Gravel

The TLDR version of Gravel is it is a criminally underrated off-road racing game that you can get for literally 1.99 if you wait for a sale, despite in my opinion it being worth the full price of admission.

Compared to Dirt Rally, it errs much more on the arcade side of the spectrum in terms of how accessible it is to play. Compared to Dirt 5, though, it is much more sim feeling, as the game still gives you the opportunity to tweak suspension, ride height, roll bar stiffness, shock rebound stiffness, etc. The game even gives you descriptors of what to expect tweaking those settings to actually do to the cars, which is nice.

Each car feels very different from each other as well. The handling is generally very fun. It's easy to learn, but there is depth there for those who want to increase the difficulty exactly to their liking.

If you're familiar with the Forza Horizon or Motorsport series, Gravel has similar difficulty options that if you turn things like Traction Control, Anti-lock Braking, Stability Control, Brake Assist, Steering Assist, the Racing Line on or off, you'll receive a slight percentage boost to the amount of EXP you earn from races, making it take less or more time to unlock the loads of cars and liveries available.

The layout of the game is very straight forward. The career mode is a series of events in chronological order. You need to complete certain parameters to unlock the next section of the career mode. Races earn you Stars, and usually you just need a certain amount of them to unlock the next section. There are special races also that allow you to race against Rival characters, and Gravel has super cheesy live action movies that tell a bit about this Rival racer and their motivations. It won't blow your mind but for a racing game to include something like this is honestly a fun touch. I love cheese so it was a neat inclusion.

The handling of the game, unlike Milestone's own Hot Wheels Unleashed, is actually really fun and very predictable. The cars all feel different from one another and tweaking the suspension, brakes, etc, all make them feel even more different, which is really cool.

The game also has wheel support, and I recently got a Logitech G29. I have to say that out of the box, the settings for Gravel work amazingly well. I am honestly blown away at how convincing this game is to play with a wheel. It is SO MUCH FUN.

The actual events in the career are quite varied. There are traditional point to point rallies, rally cross, and elimination style events, and a few other neat inclusions I won't spoil.

Ultimately it is nothing that has not been done before, and the presentation is not particularly world shattering. However I have a lot of respect for a game that clearly had a budget, likely stuck to said budget, and used that budget to make the cars really fun to drive, make the tracks quite good to look at and fun to drive on, and ultimately put it all in a package that amounts to more than the sum of its parts.

Gravel is an excellent racing game and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who enjoys off-road racing, rally, or racing games in general (to be honest). It's not going to change your world, but what it does it does very well.

The inclusion of split screen racing WOULD have been nice. But there are weekly challenges which do give the game some replayability past the career mode. 8/10 for me. Great game, go buy it.

Positives:
+ Physics and controls feel solid and are surprisingly fun at all speeds even slow turns, for sure heavily on the arcade side of things.
+ Opponent AI is rather solid and plays rather fair, they tend not to ram you and even if do clip you you don't usually spin out of control, it's also hard to cheese them/spin them out of control without losing too much speed yourself.
+ To 100% the Campaign even with all DLC takes about 12 hours, which is good as means game doesn't over-extend past welcome or force a long grind on you, you can skip many races if desire. Game length feels right for a more simple-yet-fun racing game.
+ Has a PGR style Kudos system for high speeds/drifts/jumps etc that actually works quite well and can often near double reward XP per race. (small tip if grinding liveries, final will be for level 99, is in the 1st Special Episode do the 1st race and rack up a x3 combo through drifts and jumps for ~50,000 points x 2 each race)
+ Smash-up races, where you have to aim at green arrow signs and avoid red X signs, are surprisingly unique and better than Milestones Ctrl C + Ctrl V they did from Codemaster's Dirt 2 2009 for WRC 3 with the events to smash point barriers.
+ Ice and Fire DLC is where track design and visuals peak and it's actually great, if base game is a 7.5/10 round it up .5 to 8/10 for that DLC alone. Colorado DLC stages are long so may get old but also good.
+ Loads fast (on SATA SSD) and most menus/screens can be skipped instantly, you'll spend most of your time playing rather than in menus despite how fairly short most races are.
Neutrals:
* Many camera options but none are ideal, sometimes seeing the track ahead is tricky due to the camera being too low (most views) or it's too close to the vehicle.
* Base game track design is quite solid with some stage reuse from Sebastian Leob Rally 2016 though rarely exceptional, DLC tracks are notably better (Ice and Fire especially). Ice and Fire and Colorado are the 2 DLC with unique new tracks, both are worth - other DLC can be ignored if want to save as much money as possible.
* Whole game feels like a good tech demo, like the devs looked at PGR/Split-Second/Motorstorm/Dirt and went "yeah we want a bit of all that but in Unreal Engine 4" - it struggles with identity and reaching the peaks of the aforementioned games. In fact this game feels like if Codemaster's Dirt 2 (2009, not the 2019 one) got a direct sequel by a different developer - at least from memory it's been a while.
* Another racing game that does that difficulty 'thing' of you get +1% or +3% etc XP for changing difficulty and assists, to such an extent it's so meager playing on max difficulty with all assists off will get you less XP as you wont be able to go slower to rack up Combos for bonus XP as easily. Very pointless, either should have been more extreme scaling or locked bonuses per difficulty settings.
* 2 non-skip-able cut-scenes (campaign intro end outro) and rest are skip-able, campaign is set up a bit like Split/Second or NFS Most Wanted 2005 with episodes and rivals per episode, cheesy but you can mostly ignore.
Negatives:
- Ugly as sin, even by Unreal Engine 4 standards this is a very blurry game with low resolution textures and very off colour-grading. Add to that max settings even for 2018 are very meager so max draw distance/textures ect are all very low. It's designed for use with Anti-Aliasing, if you don't turn it on expect many stray pixels and heavy rasterisated-dithering patterns, but with it on expect heavy image blur, there's no happy-medium (though FXAA-high is probably the best balance). If you hate Vaseline-smearing turn off "motion effect"(blur) and TAA.
- Oddly CPU heavy, likely due to Unreal Engine 4, can stutter on 1st few races in each new location and have surprisingly high CPU usage - though I am using a meager CPU even for 2018 (i5 4460, 4 Core 3.2Ghz == 60-80% usage by this game).
- Pretty poor menus for non-campaign races, every time you want to change track in time trial for example it boots you back to the main menu and there's little indication on track selection what track is what.
- Typical visual bugs I've seen from other Milestone UE4 games: sometimes parts of vehicles visuals fail to load seemingly at random such as lights just missing on stage load. Not sure a 'bug' but some lights in night races also have very short draw distance so will pop-in very abruptly.
In conclusion despite this game screaming it's the most 6 or 7/10 game you've ever seen it's actually better than that, closer to an 8 for sure. that said it is quite short and even with DLC slightly content anemic. I would say worth full price... but when it's on sale for 90% off SO often I can't recommend you buy it any other time, but when it's on sale go for it.

I'm a really punctual person. Being late is an ick for me so I plan journeys and arrangements carefully and with contingency, and also drive really fast to make sure I don't get behind the target time. It means I'm normally the first there, maybe by a while but hey, that's what a Kindle and glasses of water are for, no?

So I was really annoyed to be so late to this game - several YEARS late. I do love a good racing game and especially Rally games generally. so I do not know how I kept putting off playing this, and I did miss out, it's really really good, and fun, and easy to get into and just....play.

Let's get into the meat: it's not meant to be AAA standards but even many years later it looks really good and plays really nicely today, extremely pick-up-able and pretty much bulletproof - clearly pro devs making a game with heart and requisite talent. Nor is it a simulation game to be clear, although don't let you think that makes it sloppy in the physics area. It is instead a seriously made Arcade rally racer but with accurate, predictable physics and driving mechanics.

I'd most liken it to GRID but for rallying - in structure too. But instead of the slightly twee story stuff you get occasional boss battles who mark your progression. These bosses are excellently portrayed in FMVs that look exactly like the intro to your favourite sports match with the character striking poses as their bio is read - love that! I don't even know if they're real racers or actors or what, but they really pop.

The rallying is great fun - arcadey like I said but clearly with a lot of knowledge about driving mechanics on mud, sand, tarmac, jungle, ice. The structure is nicely progressive with a series of races in order as you improve your standings in each event, and obviously you win new cars and liveries on the way based on your successes. I played with the DLC which just slots into the standard progression nicely (and gives you a leg-up to get extra stars to more easily qualify for the late-game events) And although it's not hard generally, some stages can throw you a curveball so my IRL overspeed driving tactic to never be late works here!

Being so tardy I missed the Multiplayer so it's rare to find someone to race with, but if you have buddies to invite it works well still.

A really enjoyable rally racer with plenty of content and a big thumbs up, And if you're reading this now then like me, you're late. Which means you'll be able to bag it super-cheap especially on sale!

I really miss arcade rally game like old dirt series, motorstorm, etc. This game can bring back those memories. Damn, really recommend this game. Specially when discount. 10/10

Very decent dirt racing game, at its best moments there’s a feeling of Sega Rally to it. Graphics are good and very much enjoyed some of the car choices that were outside what you’d normally see, like the Vauxhall Astra. Career mode could be a little longer but outside of that it’s a very fun game that’s worth a look.

Pros
* good car selection
* good track and race type variety. Rally, raid, RX, gate crushing, etc.
* good graphics
* decent career mode, definitely better than latest Forza
* easy to pick up. Casual, arcadey. Not to intense.
* has rewinds
* all cars have cockpit cameras
* campy story and cutscenes in career mode
* RX content is the best in the game. good for some quick arcadey rallycross on real RX tracks.


Cons
* follow camera goes silly on jumps
* physics can get glitchy especially at higher speeds
* all cars in same class drive exactly the same. Stats don't matter.
* car can get stuck on the back of AI drivers
* night races are undriveable. Car lights don't work
* multiplayer achievements
* piss color grading filter and UI that is straight out of 2007.
* to much content in DLCs

Overall Gravel is decent off road racer if you are not to picky. It will feel like off brand product next to Codemasters games. With messier handling, no difference between cars, AI rubber-banding, camera glitches etc. I got the game with all the DLCs for about 5€ on sale, and for that price this seems like decent arcade racer. Anything more than that would make me feel like it's not worth it.

(In night races turn on full race line, otherwise you wont be able to see where you are going. Car lights are useless. It's complete darkness.)

Hidden Gem of a Game, From $20 to Free this game is worth it.
Pro's:
-Drives like a very low grip and more arcade Dirt Rally
-Music Choice is Great
-The Maps are Epic and I get some Acceleracers Vibes
-Lots of Cars
-Lots of Driver assists if you need them
-You can battle the AI drivers they aren't just solid Bricks
-Unlocking and Leveling Up is a Breeze
-You can drive over the competition
-Did I mention the Maps are some of the Best most interesting maps I've driven on in a driving game?
-You can Race Military vehicles
-Free DLC cars
Con's:
-The game is strangely too quiet, even on maxed volume
-The intro cut scene is long and Unskippable
-There is no Gear UI element so in 3rd person you'll just have to remember what gear your in, and in First person hope you car has a readout
-The Physics once a car leaves the ground are wonky
-The Narrator lacks the Energy the rest of the game oozes
Overall this game is Fun as Hell Just get it and play some races with your friends if nothing else.
Score: 7/10
Visuals: 0.5
Presentation: 1
Bugs: 0.5
Stability: 1
Story: 0
Characters: 0
Driving feel: 1
Steering Responsiveness: 1
Tracks: 1
Cars: 1