#DRIVE Rally Review – Relaxing Rally Racer

#DRIVE Rally Review

#DRIVE Rally is the second game from game developers, Pixel Perfect Dude. They are a four-man micro-indie Drive Rally continues the team’s signature game style of blending retro-inspired graphics with modern gameplay aesthetics. They pioneered this style first with #DRIVE, an endless driving car for the Nintendo Switch and mobile platforms.

#DRIVE Rally is an arcade style rally racing game that is also inspired by road movies. This is clear by your team, which sports voices that mimic actors such as the Terminator himself. The designers have created the graphics with vibrant color schemes in mind. To constantly engage the gamer, the environments provide changing vistas.

While the gameplay of #DRIVE Rally may lean to the arcade side of things, Pixel Perfect Dude is not skimping on the expected feature set for a rally racing game. There are twelve rally cars from the 90s to choose from spread over three classes. You can customize your car with changes to the wheels, spoilers, hoods, exhaust, fenders and bumpers.

The primary draw of rally racing games is racing on different terrains and locations plus a solid selection of tracks. #DRIVE Rally has forty-eight tracks spread over 400 km of real world inspired locations. There are four locations – Dry Crumbs – USA desert, Holzberg – Germany forest, Revontuli – Finland snow, and Vinh Vang – SE Asia tropical.

The different terrains cover forest, desert, and the always challenging snow. Each terrain provides a different challenging. Desert sand makes slides more prevalent, so you need to maintain control by slowing down and more judicious use of the handbrake when drifting. Forest tracks mean narrower roads with varying surface types. So you need to be very precise with your steering inputs and changing your driving behavior based not only on the track surface but on the tightness of the course, too. Then there is snow driving. Alertness is the key here, as sudden traction loss can happen because of icy patches.

Twenty-four stages make up each area. The short tracks run 2.5 kms, the middle stages are around 5 kms and the latter stages are around 7 kms. A full stage run is about 9 kms. The number of tracks double to 48, as each has a mirror version. So with a short stage you can knock off a race really quick – under two minutes.

Quick In, Quick Out

Navigation time between menus is fast. Even loading a full stage race is near instantaneous, which is a significant feature. The tracks are wide to accommodate some sliding, but if you go too far and hit a track barrier, it will add a ten second penalty to your race time.

Since this game takes an arcade approach to driving mechanics, hard core rally racers will find the driving model too forgiving. Bear in mind the intent of the game is on having fun. This is a good game for rally racing novices to cut their teeth on. Or for veterans that want to do a quick, relaxed session of racing.

Gamepad feedback includes the controller rumbling on sandy and snowy surfaces. However, there is little to no feedback if you come into contact with track barriers or go off the track itself.

For those who want a competitive experience, either against friends or to see how they stack against other, there are leader boards. And if you come short, there is a ghost mode for you to use as a reference.

#DRIVE Rally Co-Pilots – I’ll Be Back!

A vital element unique to rally games is co-pilot instructions and notes. The game provides them but leans much more towards making them entertaining over useful. For instance, with the German track, your co-pilot has the unmistakable intonations of Arnold Schwarzenegger. The other co-pilots bear the accents of their geographical locations too. It will depend on your sensibilities whether you find their voices amusing or irritating.

The game boosts full controller and steering wheel support. This is mostly true on the gamepad side. You can remap controls to suit your preferences. However, I could not map steering to the directional pad. This is true for both Playstation and Xbox controllers. You can set the sensitivity of the controller to a level that works best for you. There is an option to choose between automatic and manual shifting, too. Though any racer knows manual shifting is not only faster but more fun!

On the steering wheel side, the support is not as extensive. The same options for a controller are available, but there is a big omission. The game does not have any support for degrees of rotation. For example, the default setting I use with my T300 is 900 degrees of rotation. Most PC racing sims take this information and automatically change rotation according to the class of vehicle you drive.

Most notable is a lack of any options to change force feedback settings.

Cameras and Lack of Force Feedback

#DRIVE Rally also supports several in-game camera viewpoints. There is a cockpit view, a bumper view, and a behind the car view. The best view I find is the behind the car view, which aligns with the arcade nature of the game. Normally, I always prefer the cockpit for immersion but in this game the inside view is too tight and restricting.

#DRIVE Rally does not do this and so my default setting of 900 degrees is far too large for the game. To make the wheel usable, you would have to go into the Thrustmaster Control Panel and set the degrees of rotation to something suitable, i.e. between 270 and 540 degrees. And then if you want to do a session with another racing sim, you would have to return to the control panel and reverse the settings.

For those of you that like to capture highlight moments, you will be happy to know that the game has a Photo Mode.

The PC system requirements for the game are pretty modest by today’s standards. If you have 8 GBs of RAM, an Intel i5 CPU, and a Nvidia GTX 970, the game will run fine for you. Surprisingly, given the modest hardware requirements, pop-in of graphical elements still happens. This is most noticeable with shadows.

The Quick And Winding

#DRIVE Rally delivers on its intentions to be a fun, arcade rally racer. You can quickly get into a race if you are short on time or are just looking for something less demanding than a more realistic rally racer. The game launches on September 25, 2024 on the Steam, Epic, and GOG game stores.

*****Steam Code provided by publisher*****