been implemented into the game, from the Scandinavian flick to left-foot braking and E-braking. Make sure to feather those pedals (well, shoulder triggers) or you could easily lose control of the more powerful cars (don’t forget to turn off anti-lock brakes, that’s the only way to play a rally game). You can choose to play with automatic gears or manual, and there’s a clutch that can be used in either. I haven’t tried it out much but I’m sure it can be used to mimic other real-world techniques. This might sound complicated to some, but the actual gameplay is very accessible. 

A lot of rally games have very narrow driving surfaces, but in Art of Rally, the roads/trails are roughly two lanes wide. Off road sections can be very treacherous in other games especially with RWD cars. However, while there are a number of different surfaces in Art of Rally I never felt like the cars I was driving were out of control. Honestly, I might have liked it slightly more if there was a bit more difference in the feel of the different surfaces. The courses offer a lot of variety in the form of both the landscapes as well as the actual driving paths but they’re never overly complex. In addition, there are multiple difficulty settings. The higher settings can be pretty tough, no matter how perfectly I complete a stage there’s always one AI driver that finishes five seconds ahead of me. Fortunately, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter where you finish in career mode, as long as you finish and have at least one of your retries left you still earn the unlocks for that series and can advance to the next one.

There are also a few different damage settings. The cars don’t take visible body damage as far as I could tell, but if you crash into stuff you could damage one or more of the car’s parts. Most of the basic elements are there: engine, radiator, gearbox, turbo (when applicable), and suspension. Each part is related to a different aspect of the car, like top speed or acceleration. Some have additional relationships to the cars like the radiator which when damaged can cause the car to overheat. To tell you the truth I didn’t notice much of a difference after my car was heavily damaged, I guess the speed was decreased a bit. The only damage I noticed in the performance of the cars was when the suspension was damaged, causing the car to veer to one side. There are some visual cues to tell you that your car is damaged; for example smoke will start coming from the car, and if you continue driving like a maniac it’ll eventually catch on fire. Like most rally sim games there is a repair option in between certain stages within each series where you have a set number of points (time) that you can use to repair whatever needs fixing.

The game is essentially split into two sides. There’s the career, time attack, online, and custom race section all of which have you competing in rally series made up of one to ten stages, and then there’s free roam. The free roam is reminiscent of their first game, Absolute Drift, letting you drive around each of the six environments that are used for the different rally stages. It feels almost like a bare-bones Forza Horizon but with a very different yet just as stunning art style. You can use any of the cars you have unlocked and can drive all over each map on or off-road. There are also a number of collectibles to find – all of which are on or right next to the road. I think the game could have really been taken to the next level if a few activities were added to each area, like maybe a race from point A to B or a drift contest, but as a whole the game is extremely impressive especially considering it was the work of one developer. Funselektor has created new content in the form of an Africa map and matching stages, which are included day one for the Xbox version and as an update for previously released versions such as PC. Hopefully he can devote some more time to the game because I would love to see it expand even more. 

The career mode is a sort of tour through the history of rally racing from 1967 to 1996. They take a few liberties here and there and add in a lot of humor, but overall it’s somewhat accurate. Career mode is split into six groups: Two, Three, Four, B, S, and A. Each group consists of five series, each series represents one year, and each year could have between two and ten stages (maybe more in the final two groups). Like any rally game and rally events in real life, you are racing by yourself and the final time you earn is compared to a field of other drivers and points are awarded depending on where you finish. As you complete each year you will unlock new cars for that group and for later groups as well as liveries (as long as you don’t use up all your retries). Custom rally lets you set up your own series, by letting you pick which stages you want and what group the field will be. Time attack is essentially a time trial mode. 

The cars are based on real-world cars, many of which are iconic rally cars, whereas others are based on lesser-known models. A typical rally fan will recognize most of the cars because they are modeled just like the originals but in the stylish, low-poly Art of Rally style. Each car feels a little different and the cars get progressively better with each group, which stays true to the actual groups/classes they are based on. There is one exception however, and that is group A. In real life they had to take it down a notch because group B was too dangerous, but this group A is filled with 800+ horsepower beasts. The names of the cars are usually a play on their real names, nicknames, or how they look. The Ford Escort is called the Esky here, the Mini Cooper the Meanie, and the Renault 5 Turbo is Le Cinq. The Lancia Stratos is called La Wedge and the 80’s Celica is called The King of Africa, a nickname it picked up in real life for faring particularly well on that continent. All the cars have short text descriptions that contain some truths and some, let’s just say fabrications. One of my favorites is the second part of the Zetto’s (Datsun 240Z) description, “has built in sake dispensers for better weight distribution and to reward spectators who rescued it from ditches”.

There’s not much more I can say about the art design, it’s just amazing. There’s a photo mode that can be accessed in-game from the pause menu, and I was blown away at how stunning almost every picture I took looked (credit goes to the game obviously, not me). One feature I enjoy in racing games, rally ones in particular, is the replay option after a race. It’s present here in Art of Rally and watching the replays is almost better than actually driving the cars. The first setting switches camera angles for you and it always seems to switch to the right one. One negative aspect of the art design that I have to mention is the draw distance, during races all the objects in the environment render into view much closer than I would expect and it’s always very sudden with more assets constantly popping in. Because of this, when taking pictures, areas in the distance can look barren since they typically have very little or no scenery. I am playing on an original Xbox One so I’m sure newer models and the current-gen will fare much better, but in a game with a lower than average graphical style I would expect a little more; at the same time though everything is extremely high def so that’s likely a factor in the draw distance issue.   

I have to admit that I do like having a co-driver calling out to me in other rally games, it adds to the authenticity, but like I said this game really doesn’t need it, and without all that extra noise you can enjoy the excellent soundtrack and the better than expected car noises. The soundtrack is electronic heavy, but the high tempo music fits perfectly with the gameplay. My favorite track is the one that plays once you collect all the cassettes in the Japan free roam, it sounds like it was pulled straight out of the drifting/racing themed anime Initial D. The engine noises sound really nice, and each car seems to have it’s own unique sound. There’s also plenty of other sound effects like tires squealing, fluttering turbos, clunky gear shifts, plus a few others, all of which make this visually unrealistic game sound pretty real.

I’ve been playing Art of Rally every chance I’ve had since I received my review copy and I’ve logged in about twelve hours. In that time I found all the collectibles in the first five environments and I’m about halfway through the career mode. The game could do with a few more features, but what’s there does offer a lot of replayability. Each time you play a career season the location and stages are randomly selected. There’s also daily and weekly challenges, much like Dirt 4, or the Dirt Rally series. Each stage has worldwide leaderboards so you can compare your times to the best players out there and to your friends.

Conclusion

I was pretty much sold on Art of Rally the first time I saw it, but perhaps what might have truly sealed the deal was the line the large buddha statue laid on me in the intro, “we are in a parallel universe, where Group B was never cancelled”. Art of Rally is coming to Game Pass and there’s no excuse for anyone not to give it a try, unless you absolutely loathe racing games. It should appeal to any one with even the slightest interest in racing games, but will also satisfy the racing game veterans. The art style is sublime – I know some players might not be into the non-realistic graphics. It doesn’t get better than this in terms of pure art, and overall fun, and Art of Rally is both.

This game was tested and reviewed on Xbox One. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.