REVIEW – „Why on earth Milestone making a DiRT 3 clone?” This question was my first thought when I first saw Gravel. Even its name sounds like Codemasters’ franchise, which is now moving towards more serious rally territories. Although Gravel is far from any of the DiRT titles (even Showdown would beat it…), it’s not as bad and glitchy to make me throw the disc and the case out after one hour.

 

Let me repeat myself: DiRT 3. No, Gravel doesn’t want to be a simulation (it’d fail if it tried to be one), but if we consider this game as an arcade off-road racing game, it immediately gets a turn to another direction. As usual, Milestone had its approach (beginners can succeed, too) kept, and it quickly becomes a game that those who play shooters or RPGs (and both are aplenty on PlayStation 4) might also have a look at it.

Track

Let’s start by how many tracks the Italians threw into Gravel. I think it’s around sixty, and it might get even more if the game sells well, which is possible to happen. The tracks can be divided to four categories (or disciplines): Cross Country has you go from point A to point B, hitting the checkpoints on the road with a few jumps, as well as bumps into the other drivers. They are going to run into you a few times, prepare for physical contact. My favorite here would be Namibia, but Alaska isn’t too shabby either. (However, if you live on the East Coast of the United States, you might be fed up with SNOW.)

Wild Rush will have circuit tracks with even more of a possibility of physical contact – the AI can be quite aggressive when it comes to knocking you off the track. (The feeling is mutual: it was weird to see that I rammed off a car, hitting its side, only to see it flip no less than five times. The physics don’t seem to be perfect!) Stadium also has circuits, but in a closed environment, and Speed Cross combines off-road with asphalt, which is a little awkward: most of the game, you are not on asphalt, but all of a sudden, you will hit the proper road in this discipline. It could have been left out altogether.

Lack of track

Although there are several tracks, most of them lack ambiance. I mean, several of them lack that vibe where you feel that „yes… this place is fun to race against others,” which means boredom might surface, which is one of the seven deadly sins in this genre. (And this is one of the reasons why Gravel doesn’t get an 8/10, which could have happened…) It might be noticed in the „story mode” – Off-Road Masters has characters with faces! Wow! I haven’t seen something like this since WRC 3, which was one of the best Milestone games for a LONG time in recent years! They even have some overly dramatic personalities, which just makes me think that Gravel wanted to be DiRT 3 – it wants to be an easy-to-access game for average gamers, except you will not perform gymkhana in Gravel.

The game will have several cars to put your ample virtual posterior into, and with the upcoming free DLC, the total number will be close to eighty vehicles. There will be familiar „faces” from the WRC series, but there are other vehicles, too – for example, there’s also a Porsche in the line-up, and yes, there is variety. Don’t forget, though: the game has arcade physics, so do not expect realism, and most of the tricks in Gravel will consist of the usual jumps and drifts in the corners.

What’s the problem?

A few times, I felt that the time limits are extremely tightly set up. There’s not a lot of issues with the difficulty (as you can set it up before each race if you feel like doing so), but it has those spikes here and there, which is… frankly, painful. Also, Gravel lacks local multiplayer. Dear Milestone, what exactly holds you back from including one in your games? Gravel is the type of game that would BENEFIT from it. Sure, there’s online multiplayer with a few game modes such as Capture the Flag, but I’m sure that it would also work just fine if we played the game split screen with our friend in the same living room.

Also… maybe, just maybe, Milestone could have been a little less serious. Gravel has good vibes, yes, but it could have been cranked up a bit. I don’t say that it should be just a whole bunch of stupid crap all the time, but Off-Road Masters shows how it could have been done. That could have been expanded.

Buy it for cheap

And this is where I hit a wall. I talked with the editor-in-chief, saying that I’m not sure if it’s a 6.5/10 or a 7/10. Then, I thought that I played the game for a while, remembering how audiovisually it’s not outstanding (although the cars seemed to sound good), and after standing in a massive queue in a shop, I thought what Gravel wanted to be. The spark came: Gravel is outdated. It just doesn’t fit into 2018. If Milestone released this game around 2010-2012 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, it could have been successful. Now, it’s just average. It’s a 6.5/10, but my heart would have given it a 7. If you liked DiRT 3 and DiRT Showdown, buy it, but DON’T buy it for full price. If it’s around 30 bucks or less, go for it.

-V-

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Publisher: Milestone/Square Enix

Developer: Milestone

Genre: off-road rally/racing

Release date: February 27, 2018