Dakar: Desert Rally is an interesting beast. Rather than relying on the convention of either being a simulation of the actual Dakar event or being more of a user-friendly arcade racing game, Dakar: Desert Rally offers both options. It balances the two persuasions quite well and that balance results in a game that is somewhat of a jack-of-all-trades if its rough edges can be overlooked.
Dakar: Desert Rally is out now and is available on Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox.
Don’t get me wrong, by rough edges I’m not referring to the look of the game. Dakar: Desert Rally is a visually stunning game on every level. Its vehicle models, destruction animations, particle effects, and lighting are all stellar sights to behold. There are certain times in Dakar which are nothing short of visually breathtaking.
While the star of the show is undoubtedly the vast desert environment that players find themselves running through Dakar: Desert Rally. Not only does it provide a unique sense of scale for a driving game, not only is it thrilling to race, but it looks damn good while satisfying those other parameters.
In terms of from Dakar ability to simultaneously exist as a realistic simulation game and an accessible arcade racer, it achieves this by including a range of racing modes that double as difficulty settings. Sport is the perfect mode for beginners to get familiar with Dakar and features yellow checkpoints in the environment and non-player AI that can be beaten while the player gets a feel for the five different vehicle classes and their respective control schemes.
Professional and Simulation are the other two modes that players can switch to after familiarizing themselves with the game through Sport mode. Both advanced modes feature more aggressive AI and less HUD functionality, with Simulation mode sometimes feeling more like an orientation expedition than a high-speed race. While this might initially seem like a negative for a rally game, I actually enjoyed the fresh feeling that the added challenge of finding your way to the end of the race brought with it.
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The five categories of vehicles mentioned earlier include motorcycles, quads, cars, light vehicles and trucks. All of these are fun to drive and have their own unique feel. My favorite was the motorcycle class. Another thing I liked Dakar: Desert Rally were the generous amount of winnings earned with each win. This meant new advanced cars could be unlocked and tested with minimal fuss.
The game received a recent stability patch that refined the virtual Dakar live. The vast majority of bugs and framerate drops that plagued the game at launch are now completely gone. Playing in Performance and Resolution modes on PS5 gave stable results. I never noticed a major FPS drop and the only bug I encountered was the odd minor visual issue.
Dakar: Desert Rally
The areas in which Dakar: Desert Rally what’s missing only becomes really clear when you compare it to the other premium virtual rally experience that was released this year; WRC generations. The area in which Dakar misses most is in his co-pilot captions. The imprecision of these controls can lead to a lot of frustration when traveling at high speeds.
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The other major drawback of Dakar: Desert Rally is how contradictory his open-world sensibilities are. Even though the game shows you the next checkpoint to run to and gives you several different paths to get there, more often than not it turns out that there’s only one path that isn’t. littered with small rocks which, when hit, immediately cause you to crash and either get off your bike or spin into your car.
If there is only one safe path that does not involve resets and time penalties, then why offer any of these other paths? It’s as if the devs created these multiple paths to the goal and then scrapped the idea, but instead of removing the optional paths, they just littered them with rocks to discourage players from using them. This seems extremely counter-intuitive.
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Globally, Dakar: Desert Rally is a fun virtual racing experience. It manages to feel like both a hardcore simulation game and an accessible fun time for racing novices. The visuals are also impressive. Since patches have already dropped to improve the game, it’s likely that Dakar: Desert Rally will only continually improve over time. While it might not be the perfect rally game at the time of writing, there’s every chance it will be this time next year.
7/10
Dakar: Desert Rally was reviewed on PS5 with code provided by Sandbox Strategies.
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