Rally Rock ‘N Racing

Genre: Arcade Racing

Players: 1-4 (Local Split-Screen)

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in Rock ‘N Racing Bundle Grand Prix & Rally along with Grand Prix Rock ‘N Racing. It is also included in Rock ‘N Racing Bundle Off Road & Rally along with Rock ‘N Racing Off Road DX. In addition, it is also included in the Rock ‘N Racing Bundle 3 in 1 with Grand Prix Rock ‘N Racing and Rock ‘N Racing Off Road DX. If any of this seems confusing, you may want to consult with the handy chart on this page.)

Rally Rock ‘N Racing is an Arcade-style Racing game that, while it does have a vaguely Rally-style gameplay mode, is actually mostly not a Rally-style racing game, but instead a fairly by-the-numbers Arcade racing game.

The game’s main mode, World Rally Cup, is a bit odd. There are no other racers, and players try to get through the lengthy course as fast as they can, with a timer ticking down and getting refilled at checkpoints just like old-school Arcade racing games, with the locales and even the climates shifting as you progress in a fairly unrealistic fashion. Like in rally races, you have upcoming turns shouted to you, though I wonder if this bit was even necessary, as none of the game seems to take place off-road in any way that would make these turns hard to see or anticipate. The rest of the game is all on closed-circuit courses against other cars, playing out as a fairly vanilla racing game.

The gameplay here is mostly decent, though I have to say that the drifting controls feel overly-reactive, and I found it easier to just rely on the ol’ gas and brakes.

This game’s visual style is a bit odd, with visuals that are mostly fairly bland, but for some reason the game uses cel shading to accentuate these visuals, and I’m not sure it helps. For backgrounds it makes them look odd and distracting, and at times outright ugly, such as when the black border on trees makes them look like they were poorly Photoshopped into the game.

The resolution here is fairly low, but not so much that it ruins the gameplay, and there’s some ugly pop-up, but the framerates remain consistently decent. This remains true even in the game’s 4-player Split-screen mode, although here the lower resolution is definitely more noticeable, as is the pop-up.

While there are definitely parts of this game that are rough, overall I’d say Rally Rock ‘N Racing is a decent but unspectacular budget Racing game. It doesn’t do anything especially noteworthy, but it doesn’t do anything especially terrible either. It’s just… okay.

tl;dr – Rally Rock ‘N Racing is an Arcade-style Racing game that’s only partly a rally-style Racing game. This is largely a decent but unspectacular entry in the genre – it’s flawed, but not in any way that outright ruins the game, and the gameplay is okay, but doesn’t really stand out in any way.

Grade: C

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