Release Date: 27/02/2018
Played On: PS4
Available On: PS4 / Win / XBO
Time Played: 7h 37m
Progress: Completed Career Events
Developer: Milestone
Publisher: Milestone / Square Enix
Whenever a particular series of games has a monopoly on a genre, I'm always eager to check out any competition that crops up. This is often the case with sports games as real life teams and branding get licensed to a single developer and nobody really wants to play as fictional teams instead of the ones they actually support IRL. Thankfully though, there's a bit more variety to be found in the racing genre.
It seems that car manufacturers are much more willing to license out their vehicles to multiple franchises and game series. There are plenty of competing games that all feature real world fleets of expensive vehicles for players to run around in, but even then there are the obvious leaders in the genre.
When it comes to rally and off-road racing games, the clear leader of the genre is the long standing Dirt series by Codemasters. I always know that when I pick up a Codemasters racing game, I'll be getting a quality product with some excellent driving physics and a fun range of cars to play around in. At this point in time it seems like nobody can even begin to compete with the likes of a Codemasters, but there are many out there that have taken their own slice of the pie.
Lately I've been playing the excellent Forza Horizon 4, and I completed Project Cars not so long ago. I've dabbled with The Crew, and despite their flaws I always manage to try and give Need For Speed titles a go (even though they tend to disappoint). The unfortunate fact of the racing game genre is that this is a crowded pond with some very big fish, so anyone getting involved better have something special to offer.
Gravel is one such game that found its way onto my PS4 thanks to a sale where it was available for about ten bucks (don't quote me on that, but it was cheap when I picked it up). On paper it seems like my kind of game, as I thoroughly enjoy off-road racing games and rally games in general. I've mentioned before how terrible I am when it comes to racing skill, but I always enjoy myself no matter how low I need to set the difficulty.
First of all, this is a racing game that comes from a rather solid pedigree. Its developer Milestone has been responsible for the FIA WRC rally series, and the Screamer series, as well as a whole lot of motorbike racing games like MotoGP and the Ride series. Basically, this is no slouch when it comes to racing game development, so a fresh IP from a solid developer should always be something to pay attention to.
So let's not beat around the bush - Gravel isn’t going to be displacing any of the big names anytime soon and I would be surprised if we saw a sequel. The simple fact of the matter is that this is racing game that feels short on features and rough on gameplay. While the premise might sound appealing, the actual gameplay experience ends up being extremely middling, with only a few different classes to play, and fairly underwhelming game-feel.
Racing games always try to invent some new reason to string a bunch a of random races together, but I'm not sure why they don't all stick to the IRL method of competing in a seasonal championship and leaving it at that. Gravel's version is a fictional TV show about competing in off-road competitions against some of the best IRL off-road racing personalities.
Each series of events focuses on a particular style of off-road racing, and at the end of the series you face off against the IRL celebrity in their class speciality. Maybe if I followed the off-road racing scene a bit more I might be excited about racing against some of the names on the box, but they ended up being a short line of some dudes I didn't know.
It's the same for the vehicles on offer, as there's only a few to select from in each class. From memory I think the most I saw in any single class was about 6 or 7, so I ended up just picking the one with the most horsepower and sticking to that. It made the whole progression feel pointless and banal, as all vehicles in the same class basically felt the same to drive anyway. The only difference was some slight changes in acceleration and handling.
I got the point that when I was close to the end-game, I was changing out vehicles just for something different to look on the screen. It didn't matter what their stats were, and they all felt the same to drive so it didn't matter if I messed about at critical times.
In fact the entire game-feel was a little simplistic for my liking, even though I don't mind racing games that focus more on arcade fun than realistic simulation. The problem with Gravel is that it couldn't make up its mind about what it wanted to be the whole time I was playing. The moment-to-moment gameplay felt like a simple arcade racer, but the tone of everything else was super serious and focusing on realism.
Of course, it didn't help that at the start of every race, textures and environment models would slowly fade into existence over the course of about twenty seconds. I mean, this isn't a bad looking game, but it's a little off-putting when you have to sit and wait for textures to load before realising which car on the grid is yours. To be fair, it might be better in the PC version, but these days I don't like making excuses for consoles, as they all have enough grunt to make a decent product, as we've seen with other racing games that are almost photo-realistic and still don't take forever to load in their textures.
I don't want to be to down on Gravel, as I did enjoy myself enough to see it through to the end, but it was kind of in spite of the game instead of thanks to it. Although, as far as simple racing games go, this one is fine enough to tune out and barrel your way through various courses and terrains.
However, my biggest tip for enjoying Gravel is to turn off the narrator and the in-game music and play some of your own tunes to go along with the racing. It felt like they only recorded about 3 or 4 lines for the narrator to say, so at the start of every race he spouts the exact same line that serves no purpose at all. It's there to make the TV show theme stick, but it's just an annoying element that's better removed entirely.
What's more, the in-game music is that generic rock music that gets very mundane very fast. Plus, it doesn't help that after each race, the game plonks you back to the main menu where the exact same guitar riff starts up and drones away while you navigate menus to get back to where you left off and select the next race.
These kind of tiny niggles are the kind of things that makes you wonder if anyone did any QA on the game, as there are so many little decisions that feel more like a hinderance than help. In fact it only leads to the entire game feeling rushed and under-cooked. Much like Codemasters' own release Dirt Showdown, which was light on features and short on content. However, at least Showdown had fun racing that straddled the line between realism and the arcade.
Every vehicle in Gravel feels pretty much the same, but what makes it even worse is that every vehicle feels like it's floating on a flat board beneath its wheels. Remember that this is an off-road racing game, so bumps and dips in terrain are not only expected, but they're and integral part of the driving experience.
None of the cars in Gravel felt like they actually had any suspension, as rolling around corners and through ditches made the entire car feel like you're driving a stiff board instead of four independent wheels. Think of it more like a sled than a dune buggy; everything is fixed in place and just slides around the map as you direct it through large sweeping corners.
Okay, so I'm not being completely fair to Gravel, even though all of those things are honest complaints. The thing is though, that this isn't a terrible racing game and it's actually kind of fun to play if you're willing to remove your rational brain and just go with the jank of it all.
You can traverse every track with the accelerator down just about the entire time, and the courses are fairly interesting despite being repeated often. I actually enjoyed racing stadium trucks around the LA Colosseum track with its crossovers, bridges, and tunnels. There's something fun about zooming along the coast and through the jungle on the cross-country tracks, and bumping across desert dunes is entertaining when you land on top of and AI's vehicle.
I did enjoy my time with Gravel, but if it wasn't going to be any better, then I would have liked it to be about 25% shorter. It wasn't until about three quarters of the way through that I started checking to see how many races were left, as they started feeling like more of a grind than anything else. I suppose that's pretty damning when I'll happily spend 50+ hours in other racing games because they're feature rich and exciting to play.
At the end of the day, Gravel is never going to be more than a silly diversion for a few hours. I'm happy I picked it up on special, as I feel like I got my money's worth either way. Just don't be fooled by the pedigree, as this racing game lacks features and polish in a way that's barely acceptable.
I enjoyed playing Gravel about as much as I enjoy watching crappy movies. There might not be a lot of positive points to redeem it, but there's enough working that keeps it on the right side of the line. Although, I think I'll keep sinking hours into Forza Horizon 4 instead.