V-Rally 4

An unlikely revival that's spirited in its return to the genre's arcade roots, but that is uneven in its execution.

Once you get to grips with how it handles, V-Rally 4 is a competent and lightweight arcade-style off-road racer with a fair bit of charm that harkens back to the series' foundations. Aiming for spectacle and variety in design, it looks and feels like a 2018 V-Rally game. However, a shallow and disappointing career mode, irritating music, and a handful of visual and gameplay bugs means you're likely to grow weary in a short space of time.

V-Rally 4 is an old-school rally game at heart, for better and worse (but mainly the latter). If you stick with it you'll eventually start to master and enjoy it, but the slippery handling and unforgiving ‘no mistakes allowed' rally races make getting to that point a real slog. On top of this, its numerous performance issues are so severe that they aren't just ugly, they're downright distracting: the result being that although this is now the best rally game on Switch by default, pretty much every aspect of it leaves acres of room for improvement.

For 50 euros, this is a below-average title that is nowhere near the quality of its competitors. It offers average to below average graphics, a terrible driving model, unbalanced difficulty and a lot of frustration. Better reach for the Dirt series from Codemasters or WRC from the same studio as today's V-Rally 4. On the other hand, someone may be pleased with Split Screen, which does not compensate for the shortcomings of this game.

While hours of racing can be enjoyed, this will eventually wear quite thin pretty fast.

I was looking forward to what the V-Rally franchise would bring with its comeback but was disappointed to see dated graphics and harsh controls holding back a once revered series.

On paper V-Rally 4 sounds like it should deliver everything you’d want for a rally racer. It has a lengthy single player, plenty of tracks and environments and a decent sized list of cars to tinker with in the garage. Unfortunately what the game does manage to get right is quickly dampened by some rather glaring and unforgivable flaws.

V-Rally had a lot of potential which it just didn't live up to.

V-Rally is back. But it's way behind the Dirt-Series. The career isn't very motivating, also the handling of the cars isn't very good. But V-Rally 4 has its moments. The races are fun, but not very realistic.

Kylotonn still didn't deliver a DiRt Rally Killer, however, it is a consistent development from the experience of the recent WRC parts. Although there are some things that take some getting used to, such as the oversensitivity of the controls and the gruesome soundtrack, the substance is very motivating and well-implemented. The various event types bring the necessary variety in the gameplay and thus provide the necessary long-term motivation. Also, the online modes make fun to compete in the races asynchronously against other players. In any case, V-Rally 4 is a successful continuation of the V-Rally series.