Over the years, racing sims have come a long way. Gaming PCs and consoles have become more powerful, physics and tire models have become more accurate, and after COVID, it seems like nearly everyone has a sim rig setup at home. Sim racing has even become an accepted route into the world of real-life motorsport (not to be confused with the Indy Racing League).
But what if you aren't looking to become the next Max Verstappen? What if you miss the more carefree days of old, where the fidelity wasn't quite so high, nor were the stakes? Rally Arcade Classics is worth a look.
Developed by NET2KGAMES, you might think of RAC as a spiritual successor to legendary titles like Sega Rally and Colin McRae Rally. Forget about the Nürburgring or even street circuits laid out in famous cities you might have visited; instead, this game is about point-to-point racing against the clock—mostly—across landscapes that long-time World Rally Championship fans will remember.
There's Finland, with plenty of fast dirt roads, complete with crests that will launch your car into the air. Or the dusty, sinewy mountain roads of Greece. Catalyuna (in Spain) provides technical tarmac stages. And Monte Carlo combines tarmac, ice, snow, and challenging corners. But since this is rallying, each location is broken into a series of short stages. Oh, and some of them will be at night.
Then there are the cars. This is an indie game, not a AAA title, so there are no official OEM licenses here. But there are plenty of cars you'll recognize from the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. These comprise a mix of front-, rear-, and all-wheel drive machinery, some of them road cars and others heavily modified for rallying. You start off in the slowest of these, the Kopper, which is an off-brand Mini Cooper, a car that won a famous victory at the 1964 Monte Carlo Rally, despite being many, many horsepower down on the mostly RWD cars it beat.
The models of the cars, while not Gran Turismo 7-level, are close enough that you don't really notice the Peugeot 205 is called the Paigot 5, or the Golf GTI now being the Wolf. The Betta is a Lancia Delta Integrale, the Fourtro is an Audi Quattro, and the Selicka is the Toyota Celica, but I must admit I'm not quite sure why the Subaru Imprezas are called the Imperial R and the MR Bang STI—answers in the comments if you know, please.
Gameplay
There are several game modes to keep you occupied in RAC. Tour has a number of sub-modes, including point to point; Versus, where you race against other cars on track; and Drift, where going sideways earns you points. They're mostly short levels—at least at my current state of game progression—so it's quite frenetic as you jump from stage to stage, in groups of five stages. There are gold, silver, and bronze times, and you earn credits with each that you can spend on new cars.
Arcade sees you compete against 14 other cars across four different stages, with Arcade modes for each of the cars. Then there's Rally, which is more involved and tasks you with completing all the stages for a given location, complete with random weather and three different difficulty levels. Chrono is a pure time trial mode, and Events are where you'll find online challenges.
Finally, there's a license section, similar to the ones you'll find in Gran Turismo games. If you've played any of those, you'll know the score: beat the clock and don't hit anything.
While the graphics for the cars are slightly cartoony, the Monte Carlo stages managed to evoke memories of driving those same roads on a cold winter morning, so I think they did a decent job with the environments. The sound isn't much to write home about, but the pace notes from your (unseen) co-driver are easy to understand, if a bit less complex than the stream of instructions you'd hear in Colin McRae or a Dirt title.
I'm also a big fan of the way the cars handle, at least in the early stages of the game. The physics remind me a lot of games like Project Gotham Racing 3 or PGR4, racing games that sacrifice some real-world veracity for good old fun and which I have begun to miss in this era of more hardcore racing sims. As someone who usually prefers circuit racing games, even my relatively mediocre ability to get the rear wheels slipping and the car drifting felt rewarded. And the short nature of the stages makes it ideal for those "I have 5 minutes to kill and wouldn't mind a quick drive" moments.
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