V-Rally 4 is Special

V-Rally 4

V-Rally 4 is a 2018 mixed-discipline rally and off-roading focused game by French developer Kylotonn, now working on the much anticipated open world racing game, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. In 2024, V-Rally 4 captured the peak of an era of video games before photo-realistic Unreal Engine look-alike games started to dominate. V-Rally 4 gives me Driveclub-but-rally vibes and that's a compliment as Driveclub is a beautiful, creative, rich game, itself. I think V-Rally 4 is a true hidden gem.

Fun, Rich, Bright, Vibrant

The game captures a fun atmosphere of richly designed locations with bright, vibrant colours, and deep pallettes, overlaid with a beautifully dynamic lighting system. Locations include expansive tarmac, gravel, dirt, mud, snow, and even water and river track components. Each location has a unique vibe to it. Kenya is evokes a Far Cry 2 vibe. Japan evokes the classic Japanese lakeshide town, narrow streets and alleyways, lush countryside, and twisting mountain roads.

You'll experience all kinds of weather, at different times of day and night, in all kinds of climates from moderate Europoean, to jungle Kenya, to scorching US, to freezing Siberia, including rain, snow, smoke, dust, fog, God rays and more elements that all come together in an incredibly tight artistic presentation.

An Open World Racing Game in Disguise

What really began to strike me was the location design. V-Rally 4 doesn't present itself as an open world racing game but, after playing small segments or variations of each location as you progressively level, you begin to get the sense that you're returning to a single location and not a "level". You get the sense that all the smaller rally segments, rally cross variations, and buggy, hillclimb, and extreme Khana track variations, all really exist in a real place and the organizers have just blocked off roads or rerouted parts of the track to create new circuit variants.

There's an old video game developer tale about N64's GoldenEye level design: They started out with design real places, with real structures that first served real-world purposes and then designed a way to move through those locations in the video game. The levels have a believable feel. That's the sense I get from V-Rally 4's locations. And I don't think it's a coincidence Kylotonn has gone on develop Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, an open world racing game. They have demonstrated a knack for creating believable racing locales.

One specific example is the location in Japan. Race it enough and you'll begin to see that it feels like they've created an entire small town, complete with a lake, mountain, hills, fields, waterfront roads, narrow streets, back alleys, houses, businesses, walking paths, train tracks, and then they added a lush hilly country, a bamboo forest, and mountainous roads for hillclimb and drifting styles. It's remarkable to experience.

You only start to realize the extend of what they're really pulled off here if you go deep in the game. It's worth it.

Game Mechanics

V-Rally 4 includes quick races and career modes and the career includes quasi-simulation gaming mechanics like hiring engineers and mechanics that accelerate research and development that allow you to upgrade your car's parts and specs. Upgrade your team and you upgrade how fast your car upgrades complete. It really does help to create a more enjoyable, immersive experience.

Rewarding Difficulty Levels

The AI difficulty level is easy to grasp at first but contains depth with a multi-faceted approach to how it's applied. Events are scored by stars, 1 to 3 stars, and a championships. You might breeze through 1 Star events at max AI (100%) but on 3 Stars or a Championship, it becomes much more difficult, and that's great, that's how it should be. Lower the AI difficulty and try again. It's far more rewarding than winning every event, every time by 30 seconds.

But V-Rally 4 rewards you for taking the risk of raising your AI difficulty level: You get rewarded up to 25% more money from events. That doesn't seem like much for small 1 Star events with a $10,000 payout but it becomes significant when you're talking about a $50,000 bonus on $200,000 events.

Drawbacks

There are some drawbacks. The steering is a little twitchy and will likely be a frustration point until you dial in your controller settings. I have tuned a PS5 DualShock 4 controller to my liking on the V-Rally_4 page which you might find valuable. The graphics are beautiful, immersive, and engaging, but they are a generation behind (the good news is it's a solid 60fps experience). Online multiplayer mode is no longer supported.

There are few 4WD/AWD cars which make rally much more approachable. You start out with FWD cars, like most rally games do, and that's a good place to start, as they make rally approachable by giving the driver a way to "pull" the car around corners instead of having to learn to steer-by-throttle pushing the backend out through corners. On the flip side, the progression levels encourage you to learn RWD cars early and car upgrades make it engaging to keep trying. I always find RWD rally cars extremely challenging on a controller but V-Rally 4 was engaging enough to make me want to master them.

At first, it will feel like there are only a few locations and you'll feel like you keep repeating them but you'll soon realize that while you're repeating locations you're experiencing them in significantly different ways through track variations. I am deep into the game and I'm still not repeating the exact same track variations as when I started. I'm certainly repeating "sections" of tracks but that's a good thing, it helps you learn in small chunks and then you get to string them altogether in a longer variation. Every discipline's tracks have many variants with sections blocked off to create new routes. V-Rally courses have Joker laps and even these are changed up when you come back later.

These drawbacks are barely worth mentioning except in the real experience of the game but it's valuable to know that each drawback has a positive side to it.

Conclusion

I am deeply impressed with V-Rally 4 and find a lot of joy in finding an older, cheaper game, with all the extras now bundled in an "Ultimate Edition" that is a true hidden gem.

More Resources

For more info, check out the V-Rally 4 Fandom Wiki.

V-Rally 4 is still available on Windows via Steam and Playstation 5. It might be still available on other platforms, too.

People Are Giving V-Rally 4 A Second Look

And, finally, check out some recent reviews. Here's one from 2024: "It's been a blast, I don't know what all the hate's about."