A few times this year, I’ve covered games that are about rallying, Finland’s national sport. The problem with rallying is that while it is dangerous, it is also very dull. Yes, I am talking of the men (it’s mostly men) sitting in the passenger seat yelling their weekly shopping list at you: “Two eggs, right. A mountain of bacon, slope steep, 34 [degrees].” Overall, it is an issue of racing games and their fans, in general, being the most boring humans alive. Why can’t I ramp off of a small hill into the gathered crowd? I miss the cartoon violence and humorous stupidity of games, especially racing ones.

Art of Rally is a cartoonish racing/rallying game where you compete through the years of Finland’s national sport. It is a mix of serious time trialed racing and stupidly fun open-world collect-a-thons. You’ll go through the early years of modern rallying through cartoonish glee at the little knock-off Minis and other rally cars of the late 60s. All the while you are trying to stay on the road, avoiding the hazards of trees and bails of hay. You’re also trying not to kill the little block people that are actively trying to commit suicide by sport.

Yet, nevertheless, Art of Rally is a stunningly beautiful game without all the fancy ray-tracing that other games are using to attract players. There is a simple and straight-to-the-point colorful art direction, that makes one thing clear as soon as you add a touch of almost tilt-shift style focus on the action. It is less about the rallying and more about taking photos in the surprisingly deep photo mode. I’ve said it before, but I’m a sucker for a good photo mode. In fact, I’ve shown that with DiRT 5 and F1 several times. I like to call this one, “Le Moo”

What’s the driving like, you ask? Well, it is a mixed bag really, trying to balance the slide-y and difficult conditions rally drivers are expected to drive in while still being reasonable. After quite a while, I am still working out how to control the handbrake properly. Several times I’ve gone pirouetting into the assembled block people or someone’s back garden. No that’s not an artless euphemism. If you crash, you’ve two options: Either restart and take a hit on completionism, or you swear greatly about the lack of acceleration after slowly reversing. However, I don’t think that’s the point of it all.

Art of Rally is a gentle, fun, lighthearted, and stylish take on the otherwise dull genre of motorsport which is often taken very seriously with WRC and DiRT. Performance can vary from time to time on lower-end systems. Nevertheless it is beautiful once it is leveled out. This is a fantastic time trial racing game that is only slightly let down by my desire to sit in the open world and take silly pictures of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on the run after all those murders of block people.

A PC copy of Art of Rally was provided by Funselektor Labs Inc. for the purposes of this review.

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Art Of Rally

$24.99

7.5

Score

7.5/10

Pros

• Colorful and fun art direction.
• Easy to learn, hard to master driving.
• Greatly detailed photo mode for such a game.

Cons

• Somewhat stunted performance on lower-end systems.