Gravel

Hdrslop

Scooped this racer and all it's available DLC up on an extremely deep sale when I found out this was a Milestone title. There's a shortage of arcade-style off-road racers these days, and this is a very, very good one. From a presentation and progression perspective, Gravel feels like a PS2/Xbox-era game - You unlock new events, cars, and liveries when you complete events. There's no crew or garage management, no fine tuning of your vehicle, no purchasing of vehicles, repairs, or upgrades, and no livery editor. The game is designed to get you into the action with as little downtime as possible, and the simplicity is refreshing. Where this game shines is in the basics - which might sound damning with faint praise if so many racers didn't get this wrong. The handling model is superb: immediately intuitive, but possessing a level of nuance that doesn't really make itself obvious until you turn down some of the assists and increase the difficulty. Speaking of difficulty, the AI is generally better than competent. On the "hard" difficulty, AI opponents will push you and shove you around corners, lining themselves up to jump through a gap if you take a turn too wide, and they'll deviate from their racing line to close you off when you try to do the same. There's a wide variety of mostly-excellent fictional track layouts in various locations around the world, and the car collection is carefully curated to include a not-overwhelming number of both famous and obscure rally and off-road cars. Bombing down the dunes of Namibia in a kitted-out 4WD VW new Beetle while battling for first around every checkpoint flag is an exhilarating feeling. Gravel does this better than most - most of the time. Graphics are typical of a 2018 game, and it looks great on modern hardware. My rig is a Ryzen 5 5600X, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and an RTX 5060 ti 16GB. I run it at 3440x1440 resolution locked at 90 FPS (my monitor refresh rate is 100hz) with all the details at their highest settings, save for shadows - for some reason, at "high," they seem to be prone to flickering at times. Setting the shadows to "medium" seems to resolve this. I have no doubt this game would run just fine on much, much less powerful hardware. Audio is generally decent - the voiced lines get old very quickly but the engine sounds and effects are generally good. The music is simple, fun riff rock - it fits the style but doesn't do anything particularly memorable. My only real complaints about Gravel are that depending on the event and vehicle selection, the difficulty can feel a little uneven - I will struggle to cross the finish line in third on one event, then win the next by several seconds. However, it's mitigated by the lack of any real rubber banding here, so it's a minor gripe. Also, any sort of livery editor, even one with a few preset designs that could have a few color schemes applied to them, would be welcome. The campaign also seems like it might be a bit short - 2 hours in, I'm probably almost 25% of the way through the regular campaign, so I don't anticipate this game and the DLC occupying more than about 10-12 hours of my time, unless I wanted to go for 100% completion at the hardest difficulty. That might be a pro or a con, depending on how repetitive you like your racing campaigns. Gravel is an excellent budget title by Milestone that nails all the essentials better than a lot of much more big-budget titles, and it provides a fun, arcade-like off-road experience that feels unique in a "sim-cade" saturated market. Definitely a recommendation for arcade racing fans, even at it's listed $20 standard pricing. On a sale, it's a must-buy. Update after base game completion: About halfway through the game I started to improve, removed some additional assists, and turned the difficulty to "very hard." Despite this, once you unlock some of the more performant vehicles, many events even at this difficulty can be pretty easy with most assists off (I left ABS on and TCS to low just because I'm using a controller). Some of the vehicles can be wildly unbalanced within the same class (especially the DLC vehicles), making some races virtually unwinnable with one vehicle and a total cakewalk with another. Still, many of the courses and tracks are an absolute joy to drive, and the very forgiving difficulty and event unlock requirements make it a great option for beginners or casual fans of arcade racers. One of the few racers I've binged start to finish in a single week. Highly recommended!