For an early access title #Drive Rally has a lot of content and feels almost finished, but it could do with a few tweaks here and there to make it great. I enjoyed playing through most of what the game had to offer which is a career mode where you play four different characters, and a hot lap mode where you can race on any track with any car you have unlocked competing on global leader boards.


The career mode is quite extensive with lots of tracks to complete before you are crowned champion. Each character has their own separate career mode and each character has their own personality and biome. You might be racing in the forest in Germany co-piloted by someone who sounds just like Arnie, or racing in the snow or sliding around the desert or in the jungle. The characters act as your co-pilot giving you instructions on severity of bends in their own unique way. I wasn't quite sure if I enjoyed the obvious attempt at humour, either chastising you for failing or encouraging you to go faster. For a start they all had very strong accents which were sometimes quite hard to understand, including when they were giving you your driving notes, and other times they were too busy making flippant remarks that they forgot to tell you there was a sharp corner coming.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3355820763


The tracks are odd in the sense that you can cut corners quite severely with just a momentary penalty of slowing down as you go off track. This is not possible with all corners as there are sometimes objects in place that will stop you from doing this but at least half of the time you will be able to bypass hairpins and tight corners altogether. Being an arcade game I accepted this and embraced it, and knowing where to do this became the key to posting a decent time on the global leader boards. The career mode is far too easy though and there is no challenge whatsoever even on the most difficult setting. I easily came first in almost every race that I finished with mistakes along the way.

The tracks are fun to race with adrenaline soaked long straights and plenty of corners for you to swing around. Drifting wasn't the most satisfying I have experienced, but it is okay, and often I would be fighting against keeping the car straight and had to turn the sensitivity down to zero in the settings which improved things. The varying terrains feel different in grip and have their own challenges like particular environmental obstacles or narrower roads. They were exciting to race, especially when building up to high speeds, but because of the lack of challenge it started to become inevitable that I would win and instead I tried competing against the global leader board times instead. A mode where you could race against other cars would make this game much more interesting I think. Maybe one mode for the future? Even though there are checkpoints, which give you feedback on how well you are doing, I felt that I needed something else to inject some jeopardy into proceedings, as sometimes I would finish a minute ahead of second place. Showing leader board checkpoints or just something for me to chase would have made the stages more interesting.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3357869601


When you start the race you can race against a ghost, which I believe is the top finisher on the global leader board, or so I thought. The ghost seems very erratic, often driving through immovable objects, and even when you beat the ghost you don't come first on the leader board. It just seems to be glitched. It is a shame you cannot pick the ghost from the leader board or for that matter race your own ghost along with your current best time. The ghost quite often obscures your view in certain camera modes too if they are close to you, by displaying the name of the ghost which flickers on the screen. I am not sure why, but you are only allowed to see the first twelve finishers on the global leader board and if you are outside this your position just says thirteen+ and a time. I would have much preferred seeing my actual finishing spot whether it was eightieth or fifteenth. A lot of the fun racing against times is seeing yourself improve and watching yourself climbing leader boards is fun, which was taken away.


There are about five different camera modes to choose from and you can switch between them whenever you like. Some of the angles need a bit of work though. For example, some cars are taller than others and this can effect you seeing the course on certain angles. Other angles need to project the view further ahead as corners come up too quickly and surprise you. Different angles bring about different perspectives on speed. I'm not sure if that is a fault of the game but I found it much easier in certain angles as it just felt a lot slower.

https://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3355820579


Winning rallies and stages earns you points which you can buy new cars with or upgrades to cars you have unlocked. I found the whole process very confusing. For a start there is no garage as such and you have to go into the quick race mode to access your cars. There are no stats associated with new parts so you cannot see how upgrades effect performance. I think buying and installing parts is for aesthetic reasons only but the cars are detailed well and changing parts and watching the car transform is nice. It would have been nice to have different stats like handling, power, braking etc. and watch these change as parts were added and for these to translate into performance on the tracks. I just kept thinking what is the point of all this? Winning rallies, which is easy anyway, gives you loads of money to spend and it wasn't long before I had bought every car and upgrade there was but I didn't notice any difference when driving and during the rallies the cars are chosen for you anyway, so it wasn't clear what upgrades actually achieved.

There is no damage model built into the game so you can crash as much as you like and it will not effect performance. Sometimes, I would get stuck on objects, and even though there is a reset button, I wasn't sure if it was working or not as it takes a while for your car to reset, so please add a timer for this so we can see it is working once pressed. It would also be nice to be able to start the stage again after I had finished and seen my leader board time. Currently, you can only restart if you are still on the stage.

I really liked the cartoon like aesthetic. The cars looked really nice although the courses were a bit unimaginative and bland in places. I think they could have more landmarks or interesting things to look at.

I did enjoy #Drive Rally and would have no qualms recommending it to arcade driving fans, but as for all early access games there are definitely some improvements which could be made that would elevate this title.

The attempt at humour and the very strong dialects may put some people off but it is what makes the game stand out from its rivals.

Currently, the game almost feels finished but it just needs some tweaks and perhaps a mode where we could race against other AI cars or have some sort of online mode.

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super fun, just wish it had pace note card and each hud element was toggleable induvidually. also why is the car so high off the ground

Very cool game. The art looks very good and the handling for the card is nicely done. Amazing game for handhelds !