I went in with low expectations. I heard news reports of a game that had not sold well, was part of the niche gaming market of arcade racers and was being offered on Xbox Live for free through the weekend. Instead though, I came out finding one of my favorite games in recent memory. Onrush, while flawed in many ways, gave me one of the most entertaining car action experiences in ages.
Onrush delivers a unique experience. Instead of focusing on the individual racing, and finishing first, the game offers a cooperative style of gameplay. The 4 different modes the game gives you, have you relying on teammates to complete different objectives. Some of these game types fare better than others.
The four modes in Onrush are Countdown, Switch, Overdrive, and Lockdown. Each mode accentuates the cooperative experience. While technically you can win by carrying your team, it’s hard. Countdown requires you and your teammates to drive through checkpoints to add time to your counter. Once your counter reaches zero you lose and the other team wins. This can lead to a hectic rush as you and the opposing team clash with eachother trying to fit into these small checkpoints. The clashing isnt just between you and the other team though, often you will trade paint with your own teammates in the frantic dash to add the most time.
Switch pits you against the other team in an elimination scenario where you have three lives and every time you wreck you switch to a new vehicle, forcing you to play offensively and dangerously. Overdrive is all about creating and using as much boost and rush mode as you can, all by chaining up jumps, tricks and take downs. And lastly, Lockdown is the game’s take on king of the hill. With several rounds between you and victory, you need to get the most friendlies onto this traveling point in order to score.
While most lend themselves to an objective playstyle where everyone brings something to the team, Lockdown seems to be the mode that falters the most. Since you are forced into a circle to capture it, you are forced to slow down to match the speed of the point. This takes one of the best features of this game away, and instead forces you into a cramped zone where it is difficult to knock other players away.
My favorite of the game modes was by far overdrive. This game does an exceptional job at conveying speed, and being able to complete chains allowing your boost to stay up and driving your team to victory is parallel to none. The game also gives you endless fodder in the form of smaller cars running the same track to take down adding to both your rush meter. The game offers a solid collection of cars as well, each with their own distinct play style.
Each car comes with one passive ability, one Rush ability and a unique way to earn Rush charge. Some cars offer more team related abilities, like dropping boost pickups or directly filling the boost of any ally. Others focus more on the taking down of the opposing team. All eight cars offer varying experiences really allowing you the player to find the right choice for you.
The handling of the cars in general is fantastic. The game is set to just a few buttons making the controls easy to pick up. It also does a great job of making you feel the weight of the cars. The heavier cars I found myself using more often felt like a destructive force of nature, while the lighter motorcycles and buggy type cars felt nimble enough to weave in and out of populated areas.
The weight is incredibly important as car combat itself is a major part of the game. When this works, it works fantastically. The weight and destruction you can wreck on both the fodder and the opposing team are extremely satisfying, especially the ariel kills you can get when crashing down on the enemy. However, the deaths you experience never seemed to be consistent, both when you crash into the wall yourself or when the enemy takes you down.
There have been multiple times where I have slid into the wall, only to be greeted with a “wrecked” screen, but other times when going at considerably higher speeds, I bounce off as if it were nothing. This is also an issue when it comes to the car combat. Sometimes a light tap from an enemy will send you flying, but then when you ram into them full speed they shrug it off. This is only made worse with forced kill cam and respawn timer. Probably the biggest annoyance in the game overall, clocking in at about six seconds in total for each death. These two things take you out of the game constantly, and with deaths so frequent and often aggravatingly inconsistent, it can easily lead to round or even match losses.
The maps that you speed through never seemed to offer as much variety as the cars did. While sometimes visually distinctive, the maps seemed to always just bleed together, and that in part is due to the sheer speed that you run through them. It's hard to appreciate the map design, with the exceptions of some certain landmarks, when you are so focused on the game play, which in a way is a testament to the quality of the overall design of the game. This problem is only exacerbated in the night mode maps introduced later in the game. These maps become so dark that often navigating the hazards throughout the map becomes incredibly difficult, especially at high speeds.
In its later maps, the game also introduces weather on to the existing maps already. These effects are absolutely beautiful, especially when taking advantage of the HDR capabilities of the Xbox One X. However, aside from some added flavor to the maps, the weather effects make little difference on the handling and play in general. In fact they tend to distract as well, leading to a similar effect, if not as bad, as the night maps.
Progression through the maps also brings up another sour point for this game. In order to unlock more maps and tournaments in the career mode, you need to complete challenges. The issue with this stems from the fact that often the challenges go against the cooperative nature of the modes. Challenges can vary from having to perform a specific number or barrel rolls or takedowns, to hitting hitting a specific number of checkpoints in a row. As you can see, one is objective based and the other is individual. This lack of consistency often led to games where i was focusing less on the overall game objective and more on trying to beat these challenges so I can proceed. And when focusing on these challenges I found myself enjoying the game much less. This could have easily been fixed by changing progression to be based on wins instead, with challenges giving you extra loot boxes to unlock cosmetics.
While an incredibly flawed game, Onrush offers an experience unlike any other in recent memory. With fantastic controlling and sense of speed, the diversity in play styles and the entertaining racing modes more than make up for the inconsistencies in the game. The mileage that you get with this game may vary, but the level of satisfaction when it all clicks together make this experience more than worth it.
Pros:
-Beautiful game
-Car combat is extremely satisfying when it works
-Tons of different play styles that the game offers you
-Controls are tight and easy to learn
Cons
-Inconsistency in the car combat
-Progression system
-Wait time between crashing and playing