Onrush game Review: Push It To The Limit

Onrush Review: Push It To The Limit

Onrush: a poorly executed good idea

Did you like Mad Max: Fury Road? Well, the ex-Evolution Studios too. The team of Paul Rustchynsky, now a refugee at Codemasters, returns at the start of this summer with a nervous and colorful game, with diverse and varied inspirations. For an interesting result at times, but disappointing most of the time.

When the alumni of Evolution Studios unveiled their new game for the first time at Paris Games Week 2017, we were absolutely thrilled. The team led by Paul Rustchynsky is talented and has proven it many times, in particular thanks to the very good MotorStorm, which made the heyday of the arcade race on PlayStation 3. After the episode DRIVECLUB, the team has was gathered by Codemasters' neighbors and started the development of Onrush, their new baby. When we first met, at Paris Games Week, Rustchynsky had been particularly mysterious, explaining that Onrush was a racing game apart, in which crossing the finish line first did not necessarily guarantee the first square. The clever boy, however, failed to tell us that in Onrush, there is never really a finish line.

THE FURY OF THE ROAD

Onrush: a poorly executed good idea
You want destruction here.
However, during the first moments of the race, you feel a little at home. Onrush is a resolutely arcade racing game in which two teams of six driving madmen compete. On the control side, the title is simple: four keys, in all and for everything. Brake, accelerate, use your turbo and activate the Rush mode, which will be discussed in more detail shortly. The vehicles, cut for off-road driving, react with the finger and the eye, and hurtle down the tracks at full speed. There’s nothing complicated about driving, really. Just press the accelerator and turn when you see fit. It’s very MotorStorm at heart, ultimately: accessible and fun driving, focusing on its level design and a nice feeling of speed. Add to that constant action and often very impressive crashes, and you have an explosive cocktail.

Onrush: a poorly executed good idea

Rush mode is a super turbo, to be used in moderation.
Because yes, you read that right, the Onrush races are full of crashes, pileup, takedowns ... Give them the name you want, as long as you master them: in Onrush, it's not enough to go fast, the other participants must also be blown up. In racing, there are three types of drivers: those on your team; those on the opposing team; and the last ones, still controlled by AI, whether locally or online, which are in fact only there to be demolished. A choice that may seem surprising and that we understand after just a few games. You see, in Onrush, the Turbo button is not used sporadically. It’s even the opposite: you actually spend most of your time holding it down. Except that this Turbo is not unlimited, you must therefore ensure that the dedicated gauge is never emptied. To do this, the best solution is to explode everything that goes past your doors; that said, if you could blow each human competitor apart with a flying wheel, the games would be a bit choppy, for you as for the other participants. Codemasters therefore had this brilliant idea: to add vehicles not belonging to any team, whose only goal in life is to blow themselves up by an orange or blue buggy. It’s very clever since it brings a little rhythm to the games, and can, on occasion, create a nice flow ’’ flow ’’, in which we accelerate, jump and takedown.

This feeling of flow also depends a lot on the level-design of the different circuits. This is clearly one of the big positive points of the game. The philosophy that guided their creation recalls MotorStorm: the roads are wide, very wide, the springboards multiply and the route is regularly cluttered with obstacles of all kinds. The ideal playground for fun and tumbling at 150 km / h by bending sheet metal, in fact. The whole is also rather pretty but is spoiled by a generic artistic direction if possible.

The bottom line is that on the screen everything is going very fast. If the idea was to transcribe the mad chase of Mad Max Fury Road's chases, it is successful: Onrush is an endless flight forward, a caravan of death and steel which offers no respite to those who decide to follow it. Which is pretty exhilarating. Until...

TOP AND MOBA

Until we discover that in fact, Onrush is not a racing game per se. A racing game requires you to race, that is, to be the fastest to go from point A to point B, or to be the first to complete 5 laps of the same circuit. None of this in Onrush, which has more League of Legends than Need for Speed. Indeed, the title asks you, at each race and each reappearance, to choose a vehicle. There are eight in total and all have very different capabilities. To destabilize the enemies by landing after a big jump, more powerful but more greedy turbo, deactivation of the turbos of the enemy players by sinking into them ... Some have powers that enhance the team game, such as for example the Titan, including the special ability is to make the teammates within range more resistant, or the Dynamo which leaves behind small turbos which will have to be picked up by the teammates. There's a little bit of everything and everyone will find something to suit their needs, that's for sure.

Only, in game, there is however a concern: Onrush does not hesitate to fill the screen with effects and data of all kinds, but most of the powers lack a visual impact which makes it possible to understand that they are used. Since these are passive powers, there is no command to enter, so the only return that lets you know if you have performed an action correctly is the screen. On the one hand it does not display any of this, but in addition it is constantly invaded with colors, explosions, debris from vehicles; everything goes so fast that we rarely have time to pay attention to certain details. The action of Onrush clearly lacks readability and the confusion that sometimes reigns tends to get the player out of the game. It’s even worse when you activate your Rush, a kind of super turbo that fills up little by little as you go. Concern, the handling of the vehicles takes a hit and inevitably we lose precision, where we would need it most. Most vehicles have a special power that activates during the rush. But when controlling a Bill Bourrin from Mario Kart, using these powers wisely can be difficult. Ditto for takedowns. The rush ends up being fairly dispensable, too, and its activation generates frustration and annoyance where it should be a kind of deliverance, a jubilant devastation.

All of this has a negative impact on the MOBA dimension of the game, of course. Unless you are playing with a headset and communicating properly with teammates, you will never really know what other players are doing, or if you have been able to help them. For a game whose main argument is precisely cooperation and team fighting, this kind of pitfall is quite heavy to bear. Because the bottom line is that most of the time, you will just participate, as you can, in the war effort, by attacking opposing players, or by playing the objective, but then again, there is no It's not always easy to understand who wins or who loses. Like a JR Smith lost in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, we have too often failed to understand why we lost a game, or why we won it. The way points are calculated, depending on the game modes, lacks a bit of clarity: you will have to play for a while before understanding all the little subtleties of the game.

And it's a shame since the game offers different well-thought-out game modes. Overdrive mode is pretty basic, since you just have to stunt and knock out enemies; but Coutdown or Lockdown are already more interesting. In Countdown, the two teams must pass doors to gain seconds and prevent their respective timers from running out. Since going through the gates first is more seconds, Countdown is the race-like thing, after all, since being in front of the peloton is of real interest. Same thing in Lockdown, a kind of King of the Hill version Onrush: an area moves throughout the circuit and it will take eight to capture the game. To capture an area, you just have to stay inside its perimeter long enough, which of course is not easy when you are constantly being attacked by spin-to-tail maniacs. In short it is rather successful and fortunately that these two modes are there since Overdrive is quickly forgotten and Switch, for its part, is a curious error in game-design. Imitating the "Arms Race" modes and other variants well known to FPS enthusiasts, Switch uses the same concept but swaps the fireballs for cars ... doing everything backwards. In an Arms Race mode, you generally start by using the most powerful weapons in the arsenal of the game in question, to finish with a poor Colt 45 or outright a combat knife. In Onrush, it’s the other way around: you start on a frail motorbike and end up on a rugged off-roader. Which is inconsistent. The first "round" is quickly dispatched and if you have the misfortune to survive on two wheels, you are quickly reminded of reality by the first bump. A curious choice, which logically reduces the interest of this game mode which is more frustrating than anything else. It’s like this Onrush, quite uneven, original and fresh but at the same time frustrating and a bit clumsy. You never really know the great classic thrill of racing games, the adrenaline of the last, the piloting mistake not to make to secure a good place in the standings.

THE OWNER'S TOUR DOES TOO QUICKLY

You can't finish this test without telling you about the overall lack of content that Onrush suffers from. In addition to the Career mode in which we are content to chain the races, often with imposed vehicles, Onrush will suggest you going to face other players online, via the "Quick Races", or to create personalized games, there is absolutely nothing else. We would have liked playlists to separate the game modes, but maybe this will be possible via the "Ranked" section which is still not available at the time of this writing. It’s weak, very weak. Who knows, maybe in the weeks and months to come, Onrush will be updated and in the manner of service games, and that it will accommodate more ways to play, but we would have liked everything to be available at launch . Because it is not the different car skins and the few customization items that will mobilize players in the medium term.


The notes
+ Positive points
Original concept
Quality level design
Good feelings of speed
Online that works well

-Negative points
MOBA dimension too limited
Quick repetitive
Many readability issues
No progress
We quickly go around the game

An original concept but not always exciting game modes, beautiful sensations often drowned in an ocean of confusion, a lack of content quickly problematic… Onrush manages to amuse us but only intermittently: the formula imagined by the ex-Evolution Studios works apparently on alternating current. There are still some good passages and an appreciable lightness, which remind us of the distant era of arcade racing games that we have cherished so much.

Share on Google Plus

About hicham

hicham elaziz love games . apps and entertainment