Bacon cornflakes. That's what Gareth Wilson said of Blur as he
pondered the reasons where it all went wrong for one of the last great
arcade racers; how Bizarre Creations mashed together Mario Kart with
authentic cars and a downbeat aesthetic for a concoction that plain
confused most people. Onrush, the new game from the studio formed from
the remains of Evolution Studios, seems to have thought to itself that
bacon cornflakes isn't quite unique enough a concoction. How about
tossing some eggs in, too? And then how about smothering it all in a
sweet layer of strawberry jam?
This
is a seriously strange game, though it can be told in one clean and
simple elevator pitch; what if the racing genre met with the
first-person shooter, if Burnout paired up with Overwatch to create an
all-new hybrid? The answer that Onrush developer Codemasters Evo can
sometimes be a little patchy, and in some places doesn't quite convince,
but despite that this emerges a remarkable achievement. Onrush, against
all odds, works.
The studio's pedigree helps. Onrush looks exquisite, as you'd expect
from the team behind the outrageously gorgeous DriveClub, and its more
outlandish premise allows the art team off the leash. Bleached white
beaches stretch out beneath blue skies, events cascade through golf
courses and through mountain ranges, particles and debris sparking
across the screen, all while keeping to a sweet and steady 60fps, all
told to a sweetly upbeat soundtrack. It's as sublime a technical
achievement as any of Evolution Studios' output, and an even more
remarkable one when you consider this is a multi-platform release,
pulled together on an all-new engine in just over two years.
Even
more remarkable - and something that, after the open beta, has already
proven divisive - is how Onrush doesn't fall back on an existing
formula. This is a very different racing game, to the point where I'd
hesitate to call it a racing game at all. Is it a car combat game? A
team sports game? Let's settle with vehicular action game, with an
emphasis on the action - because in Onrush, there's an awful lot of it.
Indeed it's relentless, a constant churn of carnage that pulls you back
in as quickly as it spits you out. The thundering heart of Onrush is its
stampede, the mob of cars you're competing with and that you're
constantly tethered to by an invisible rubber band. It's an oddly
restrictive feeling, whether you're boosting your way ahead of the pack
only to have it numbly consume you, or whether you're lagging behind
only to find yourself snapped back into the midst of it all. It feels,
at first, plain wrong.
And that's the first of several
contradictions that's at the heart of Onrush, a game that takes a fair
amount of recalibration on the player's behalf. This is a pick up and
play action game that doesn't make that much sense until you've spent a
couple of hours with it - and a multiplayer game that's arguably at its
best when played alone, those dramatic slowed down killcams that greet
each takedown understandably absent from online play. It's only when you
start playing with the mindset you'd take into a multiplayer shooter,
though, that Onrush really clicks into place. Takedowns come in various flavours, none more satisfying than crushing your opponent from above.That's
because, across all of Onrush's game modes, it's never about finishing
first. A lengthy single-player campaign, complete with various
objectives for each event, ties together the four main modes which are
available offline and on - in Overdrive you're boosting to score points
for your team, stringing out combos of tricks and takedowns, while
Lockdown is a variant of King of the Hill, teams working to gain
possession of a small zone that races along with the stampede. Switch is
a smart twist on Call of Duty's gun game, starting everyone off in a
motorbike before switching them out to meatier machinery once they're
taken out, and Countdown is the closest Onrush ever gets to a
traditional racer, taking the checkpoint system of arcade classics and
delivering its own spin as teams work together with a combined clock,
and work to prevent the opposition from hitting gates.
For all the noise and clatter of Onrush's second-to-second play, with
other players and the fodder that courses along your stampede
barrel-rolling out of the way, it's hard at first to get a sense of what
impact you're having on the outcome of any event. There's a rhythm to
be found though, pulling off tricks to earn boost, using boost to fill
your Rush meter - Onrush's analogue of Overwatch's Ultimates - and then
unleashing it in one cathartic moment. Be
warned that there are loot boxes, rewarded upon levelling up. They're
totally innocuous, though, offering mild cosmetic items that can be
easily ignored.And in that rhythm there's
depth, even if it's blurred a little amidst all that chaos, with eight
different vehicle classes complete with their own strengths and
weaknesses as well as their own perks - little gates that spawn in a
vehicle's wake when they're rushing that can help boost other teammates,
say, or ones that can impede the opposition, or perhaps the ability to
upend others with a little more ease. There's a lot going on in Onrush, and it's not necessarily coherent most of the time.
It is, however, fascinating and infectiously energetic. What an odd, odd
game Onrush is - something that harks back to that peculiar purple
patch for the arcade racer, when games like Pure, Blur, Fuel and
Split/Second all came bounding along with their own take on the genre.
They're hardly names you'd want to invoke in a boardroom, but they're
rightly cherished by genre aficionados, and Onrush is proof once again
of how thrilling a little leftfield thinking can be when it comes to the
age-old racing game. Handling
is a little on the light side, and feels fleetingly similar to
MotorStorm in some respects. The weight implied in vehicle combat is
exemplary, though, and worthy of the great Burnout series itself.
Onrush, for all its eccentricities - indeed, because of its
eccentricities - has the makings of a cult classic. I've no idea how it
was greenlit, but good god am I thankful that it was. This is a driving
game that's resolutely unlike anything you've played before, and in that
way it feels reassuringly old - a throwback to the time when every big
racing game had a bold new idea to justify its existence. Onrush is odd,
upbeat and inventive - and once you've got your head into its peculiar
rhythm, it's mostly excellent too.
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