V-Rally 4

I remember loving V-Rally 3 on the original Playstation, and so I wanted this game based on brand loyalty. However, the poor reviews put me off from buying it early. I finally bought the game for around £4, and I have no idea where all the hate comes from.

All the different types of rally are here, so there’s standard Rally, RallyCross, Buggy, Hillclimb and Gymkhana. The Gymkhana isn’t necessarily about drifts and jumps, since it is about completing the track quickly; but the track styles means you will be performing slaloms, sharp turns and jumps - you just aren’t scored specifically on it.

In the career mode, you are given a somewhat random selection of events and you raise money to buy new cars, upgrades and staff. Eventually, the Championship event will appear which is tough and consists of several races. You want to win the championship in each category, but then there’s the World Championship versions of each category too.

It starts off easy in the 1 star events, but the 3 star events are definitely challenging, and the championships are more so. In general, I think you need to pick the tier 1 cars for the 1 star races, tier 2 for the 2 star etc. The exception of this are the Rally cars which have far more tiers.

When you purchase a car, you then unlock access to the next tier of cars. With the Rally cars, sometimes I bought a car from the next tier but had no interest in using it, because I wanted a car from the next tier above that. Many of the tiers are very similar spec anyway.

There are plenty of tracks and I was still seeing new tracks or variations even 10+ hours into the game.

The staff you hire consist of an agent, researchers and mechanics. The Agent determines what events are shown, or other bonuses like discounts on parts, the Research team unlocks new parts, and Mechanics fix your car between races. The staff cost a monthly wage but it’s pretty insignificant with the money you earn.

I was surprised at how good the graphics are. There are some really stunning views, and the lighting is definitely impressive. Maybe if you compared it to the top racing games then maybe it is lacking. There’s some nice details too like hot air balloons in the sky.

One thing to note is that there is no rewind mechanic in the game. So if you make a mistake, you have to accept it, or restart the race. If you go off course or are about to hit a spectator, then you are automatically reset. You can hold the Y button on the controller to manually reset.

I found the penalty system really inconsistent. Sometimes flying off course resets you with no penalty, but then other areas seem to give you anywhere between 1-10 second penalty. The more extreme penalties seem to be for when you are about to hit a spectator, which is frustrating when they are right next to the finish line, and you are driving an unstable car.

The cars vary in how they handle, The ones with the low “stability” rating tend to slide and spin out very easy. Whereas the high stability feels closer to how you expect, where they are fairly rigid on tarmac, but slide nicely on the more slippery surfaces.

You can customise the look with paint colour and decals. I didn’t spend much time with this feature. I mainly used the default look, but sometimes chose a solid colour and threw a few decals on there, or random paint splotches.

Music plays in the menus and not while racing. The music will drive you insane though since there is just 1 track that loops. You can switch to an instrumental version in the menu.

If you like rally games, then I don’t think you can be too disappointed with V-Rally 4.