Game Review: Gravel

Somebody at game developer Milestone must have consulted the Thesaurus to come up with a name for the company’s first foray into racing games.

Dirt and Mud were already taken and Slush wasn’t going to cut it, so Gravel it was.

Available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC, Gravel really doesn’t give you much more beyond getting you out onto the track and letting you loose.

This is a quite traditional racing game, so don’t look to Forza Horizon 3’s cross-country open-world game-play here.

Gravel is all about progressing through a number of events, starting with a limited car selection screen and unlocking more goodies as you progress.

This can be demanding, old-school and frustrating at times, but if you feel up to the challenge you won’t be distracted by too much peripheral bells-and-whistles game-play here.

Select an event, select a car, get on the track and go for it. Success means more events and perhaps a new choice of vehicles.

Graphically this is no Gran Turismo or Forza; the vehicles are rather flat textured and optionless.

No, you won’t be applying pearl-effect paint to your customised wheel-arches here. Instead, select white or green paint for your Celica, then get out on the track and get it dirty. Not much need to spend time in a showroom mode here.

As the PR for Gravel says, this game is all about “Celebrating off-road racing by bringing back the pure arcade genre”.

This is no-fuss racing in events such as Cross Country, Wild Rush, Speed Cross and Stadium Circuits, as well as weekly challenges.

Gravel is compelling enough though, offering a synthesised way to get onto the track, bustle around against AI or human opponents, cross the finish line and progress to the next event.

There is a reasonable amount of content to unlock (more than 50 tracks across 60 events), including some showcase faux-rival events against some suitably agro looking adversaries.

Gravel is a simple format: straight-forward bash-and-crash arcade racer. There are rewards for performing driving feats like jumps and drifts, but it is racking up the podium finishes that will really move the game along, and the AI can be challenging enough to make a real race of it.

The format is fine, the physics passable and there is fun to be had. This game is not going to win any awards, but as a first go from a new developer, throwing your car through some Gravel scenery can be surprisingly thrilling.

You will need to keep the pedal to the floor and master the timed drift to grind out the wins, but these skills are at the core of some of the best racing sims of all time.

So if full-throttle sideways action is what you find fun in a video racing game, then you should seriously consider hitting the Gravel.