Don’t be a Backseat Driver!
In the world of racing games where we have games that are either hyper simulations or arcade centric, there have only been a handful of titles that focus on the world of rally racing. And there might be a reason for that but, I will get to that in a minute. As someone that enjoys games like Forza Horizon, Gran Turismo, and the Dirt Series. I can confidently say that racing games do appeal to me. So, when asked to review Drive Rally developed by the Polish developer Pixel Perfect Dude, I said why not? But before that I wanted to find out a little more about the developer. Pixel Perfect Dude is an indie developer of such titles as Funky Cars, Escape the Mine, Ski Jump VR and #DRIVE…yeah me either. Never heard of any of these titles. But let’s not let that get in the way of fun.
#Drive Rally is “an arcade-inspired rally driving experience set in the golden racing era of the 90’s”. As a matter of fact, the game looks like something out of the 90’s akin to a PS1 era racer. The colors are bright and the cars and the environments have that low polygon look and feel to them. Even down to the jerky animations. The teams that you can choose from when starting a series of races look different but feel very similar. Not that you have much interaction with the driver or the copilot. The cars look different from team to team with different paint schemes but other than that It was hard to tell a difference from one car to another.
MSRP: $19.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, Switch, PC
Price I’d Pay: $4.99
Anyone that is not familiar with rally racing, the objective is to drive a predetermined course as fast as you can to get the best time. Sometimes the courses are dirt. Sometimes they are road courses. And sometimes it incorporates both. You have a copilot the is supposed to tell you what the next turn is and the severity of the turn so the driver can determine how to handle the turn. In this game, with each team you choose there are a series of “events” that you can drive to get the best times on the tracks and the higher you place the more money you win. Simple enough. You also have a copilot that yells out to you the next turns and a number. This is where my lack of rally knowledge kicks in.
If the copilot yells “left 2”, I assume the next turn is a left turn, but what does the number mean? Is the higher the number mean the sharper the turn? And then there are prompts like “right corner”, and “right hairpin”. Those make sense. But the numbers didn’t seem to make much sense and the repetitive nature of the copilot yelling turns and numbers got to be a bit annoying. There is no tutorial or any information to tell you what anything means. I get that they are trying to go for a rally simulation, but it just came off as annoying. And most of the time I used my own line of sight to determine how to handle the turns. Which leads me to my next complaint with the game. The steering for the vehicles seemed very loose and there was a slight input lag that made it too easy to over steer and hit a wall or go off track. This was frustrating because if you were on a good run and your turning was a little off you would lose a lot of valuable time.
As far as the tracks, the variety of tracks from team to team seemed different. But, the tracks within each series seemed very similar and repetitive. The landscapes looked the same from race to race in a series with the turns being the only major difference. There are only 6 teams to choose from and then there are about 30 races in each team’s journal starting from easy and going up in difficulty. Each team starts out with 3 cars with the option to buy more cars with your winnings. There are no modifications to make on your cars with one exception. If you win a particular race, you might win a front bumper, or a rear bumper or lights as a reward.
You can’t tweak settings of your cars setup in order to make better times. This is about as bare-boned as you can get. You drive. You finish. You repeat. Not wanting to sound like #Drive Rally is a bad game, you just have to go in with lowered expectations. This game is not going to with the world of racing games. Nor is it meant to be the definitive rally racing simulation game. This is meant to be something that you turn on and play for a few runs and then move on. It is fun… for a short time. There isn’t much else to keep someone playing. The only other modes in the game are, quick race. Which is, as its name implies, just a quick match on a track of your choosing. And then there is free roam, where you can drive around in a semi-open world and find collectables of letters that spell out a word. This became boring after just a short time. And party mode where you can select a number of people and you can take turns driving to see who is faster. Not at the same time.
Overall, there is some fun to be had in this game but, not for long periods of time. The lack of content and modes does seem to get repetitive in a short time. The cars, teams, and tracks do not have enough variety and feel very similar very quickly. And then there is the price…$19.99! Ouch. This game is a free to play game in the Apple App store with microtransactions. While I don’t condone the flagrant use of microtransactions, I think that this might have been one of those cases where this should have gone that route on consoles. Or at least for the lack of content, Charge $9.99 or less. I can’t recommend anyone pay full price for this game. I hope the developers at Pixel Perfect Dude keeps trying to develop good games, I just think there were too many missed opportunities with this game. It needed something else to keep people interested. So, for now I will stick to other racing games to keep me on the roads!
Review copy of game provided by publisher.