Onrush is an arcade racer that does not even try to be realistic. The controls and gameplay are both really easy to pick up. The right trigger is used to accelerate, the X button to boost, circle for handbrake and triangle for “rush”. As you use boost, you will charge up the rush gauge, which when full you can use rush that boosts your vehicle’s speed even more for a limited time as well as activating a special power.
There are eight different classes of vehicles. While each vehicle’s top speed are the same, there are characters that set them apart. The most obvious thing is the different size and heft to the vehicles. A bigger truck-like vehicle is able to more easily take down a small vehicle, while a motorcycle is nimbler and able to make tighter corners at high speeds. Each vehicle has unique passive abilities as well as different rush abilities. These range from giving boost to your team mates to throwing barricades behind you to block your opponents.
In each stage, you’re basically going to b constantly using boost, particularly since it’s really easy to restore your boost gauge. Landing a jump will recover boost, taking down opponents will recover boost, even being near your allies will recover boost. While taking down the opponent’s team is harder, there are “fodder” vehicles which are slower and much easier to be taken down. The whole point of fodder vehicles is to provide an easy source of boost for the player.
This is not a racing game in the most traditional sense as there are no races. Instead, there are four game modes and they are all team based activities. Each mode has two teams of six. Overdrive has the team using boost to rack up points and the first team to reach the target wins. Countdown involves a countdown timer which only increases as players go through gates. Lockdown has the player keep within the zone as it moves around the track to capture it. While Switch has the players start off with the lightest vehicles, as they destroy their opponents they will move up until the heaviest vehicle. The victory condition of Switch is the one that manages to take all the lives of every member of the opposing team.
Each mode has several rounds which transition seamlessly into each other so it never takes you out of the game once you’re in an event. You can have a bad round and still be able to catch up in the next. If you fall behind the pack too much, the game will respawn you right back into the thick of things to keep you in the action, although this can be disorientating you can use it to your advantage. Each time you get taken down, there is a short replay which is fun the first few times but then becomes yet another annoyance in the game. This replay delays too much of your time to get back into the level.
The tracks themselves are wide although even then, there will be corners where it’ll be tight given the wider turning circles of several vehicles. Scattered around the track are plenty of cliffs and ramps so there’ll be a lot of air time. The tracks naturally loop but there is a lot of variety. There are different weather effects and time of the day, although when it is night coupled with rain, it can be frustratingly annoying as you can’t see properly as the speeds you’re going. This doesn’t affect the AI of course, so you’ll be the only on disadvantaged and when you have levels that are constantly like this one after another, it is tedious.
There is a single player campaign which is little more than events back to back. There are some cutscenes to explain how this type of sport got really popular around the world. Each stage has various additional challenges that you can complete to earn more stars, which unlocks more levels. There is a player leveling system where the experience points are based on the achievements of that level such as number of takedowns or using surviving a particular amount of time. When you level up, you get a lootbox which unlocks cosmetics. You can use the in-game credits to purchase more of these cosmetics.
The game is easy at the start since your teammates are really good. Get about halfway and the rubberbanding starts to occur. Your opponents are much stronger and since this is a team based game, you can do amazing yourself but still lose because he opponent AI is so much stronger than your team’s AI. Normally this isn’t too much of a problem except when you get to the “tournament” stages where you need to do several levels in succession that you have to win. This is painful when you lose in the third round and need to do the preceding two yet again. Although you can cheat and restart the level just before you’re about to lose, it’s still annoying when you keep repeating the same events.
There are inconsistent takedown physics. The AI can take you down from a tiny tap at the back but you can’t even when you’re using a larger vehicle to smash into another. The Switch and Lockdown modes are the worst since they rely on AI luck so much. It gets quite frustrating in the later events when the AI is consistently overpowered and no matter how many you take down, they somehow manage to spawn all in a tight bunch up front to overwhelm you. It frankly sucks a lot of the fun out of the game which this happens.
The campaign ends up being around ten hours long, but a lot more if you wanted to complete all the challenges. Of course, there are online multiplayer modes as well. While a lengthy campaign can be fun, this one goes on for just a bit too much. You’ll soon realize the limited content since there are only eight classes of vehicles, four modes and sixteen tracks. The track variety is okay but it’s the four modes that is the killer. You’ll be playing the same modes again and again during the single player portion, let alone the multiplayer.
The game has strong graphics and the handling feels great. When you’re travelling at high speed with crazy stuff happening all around you, it is hard not to smile. However the one negative with the presentation of the game is the atmosphere, style and tone of the cutscenes that it is going for. The choice of words and how it is said, tries too hard to be hip and cool, which ends up being cringe.
Overall, Onrush, while it is a solid game, has a lot of small issues that hold it back. The poor design of the single player mode by having too many events that are back to back, overly aggressive AI, and lack of modes can suck. Unfortunately, it cannot hold your attention for too long, although it is heaps of fun for the first few hours and in small bursts afterwards.
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