Dakar 18 Review

Dakar Flatlines Onto Consoles and PC!

Dakar is available now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. It is a racing game with realism at heart and has a plethora of bugs included.

Dakar is a game that sees you race across miles of desert locations, it provides an extremely tedious experience overall. First off the game looks mediocre at best, visuals clearly weren’t the priority here and I am unsure as to whether it is indeed the locations that are barren and bland, or the game itself. It opens up to the most frustrating tutorial mission ever and while my review guide stated I should start off with a car, I actually had to get past the tutorial in the first place as failing would restart with no way to skip either. This in itself took me several attempts as there are reasons you can be disqualified for in Dakar that are never made obvious to you upon starting the game.

Once past that the game opens up and again never truly explains to you what to do. I picked a car and tried my hand at easily one of the roughest and brutally difficult racing experiences, I have ever been part of. It truly is a pain to play Dakar. The game itself never truly feels rewarding and as a result, I found playing the game in the shortest bursts possible, was indeed the best way to get this review out.

Visually the game is super rough with character models that are less detailed than most games available and vehicle models that look just ok, the scenery you drive around in also looks less enticing thanks to what seems like a lack of anti-aliasing effects and general polish. The lighting is ok though. The UI is also a mess with nothing really explained to you so you kind of just have to go with the flow. I personally ignored all user interface items except for the compass and objective marker shown at the top of the screen. There is cockpit view but it is easily the worst view of the vehicle as it is blurry as hell.

Realism is present in this game and I honestly feel it is the sole reason for playing, there are various hazards from mud plains to general car degradation and all of these things help Dakar feel different. Pausing the game will allow you to repair your car using DP and there are only so many DP allocated per race. Realism can also make the experience slightly more frustrating for those not knowing what to expect too. You have several vehicles to choose from, all with their own advantages and disadvantages. The stages are damn long and feel longer thanks to the locations being barren. Multiplayer is available however, I found it particularly hard to find a session and overall the game just lacks in many areas.

Dakar 18 feels like an eight year old game in many ways, it lacks in almost every area and really isn’t fun to play, releasing it just before big hitters too seemed like a huge mistake.

Verdict

Overall, I found Dakar to a sub-par experience, it never made up for what it lacked anywhere and while the realism is tediously true to life, the game looks and plays badly. Bugs plague the game from dodgy collision detection to controls not quite feeling right. I also lost sound at one point entirely until I left and reloaded the race. It honestly missed the mark. Add that to it making my PlayStation 4 sound like a jet was in my living room and… well, I simply stopped playing. Perhaps like many games these days, this one should have been left a little longer to cook in the oven as Dakar is a game I simply cannot recommend!