| Title | Art of Rally runs on an idyll engine |
| Author | Tom Chick |
| Posted in | Game reviews |
| When | December 28, 2020 |
It's been an, uh, interesting year for rally games. Dirt 5, which was already kind of superfluous given the amount of content in Dirt 4, took a new direction...and then drove right into a ditch..
OK, I’m almost tempted to pick up this game just so I can read more factoids. I wish I had my car had an integrated espresso machine.
This looks gorgeous and I’m tempted just to drive around in it. But also I don’t actually like cars or serious racing games, so… probably not.
Ugh…hadn’t even heard of this, and now I suppose I have to buy it.
(lovely review, Tom)
This came out the blue, nice work Tom. This is just $8.74 + taxes on the Epic store right now if you use one of their fancy vouchers.
I like the visuals in this, and the fact its easy to pick up and play.
Also Tom gave it all the stars!
Excellent review for a deservedly excellent game.
Yay, this game finally has a thread here on Qt3! I bought it at launch, but when it turned to be played from a camera view so far away from the car, I was really taken aback and haven’t returned to it since. Reading the review, I realize now that I should give it another shot.
I’m not sure about turning off the assists though. How am I supposed to learn rally driving with the camera so far away from the car, with the assists turned off Tom? Heck, I can’t even handle 3rd person views in normal Rally games, let alone this far away view.
Lovely review of a game that sounds even more lovely. I’d been interested by the visuals and am happy to find out the game is good. Thanks for checking it out for us!
I’m curious why you make such a point about it being a Unity game? I thought these days the various game engines can make pretty much anything the hardware can support, the look of a game was entirely on the art team, and the differences were really only how much expertise a given team has with a particular technology?
You’ll be fine. :) Of course, it helps that older cars you start with are so darn pokey.
Yeah, that was probably unfair. But I still associate Unity with indie games that can’t be bothered with visuals, which is why Art of Rally and Falconeer stood out for me. They’re both absolutely gorgeous, and to my eye, far more impressive than a hardware boondoggle like Cyberpunk 2077. And I was serious about the fullscreen things. I have one of those egregiously widescreen monitors, so I run most games in a window with something else going on in another window. But not Art of Rally or Falconeer.
What are the other gorgeous Unity games that I’m forgetting? I’m sure there are some that are going to make me facepalm when you remind me.
-Tom
Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps.
I lost the first race by a lot. That’s with all the assists on! I think you play racing games with the camera outside the car all the time, so you don’t understand how hard it is to adjust for someone who doesn’t do that. :)
I haven’t played the Ori vs. Will-o’-the-Wisps games, but I’ve looked at screenshots. I’m afraid they didn’t do anything to interest me. Besides, side-scrolling platformers aren’t really my things.
You take that back! How dare you! One of the things I love about WRC9 and Dirt 4 is that you can lock in rewards for playing from inside the car. I will always prefer an interior view for driving if the game is built to be played that way.
-Tom
Have you heard of Desperados III? :-) That’s a Unity game. Unity does all kinds of stuff: Firewatch, Subnautica, Cuphead, Genshin Impact, Inside, Hollow Knight, Sunless Sea, Cities: Skylines…
But, yeah I guess there’s not a whole lot of photo-realistic racing games or first-person shooters made in Unity, if that’s what you meant.
I’m quite intrigued by this game, but the lack of capitalization in those screenshots bugs me a little.
Not enough to avoid the game, just wasn’t sure if it was part of some Gen Z texting aesthetic.
I totally played Desperados in a window! Honestly, I don’t think any of those has the artistic punch of Art of Rally or Falconeer. Neither of which is photo-realistic or first-person, by the way!
Although I wouldn’t dream of playing Subnautica in a window, so it’s got that going for it. And I have Genshin Impact installed, but have yet to actually boot it up.
-Tom
I’m curious why this game gets a pass from Mr. Chick on setting the difficulty via assists and ai level without, AFAIK, any reward for doing so.
Grabbed it on Epic for less than 9 bucks US.
How do you mean it gets a pass?
For the record, I left the difficulty setting for the AI cars on normal. Which is I found trivially easy to beat. The real metric for how I did on a stage was the online leaderboards, although they don’t distinguish who’s playing with which assists. I do find it interesting to note who’s driving which cars. Really, if this were a competitive game, they would break down times by car. I did set the damage model to severe because I like the damage system in this. I like having to drive more carefully. I like how it reflects that the more powerful and more complex cars are also more frail. On severe, once you get into the 80s, one good whack head-on into a tree can knock you out of a race.
But there’s really no reward system in Art of Rally, so I’m not sure what you think they should do. It’s simply not that kind of game.
-Tom
We spoke about this one quite a bit in the racing thread - it really is great fun. It does a good job of conveying the feel of rallying despite playing from some eagle’s perch behind and above the car and it looks amazing.
Also, the crowd is the best crowd in any rally game so far, because they stand in the road and get out of your way at the last second by the narrowest margins possible, just like a real gang of rally spectators.
I mean that you frequently complain when a developer leaves you to determine your own difficulty setting with no incentive for making it more difficult, yet there was no mention of that here. And it doesn’t particularly matter to me… so I don’t think they should do anything. It just seemed curious you didn’t mention it since it is something you frequently bring up.
As I said, it’s not really that kind of game. But if it sours you on the experience, that’s certainly your prerogative. If you have any other concerns that I might not have mentioned, I’d be happy to answer them.
-Tom