It’s the incredibly simple yet effective use of lighting and focus. You may not be able to peek inside a wealth of licenced cars to marvel at the leather interiors or the shiny chrome engines, but you won’t care. Ultimately, what art of rally gets right more than the majority of racing games is in focusing its attention to detail on the right places. Most importantly, the controls are so tight that you’ll always feel like there are places in which you can shave a tenth of a second off your best time and, similarly, you’ll also know that any error is yours and yours alone, thus knowing where there is room for improvement. The races themselves are a lot of fun, with well-designed courses that provide plenty of opportunities for really opening up and bombing it along straights (well, as ‘straight’ as rally straights tend to be), whilst also providing plenty of trickier technical sections, especially some of those almost-180° hairpins that require pinpoint accuracy to ensure you don’t slide off into oblivion. Instead, the game generally presents this in a very lineal fashion (almost said ‘point-to-point’ here, but I’ve already used my one pun for this review), taking you on what amounts to a virtual history lesson, with races spanning from the mid-1960s through to the 1990s across a number of group categories. In other racing games, this would probably be represented by a cluttered menu system and world map that looked like an icon factory had exploded.
Art of rally maps pro#
In fact, this represents another tick in the pro column for the simple UI as, without it, the breadth of what’s available to you would be verging on intimidating, both in terms of the number of non-licenced but fairly recognisable cars that will be available to you and the number of races you can partake in. You may have already figured this out, based on what you’ve read so far, but underneath the minimalism and chill overall tone, art of rally is a game of incredible depth.
Art of rally maps free#
(One last wee cool feature about Free Roam mode that seems unremarkable, but which is actually a Godsend – when travelling through some more densely wooded parts of a map, a bubble will appear around your car, meaning you always have an unimpeded view of where your car is and what direction it is facing…a really nice touch.) Most exciting of all though are the Tony Hawk-style “RALLY” letters that are dotted around the map, as collecting all five will unlock another locale to potter about. Finding five cassettes, for example, unlocks new music to add to the collection (by the way, a quick shout-out for the art of rally soundtrack, which is truly excellent, especially if you’re a fan of chilled electronica), while each map also contains a number of discoverable ‘views’ – scenic spots in the mould of Forza Horizon’s beauty spots. Perhaps most interestingly, veering off the beaten path often reveals collectables and new points of interest. Set in large and fully explorable locales, Free Roam mode is a terrific way to learn the different handling models that each car offers, and how that handling is affected by the different road types. Perhaps the best thing about this is that you don’t necessarily have to bang your head against a brick wall trying to figure out what your ‘level’ is, thanks to art of rally’s extensive Free Roam mode.
Art of rally maps manual#
Or are you the type of maniac who likes a real challenge? Almost unbeatable competitors and manual transmission? Have at it – maybe a little judgement here though… No judgement here, especially as that’s how I started out playing the game. Forgiving CPU competitors and an automatic transmission? Sure, go ahead. This welcoming tone extends into art of rally’s gameplay options, which are extensive enough to cater for players of all levels. It’s a clean simple UI that sets a welcoming tone right out of the gate (pun only slightly intended). This can first be seen in the game’s overarching aesthetic, which is one of stark minimalism, be it the largely monochromatic look of the menus or the in-game HUD which is unintrusive to the point of being almost invisible (racing game devs – please pay attention to this). To anyone who played Funselektor Labs’ previous title, Absolute Drift, art of rally will feel comfortingly familiar.
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