Art of Rally | Nintendo Switch Review
Updated: Nov 19, 2021
Art of Rally is a top-down racing game that was initially released on Windows PC in 2020, but has now made the leap onto consoles, with XBox and Nintendo Switch available now, and Playstation to follow shortly. Art of Rally is developed and published by Funselektor Labs Inc. and for the purposes of my review I was playing on the Nintendo Switch in handheld mode.
The first thing you will notice about Art of Rally is that the visuals are just not as stunning on the Nintendo Switch version as they are on the PC. You do take a bit of a hit with the actual performance here, and it does kind of show. But that aside, you still get a very enjoyable and fun rally game for your money with plenty of game modes and configuration to keep you at least entertained. I am quickly going to mention the extras here first, because in the menus you can access the Car Trailers, where each car and class has a brilliant little cinematic trailer, and it is a nice little added touch, to allow you to check out all of the cars that are included.
My first stop in Art of Rally was the Free Roam mode. There are 6 locations in this mode with each next one on the list being unlocked as you complete your current one. There are also a few weather options depending on how you want your location to be, with rain or fog being some of the options, and once in, you have various collectible items to scoop up around the course, so there is that little added bonus to the driving, and something that will keep the completionists on their toes. I found it fun trying to locate that elusive last item, and it does allow you to fully explore each of the locations here, which are all proceduraly generated.
The other game modes include Time Attack, which does what it says on the label. There are 6 locations here with various stage and weather options, as well as car class, and you get to compete and post a time to the leaderboards to see how good or how bad you are. The Custom Rally mode lets you tailor the game to your own preferences with location, stage, damage level and A.I. difficulty settings. There is a Career mode where you start off down at the lower end of the car classes and work your way up through them all, and it does contain quite a lot of racing here, so many hours can be spent working through each of the levels. There are also Online Events, which I never tried out, but they are updated daily and weekly.
The controls in Art of Rally are right trigger to accelerate and left trigger to brake or reverse, A for handbrake, right thumbstick pressed is your horn and you can also free look with the camera using this stick, with the left thumbstick controlling your cars movement. The D-pad has controls for repairing punctures and changing the fixed camera, and you also have the option to recover your car, should you get into a sticky situation and are unable to get back on to the track. In the settings menu, there are gameplay options for stability, counter-steer, anti-lock brakes and transmission. Audio options allow you to adjust master volume, vehicle volume, UI, music, and ambience volume. There are advanced settings for steering, brakes, throttle and vibration, as well as for hud, interface and camera. Talking about camera, there is a photo mode included in the game, so you can get some nice snaps of the countryside.
Art of Rally is a fun little racing game, despite the issues with the visuals. It will keep you on your toes as you navigate round the twists and turns of the many stages in whichever of the locations you choose. There is plenty to keep you entertained with racing and challenges, as well as the extensive career mode. I definitely need to drop it that point though, due to the visuals being a slight letdown, but like I have said already, this does not take anything away from the actual gameplay, and I did thoroughly enjoy the time I spent playing Art of Rally. g1a5w3g1an's Rating: 3 handbrake turns out of 5.
For more information on Art of Rally please use the following links...
Funselektor Labs Inc. - Developer | Publisher | YouTube | Twitter | Website
Many thanks to Future Friends Games for the Review Key.
Art of Rally | Steam Store | XBox Live | Nintendo eShop
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