Game review: Rally Master Pro - iPhone / iPod Touch

Rally Master, from Fishlabs, is one of the best looking driving games around.

It boasts excellent car models, with authentic terrains and weather conditions as well as detailed scenery. Speed is very good, the physics feel realistic, draw distances are decent and there are no annoying graphical glitches.

Clouds of dust fly up as you zip along, with dynamic lighting and shadowing effects adding extra shine.

Gorgeous visuals would be nothing without great gameplay to back it up, and Rally Master Pro has that too.

The main mode in the game is career, which features three long rally events, each with nine stages.

At the end of each stage you can watch a replay, which looks really good and also helps you to improve your performance for next time.

Career mode can be played on amateur, professional and expert settings.

Time trial mode allows you drive for the best times on any individual stages completed in career, while adrenaline mode challenges you to complete stages with minimal damage to your car.

As in real rallying the stages test your driving skills to the max on fast, narrow, twisty, undulating courses. You’ll be racing at top speed on road, dirt, gravel and snow, in both wet and dry conditions. Navigation instructions are called out by your co-pilot.

One of the most impressive things in Rally Master is how you car’s handling varies hugely depending what surface you’re on and what weather conditions you’re driving in.

Cars drift and slide accurately around corners in proper rally style, always looking like they are operating on the boundaries of safety.

Included in the game is a very severe damage system. Veer slightly off the track and your car will significantly slow down. Have any sort of bump or scrape and your car will sustain damage, displayed via a meter in the top-left of the screen.

The most noticeable effect of damage is visual – your car will show plenty of wear and tear as it receives damage, including the bonnet flying off.

The other consequence of taking damage is it restricts your car’s top speed.

While adding additional realism to the game, the damage system does feel slightly over-sensitive sometimes. By the end of a two-minute stage your car can look very bruised and battered after only a few brushes with the surroundings.

Luckily in career mode your car can be patched up between stages. You can let your pit crew do the repairs or you can influence the level of maintenance your car receives by playing one of three mini games.

These games are all simplistic little puzzles using tap controls to set tyre pressure, tighten wheel nuts or connect a cable.

The games hold a little novelty value at first but they are not very engaging so this soon wears off and they become slightly irritating.

In another motor racing game way back there was a pit sequence which involved moving a mechanic around the car to change tyres and refuel it. Something a bit more interesting like that, maybe using the iPhone/iPod’s swipe gesture functionality, would improve the garage part of Rally Master.

The mediocrity of the repair games is amplified by the lack of car customisation. There are only three generic looking rally cars in the game. They can’t be tuned up at all and you can’t even change their liveries.

There a couple of other sticking points which will divide opinion among players and influence how much people enjoy this game.

The first is the controls.

There are three methods to choose from, one tilt system and two touch schemes.

In all of them the car auto-accelerates, leaving the driver with only steering and braking to worry about.

Players will have their own opinion of which one is best, though fact is none of the control schemes are perfect.

Accelerometer control feels a little loose and imprecise while the first touch method which uses a virtual steering wheel is a bit too fiddly to be comfortable.

The final option uses left and right buttons for steering. This is the tightest of the three systems, but the buttons could do with being slightly bigger.

The other thing in Rally Master which might cause a slight issue for some people is that it’s, well, a rallying game.

Rallying requires a different mindset from other driving disciplines. In rallying it’s you versus the course and the clock.

There are no other cars on the track. It’s about finding the fastest route from point to point, mastering car handling and racing line.

This summary of rallying isn’t relevant to the quality of Rally Master, it’s just this style of motorsport is an acquired taste which won’t be to everyone’s liking. I’m a fan of rallying but some people will protest it doesn’t have the same crash and bang appeal of circuit racing games.

When everything is taken into account, Rally Master Pro is a fine game.

It’s one of the best looking games on the iPhone/iPod and one of the slickest portable driving games I have played.

The pit mini games would benefit from some work and the controls could do with some minor improvements, but otherwise it’s an excellent experience which deserves a place high up on the racing games leaderboard for this platform.

Verdict: 8 out of 10 – Fast, challenging and a graphical treat – Rally Master Pro has practically everything you could want from a pocket-sized rally sim.