Gravel (PS4, 2018)
Back when I was too young to buy my own video games my mother would get me them, mostly from the local supermarket. As a result I used to have a pile of PS1 and PS2 games that were about various forms of motor racing, usually with really generic names like "Rally Championship." With this in mind we come to Gravel, an offroad racing game from the people who make the MotoGP games.
You have an assortment of vehicles to drive including classic rally cars, modern rallycross cars and racing trucks. You have an assortment of courses and race types to race them in, with lap races around original tracks and real-world rallycross tracks and checkpoint races in point to point courses across a varied range of locations. In addition to the slightly bizarre Off-road Masters career mode which I'll expand on shortly there are free race, time attack and multiplayer options where you can set up any event you like.
The bulk of the game is in its career mode, titled Off-road Masters. It's basically a sequence of events like I've just described, only occasionally there's a race against a named driver in a specially painted vehicle, with an intro video from some guy in racing overalls posing and gurning at the camera. Throughout the races there's a voiceover from a guy introducing the races and the series as if it's a genuine racing series shown specially on "Gravel Channel" and it's all a bit... odd. The overall tone of the game feels like it's attempting to copy Driveclub in terms of the culture and off-track immersion in the cars and races but it all comes off a bit cheap and pointless. The guy doing the voiceovers only has one speech for each location for instance, so every time you race in Alaska you'll hear the same speech about how great Alaska is. At least you can skip them.
In terms of cars there's a genuinely surprising selection. I didn't know much about Gravel before going in other than seeing it described as a bit soulless and boring. I wasn't expecting the amount of classic rally cars to drive - Lancers, Imprezas, Celica, Delta, 037, Renault 5, they're all there and they all look really good. There are several different classes to choose from with lots of different vehicles in each, although this isn't as promising as it sounds. Pretty much every vehicle in a class sounds and handles the same. The specifications for each vehicle aren't very detailed, with power and drivetrain being the only ones that seem to make a difference. (Tip: pick the most powerful 4WD car and you'll probably do well) Weight isn't even listed.
There is visual and physical damage but you need to really crash into something hard to cause it, and even then it only manifests as pulling your steering slightly to one side, or making the engine sound funny. You'll still reach and maintain your top speed. And even then, there's an unlimited rewind feature so you can go back and undo your crash anyway. As fun as they are to drive and as close as the racing can be, I'm trying to think right now and can't remember any car being especially memorable for its performance.
In addition to the (slightly dumbed down) real world rallycross circuits there are courses set in a range of locations including Alaska, Namibia and Iceland. Each location looks really distinctive and has a different type of surface to race on - Namibia has sand and absolutely massive jumps, for instance. Similar to the cars however regardless of whether you're driving on sand, mud or ice there's basically no difference in how a car handles. You slide at the same rate, you go at the same speed, you have the same reaction to landing from a jump. The only real difference is in the visuals and thankfully they're varied enough to keep the interest up, so I never really felt bored.
Although graphically the game isn't very impressive - there's very little dust kicked up behind cars for instance, although cars do get dirty - there's something charming about it that I could never really fully explain. In a way it's like it doesn't feel like the full-on, fully licensed cars original circuits that it is. It feels like something made lovingly by a small group of people who wanted to make their own game with real cars but didn't have an unlimited budget or resources. The result is something I'm probably not going to think about again, and which I only spend 15 hours on, but which I quite enjoyed.
One final note has to go to the noise my PS4 made while playing this. It's warm right now, but I've never heard a noise like I heard from this game. Concerning, but at least it was quick.
