I usually don’t like racing games. “What a bold admission for an opening statement of a RACING GAME REVIEW” is likely a forthcoming retort, and you’re right. However, through some luck and a series of mistakes by others I accidentally ended up being given a physical review copy (first time ever!). Besides, ‘usually’ isn’t ‘always’, as I do adore Need for Speed: Most Wanted (the original PS2 version, Criterion Games’s attempt is mocking at best), threw plenty of hours into Destruction Derby 2 and did play Gran Turismo on the PS1 once-upon-a-time. Unfortunately for Gravel, it cements itself as another reminder that perhaps the genre just isn’t for me.
GAME-MODES
Gravel, (developed by Milestone S.R.L) is an off-road racing game that’ll take you from stadiums to snowy mountains to deserts. This is primarily within a career mode where you’ll be awarded stars depending on your performance in a race, with the amount of stars you’ve hoarded leading to unlocking future races. While most races will test your time-trial on your own or race as a group, on either a lapped track or a single sprint, Gravel offers two more modes to try to distinguish it. One challenges you to always avoid being last when the time runs out as last place is punted out of the race, while the other is a lone sprint where you must breach through the boards on the track with the ticks on them lest you get slowed down. It really manages to spice up the monotony that creeps in.
CUSTOMIZATION
But you’ll find this monotony goes from slowly creeping in to invading in full force soon enough. One reason for this, oddly, is the precious little going on outside the races. Often racing titles have some form of customization to play with. Usually a paint job to slap on a car you like so you can have a squat anime girl’s face glaring at your opponent. Gravel has none of this. You unlock cars as you level up as well as different decals unlocked for each specific car, and that’s your lot in the aesthetic area. It really saps the personalized angle of racing that does feel tied closely to the racing scene. In the non-aesthetic part of customization, you can’t pick the parts for vehicles you like. Instead, before the race, you can tweak sliders for your suspension, transmission, brakes and alignment for whatever vehicle you picked based on its horsepower, traction, engine size, engine type and even its fuel. This is one of those areas where perhaps those with “diesel-dick” (a car-obsessed sibling told me that’s the cool term for car fanatics) may gush with glee, but as someone who is too thick to drive a car I felt bombarded and bewildered by all the statistics that told me nothing. Instead I’d club the controller with my fist while bellowing “WHERES DA ACCELERATORING STATS?!” like the car-thicky I am.
GAMEPLAY
“BUT WHAT ABOUT THE RACIN’?” is likely on your lips. Well, it’s okay. Some levels handle like a trolley on ice, others handle like you have Velcro tires and everything else handles somewhere in-between. Despite the damage function being on, the crunch of bumper-to-bumper never felt satisfying, the PIT maneuver disabled other cars not quite as long as it seemed like they should and my car didn’t seem to ever feel worse due to the onslaught of smashes I’d subject it to. Some tracks also felt like they lasted too long or never evolved, leaving the final one or two laps time wasters, while others felt oppressively claustrophobic (I’m looking at you arena levels, you malicious bastards). Overall, the races felt somewhere between passing the time and only slightly less tedious as Test Drive Unlimited’s Millionaire’s Challenge (an hour long race). Once you’ve had your fill trying to get through the Off-Road Masters career mode, trying to conquer championships held by folks like not-Cillian Murphy, you can take on the weekly challenge whose winner will get more show points to level up with. Alternatively you can go online and, well, it works just fine.
CONCLUSION
The final score for Gravel is a 5/10. It’s just fine. It does its objective of making an off-road racer, technically does just enough but never exceeds and then it drifts off to sell additional cars on the marketplace. That sounds cynical, but I don’t think it comes from a place of misanthropic exploitation. Instead, Gravel feels born from a studio who really wanted to make an off-road racing game but lacked the spark to give it something special. Just like how Gravel slaps your hand for going off the track, for finding your own way off-road like in Smuggler’s Run, it feels like Milestone stuck to the track too much to be noticed over the roar of car engines from other games.
Review written by Kailan May. A review copy was provided for this game.