Art of Rally Impressions

Renaissance Van

Rally games are going through something of a renaissance. After many years of forgettable licensed products and DiRT games moving further and further away from enthusiast to dudebro culture, Dirt Rally has cemented itself in rally game history as a genuine contender with Richard Burns Rally for best rally sim ever, and even WRC7 is solid!

However, with the DiRT series now suffering from an identity crisis by trying to cater to both the dudebro and the enthusiast, there is still plenty of room for a game which embraces another side of the sport of rallying—I mention dudebros mockingly, but there’s no denying that Ken Block has done much for motorsport and rallying, even if he unsurprisingly flopped as a racing driver and infuriates purists.

There is a poetic, almost dramatic, quality to rally, just as there is a lyrical quality to drifting, and it is this poetic quaity that Funselektor Labs are trying to capture. Indeed, Absolute Drift—Art of Rally’s spiritual predecessor—did capture the aesthetic joy of drifting, while managing to be a surprisingly deep take on getting sideways.

Like its predecessor, Art of Rally is also played from a top-down-view, but rather than the minimalist aesthetic seen in Absolute Drift, Art of Rally is much more expressive; taking the focus away from the vehicle and the lateral Gs, and placing it as much on the environment through which the vehicle is racing. This is important for a rally game, where much of the attraction of the sport is the combination of scenery, difficult-to-navigate-below-the-speed-limit roads as much as the cars and the racing.

As with Absolute Drift, the top-down view has not resulted in dumbed-down driving mechanics. While not a sim by any stretch of the imagination, staying on the road is difficult in and of itself, with changes in camber, puddles and inclines and declines requiring a tap dance of throttle control and braking to balance the vehicle, all while thinking several corners ahead—driving at night with the headlights lighting up the road and scenery is as terrifying as it is beautiful. Even the fog makes things difficult as you peer as far down the road as you can see to plan for the next corner.

While a co-driver is not necessary due to the perspective allowing you to see several corners in advance, I can’t help but feel the lack of one does undermine the aesthetic as a tribute to the art of rally racing!

Even so, Art of Rally has the potential to be as compelling a tribute to motorsport as Absolute Drift was, and an experience like no other—indeed, the impressionist take on rallying is beautiful, and the only racing game that has any claim to aesthetic achievement since Gran Turismo Sport and Forza Horizon 4!