Old School Rally is something for you if you like games like Colin McRae Rally and Colin McRae Rally 2.0 that were originally published for the first PlayStation. The driving feel is very much like in those classic retro games. You get actually to control your rally car using just your plain original gamepad. This seemed to be the norm way back. The gamers actually didn’t have so many driving wheels and pedals. The graphics weren’t as realsitic but yet these games just had something special in them.
I bought my copy of Old School Rally for Nintendo Switch for a bit over 30 euros. It think the precise price was 32 euros. It is a physical copy. The game is also available for PS5 also as a physical game and also for Steam as, of course, a digital copy of the game. With this same purchase I bought Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection. I tried briefly also this compilation of some earlier Mortal Kombat games. It was fun to play the first MK game like it was meant to be played in an Arcade. I got as far as trying to beat Goro. Then I had to give up for that session. Maybe I’ll try again later.
Old School Rally is really nice to play if you are familiar with CMR PS1 games. There are some differences. The cars aren’t official ones. They are fictive manufacturers and models. You also don’t get to fiddle with car settings actually at all. The damage that the car takes does affect the controllability of the car. If you damage your car greatly the driving becomes more difficult although not impossible. Car has breaking and steering functions although I don’t get to see under the hood so much and I think it isn’t actually required. My notes here are based solely on plaiyng this game. I haven’t seen the source code. This isn’t an open source release after all.
Breaking seems to be the critical fact when it comes to how you can handle your car. It isn’t, in my opinion, as accurate as was with CMR games. You also don’t get to fix how the breaks work. Other abilities of the car are the ability to accelerate and also the highest speed you can reach. Also, there aren’t any other competitors. There isn’t a series to compete in. Instead you get a record time that you have to beat on each stage.
Graphics are a bit fuzzy but I think they work just fine considering the clear comparison to CMR games. Actually, if you think about it, the CMR games are already almost 30 years old. This fact brings for me and also for a lot of other older gamers a huge amount of nostalgia. There is actually a lot to play in Old School Rally. I did spent over ten hours playing the campaign of this rally game. The How Long To Beat website states that it takes eight hours to finish Old School Rally.
I could share some tips for a beginner. Try not to completely wreck your car. Try to break in time with the corners. Don’t break too late or too slightly. Figure out which car to buy or not to buy. If you totally wreck your car during a stage consider retiring from the event and starting over. You can easily end up with a broken car trying to desperately beat the record time. This can be almost impossible. At times I found myself in this loop of repeating a stage. The driving is in Old School Rally more difficult with a broken car.