my new thing I’m obsessed with is a steam game called ‘art of rally’ which is one half being six years old and playing with micro machines on your bedroom carpet, and one half detailed love letter to the suicidal, homicidal nature of 20th century motorsport
are there bigger budget, higher fidelity rallying games? yes. I have played all of them. none of them are this good
part of the reason why is that it is impressionistic. if you care about transmission ratios you can get that from a dozen games, but this one really captures the *vibe* of sliding an alpine a110 sideways through a Finnish meadow and almost mowing down a dozen spectators
it is set in an alternate universe where Group B rally never ended - for context, that was the class they stopped running because it was too insanely dangerous
the story I remember about Group B rallying is the car arriving at the end of stage and the driver finding a guy’s finger embedded in the grille because he had gone past him at 70mph and just snatched it off his hand
you’re never gonna be able to handle ‘spectators throwing themselves out of the way of the car’ in HD, but in a world where everything is slightly abstracted and polygonal but spiritually true, it’s perfect
so for instance none of the cars have their real names but the shapes are there and INSTANTLY recognisable. all sorts of rewards for the memory. the ad banners in the exact Mobil colours but they just say ‘Oil’, etc
some plausible rally names also. you can guess most of the cars by the joke names
the description text for the BMW 220i - excuse me, ‘das 220i’ calls it a specially designed German headache for car insurers and police officers
bro I don’t even know if this plays with a controller, let alone a wheel. I’ve been using the keyboard and inexplicably that’s perfect
excels at that thing that only rally games ever give me, the full body muscle tension immediately after a stage
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