Rush Rally Origins

Genre: Top-Down Racing

Players: 1, Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Rush Rally Origins is a Top-Down Racing game released on mobile devices and Nintendo Switch in 2021 that takes the general look and gameplay of the developer’s prior game, Rush Rally 3, and transforms it by shifting the view from that of a typical Racing Game to a Top-Down Racing Game. Those who read my review of Rush Rally 3 will note that I found that game to be a delightful surprise, and while it had its rough spots, it was overall a surprisingly excellent budget Rally game, so basing this game on that one seems like a promising start. And as this game feels like a different take on Rush Rally 3, I’ll be making a lot of comparisons to that game in this review.

Where I found Rush Rally 3’s presentation to be surprisingly strong for a game from a small developer (one employee at the time that game was made, upped to two for Origins), it was also uneven, with framerate drops, low-resolution textures, and pop-in. Rush Rally Origins feels somewhat less ambitious, but it is also much more polished, with an overall solid framerate, good textures, and nice effects, with the zoomed-out view undoubtedly allowing for the game to get away with a little less detail in the level geometry and texture resolution without being noticeable. Really, the only graphical flaw I found here is the game’s shadows, which are oddly blocky and low-resolution. Otherwise, this game looks excellent, far better than most other Top-Down Racing games.

Despite that the presentation here is all-around great, the game still retains Rush Rally 3’s ability to independently change various display settings to optimize performance how you want, with profiles for both handheld mode and docked mode. Again, this is far more than we tend to see in most games outside of PC games, and while it’s not really necessary here, it is nevertheless appreciated.

It seems that the developer addressed one of the other issues Rush Rally 3’s presentation had, though – the menus in this game are much more intelligible, and make it fairly easy to get into the game mode you want. The car upgrade system has been simplified, but this is undoubtedly for the best as it is far easier to understand this time around. However, the different game modes here have also been simplified, with only three types of races available. It would have been nice if this game retained options like Rush Rally 3’s “Skill Games”, but given this game’s $7 price tag, I can’t fault it for being an overall slimmer experience than its $15 predecessor.

That said, the gameplay here is still quite excellent, and feels like a smooth adaptation of Rush Rally 3’s gameplay to the top-down perspective… although I say that with a caveat – this game is fantastic once you change the camera mode to have the camera follow behind your car, rather than follow from a fixed position, which makes steering extremely unwieldy. But with a proper camera view, this gameplay is nicely nuanced, feels great, and retains the rally mechanics of the series.

The controls haven’t changed much this time either. This means that this game supports gamepad controls, touchpad controls, and motion controls all very well, although as before, I personally find the traditional gamepad controls to be preferable.

While I thoroughly appreciate many of the ways Rush Rally Origins draws from Rush Rally 3, one similarity I wish received more work was the game’s multiplayer, which is once again largely nonexistent. Players only have a leaderboard and ghost racers to work with – and this time those can only be accessed by signing up for an account, which seems completely unnecessary.

Still, overall, Rush Rally Origins manages to improve on so many facets of Rush Rally 3 that I feel like it’s overall a better game, even if its Top-Down Racing nature makes it feel somewhat less ambitious than its predecessor. The lack of any significant multiplayer options still feels like a glaring flaw, but just about everything here is truly excellent. In fact, this may very well be the best Top-Down Racer I’ve ever played, and for its low price, I can easily forgive the less ambitious nature of this game. If you enjoy Top-Down Racing games, consider this a must-buy.

tl;dr – Rush Rally Origins draws from the gameplay and visuals of its predecessor, Rush Rally 3, while taking the game into the Top-Down Racing genre. This is a less-ambitious game than its predecessor, and as such less impressive, but it manages to fix most of the problems of the prior game while retaining the great gameplay and nice visuals. It’s a shame this game still lacks any multiplayer gameplay of note, but despite this flaw, this is still one of the best games this genre has ever seen. If you enjoy the genre, do not miss it.

Grade: B

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2021 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Value, Best Driving/Racing Game

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