Game Reviews

Rush Rally 3 review - "Probably the best rally experience for mobile right now"

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| Rush Rally 3
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Rush Rally 3 review - "Probably the best rally experience for mobile right now"
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| Rush Rally 3

Rally games need to be able to capture a different kind of danger to their more tarmac-obsessed brethren. You're not just going to drive into a wall if things go wrong - there's a very good chance that you're going to end up stuck in a tree or plummeting off a cliff.

That innate balance between success and tragedy is what makes Rush Rally 3 such a thrilling experience. Where a mistake in a racing game might leave you with slower cars to overtake in order to get back to the front, here you're fighting against yourself, the track, and an always ticking clock.

Sure there are other modes that rely on a more conventional racing setting to deliver their thrills and spills, but it's in career where the game really shines. It's a tough challenge, but one that isn't worried about letting you have an absolute blast while you're barging into its rocks and banks.

Rushing for the line

You almost certainly know what to expect from a racing game by now, but if you don't - drive cars fast. The key to being able to do that here is the controls. There are a variety of different changes you can make to them to suit your play, as well as a number of different views depending on what sort of driver you are.

Fancy some in-depth, in-car action? There's an option for that? Prefer a more top-down, birds-eye view - think a drone following your roaring rallying car - and you're in luck too. There's a bunch of other views in-between those as well, so it's likely there's going to be one that suits you.

The meat of the experience is the career mode. You buy a car, then you're working your way up the leagues - races are broken up into sections, and it's just you on the filth. Well, you and the digital co-driver whose shouts are replaced with coloured arrows telling you which way you need to go and how hard you need to turn the steering wheel.

Rush Rally iOS review screenshot - A view from inside the car

There are plenty of other modes to play as well. You've got races, both against AI controlled characters and against online opponents, and a broad range of weird challenges that you can work your way through as well. Everything you'd expect to see in a modern, brilliantly well put together racing game is exactly where you'd expect to find it.

If you're looking for a game that you can jump into and become the champion of in the same hour, then you're definitely going to want to look elsewhere. Rush Rally 3 is always entertaining, but it spreads its wheels the deeper you get into the experience, and the better you get the more fun you'll have.

You're not getting Ridge Racer-style arcade insanity here, but you're not getting the buttoned-down dullness of a Real Racing 3 either. It's somewhere in between - much like rallying itself - walking a deft line among the puddles and snow drifts.

Rally to the call

The middle ground racer isn't as well defined on mobile as it is elsewhere. We get flighty throwaway games, and we get hefty, engine-oil soaked simulations that use your inability to drive as monetisation strategies. Rush Rally 3 is neither of those things, and that makes it a bit special.

You're going to be hard-pressed to find more racer for the same price, and to be honest you probably won't want to. Rush Rally 3 shows that the series is every bit as entertaining as its apparently more illustrious competition - all while being dirty in the way that only a game that understands rallying can be.

Rush Rally 3 review - "Probably the best rally experience for mobile right now"

This is a filth-coated thrash and a brilliantly balanced racer all in one
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.