Rush Rally 3

Genre: Rally Racing

Players: 1, Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Rush Rally 3 is a Rally Racing game released on mobile devices and Nintendo Switch in 2019. This is a game that seems designed to be overlooked – it’s a budget-priced mobile-centric game, designed by a tiny developer (they specifically say they’re a one-man studio) in a genre that major game studios usually have a huge team assigned to create. Yet, despite all of these red flags, Rush Rally 3 is a game that may shock a lot of players.

You wouldn’t think so just looking at this game’s menus, though. One of Rush Rally 3’s biggest flaws are its inscrutable, difficult to navigate menus that make it difficult to understand just what your options are at any given time. In addition, those options are severely limited until the player unlocks them through play – each game mode only allows players to access the current challenge and any challenges they’ve completed previously, meaning there is always only ever one way to progress in each mode. This results in an experience that feels very limited.

However, once you get past the confusing menus and the limited options in selecting your car and tracks, the game’s strengths start to shine through, with the first being the game’s graphical presentation. While not quite as impressive as releases from more major studios, Rush Rally 3 nevertheless manages to hold its own, with nice, detailed visuals, good resolution and framerate, good lighting in darker tracks, and an overall look that’s actually comparable to games from bigger studios. There are cracks in the veneer though – there’s some pop-in here, some of the textures for the scenery is particularly ugly and low-resolution, and the framerates can dip slightly a little in busier areas. But overall, Rush Rally 3 looks great, and what’s absolutely crazy is that all of this is done with under 1GB of storage space in your Nintendo Switch’s memory – this game looks far better than others that are multiple times its size.

What’s even more surprising than the generally high quality of the visuals in this game is how many options players are given to adjust this presentation to their liking. Players can separately adjust the target framerate, resolution, tree draw distance, and various effects like shadows and reflections, all in pursuit of creating a more ideal experience – if those occasional dips in framerate bother you, or you don’t want to see any pop-in, you can reduce the resolution to compensate, or toy around with other settings until you feel like you have a good balance. This is the sort of freedom you don’t often see in console games, and feels more typical of a PC game. Players can even adjust these settings separately for both docked and handheld mode.

The sound in Rush Rally 3 is good but nothing truly special. You get good but somewhat generic racing/sports music in menus, and in the game itself you have some good car sounds and a man’s voice shouting directions at you. There’s nothing especially bad here, but nothing great either.

While I’ve already stated my frustration with this game’s menus that makes it difficult to figure out how to fine-tune your preferred vehicle, once you finally get into a race, the gameplay itself is quite good, and players are given multiple options for how to race – there’s a career mode, players can tackle individual races on both off-road and closed courses against other cars, and the game even has “Skill Games” that have players racing in difficult conditions like avoiding traffic while trying to beat your time to a finish line. There’s a lot here to keep you busy.

Unfortunately, one thing that won’t be keeping you busy is multiplayer. The game touts “LAN” play, but I couldn’t get this to work. In any case, I can’t seem to play online multiplayer and there’s no split-screen multiplayer. The only thing resembling multiplayer here are the presence of ghost cars and a leaderboard.

There are a few other features deserving mention here – Rush Rally actually does a really good job of supporting Nintendo Switch’s unique features, and players who desire to do so can play this game using the touchscreen or gyroscopic motion controls. I personally found both of these not to my liking in the actual gameplay, but I do think the touchscreen controls make menu navigation much easier.

Rush Rally 3 certainly has its rough edges – the graphics here are good but could definitely do with improvement in areas, the lack of multiplayer options is disappointing, and the game’s menus are garbage. But for $15, this is a pretty respectable Rally Racing game, and one that Nintendo Switch owners looking for a good experience in the genre should definitely be considering. Despite all the reasons it may be easy to overlook this game, it is well worth checking out.

tl;dr – Rush Rally 3 is a Rally Racing game that is a solid entry in the genre that manages to rise above its value pricing and mobile-centric development to be worthy of competing with games from bigger developers. The graphics could do with brushing up in some areas, the lack of multiplayer options is unfortunate, and the menus are terrible, but despite these flaws, this is a game that is nevertheless an excellent entry in the genre.

Grade: B-

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