Go Rally review - Top-down rallying at its finest

Rallying games can go one of two ways – either they're far too serious and po-faced to be accessible to newcomers, or they become too arcade-y to actually capture what the sport is about.

Chillingo's Go Rally is most assuredly in the latter column, but through its tight track design and solid controls, it avoids feeling too floaty and silly.

It may look simple and throwaway, but it's actually an exciting, engaging, and smarter than you might give it credit for at first glance.

Go Rally is a game of two halves – there's the single-player Championship mode, and an asynchronous online multiplayer filled with player-made tracks.

The solo stuff is where you'll spend most of your time, progressing through a series of time trials on tracks of ever-increasing difficulty.

There's a wealth of control schemes to appeal to all players, but the recommended – and the best – does all the accelerating for you while you handle turning and braking.

Your first few races will be spent trying to get to grips with everything, and as a consequence, you will be terrible.

You'll smash into trees, fly off into mountains, and skid into barriers with wild abandon, but the game is lenient enough to let you progress even when you suck.

A few events later and you won't be much better, but you'll have worked out a few tricks to get ever so slightly better – and you'll have a ton of fun the whole time.

The tracks are well-designed with twists and turns aplenty, and when you do fling yourself off-course, you can easily reset back to a recent checkpoint.

Finish with even a passing grade and you'll earn XP and money to upgrade your car and unlock new paint jobs, which is a nice reward even when you're being dreadful.

Swing by Go Rally's track editor and you can make something a little easier on yourself – or just make something totally stupid.

There's a quick tutorial to teach you the basics, but before you know it you'll be throwing together intricate tracks of your own with ease.

Make something you're proud of and you can stick it online for the whole world to see. People will then jump in, have a race, and leave their own times on it.

It's a neat system, allowing you to show off your own skills, while also allowing a perpetual stream of new tracks for you to try out long after the main content ends.

Overall, while Go Rally may look like a basic racer, underneath it's actually a deep, engaging, and incredibly fun rally game.

As well as a tough-but-lenient single-player mode, there's a great online mode and track editor thrown into the mix just to sweeten the deal.

It handles well, it's easy to pick-up-and-play, and it's just a really, really good game. Go Rally is more than deserving of your time, and worth every penny.