Of course, if you tune your 4x4 properly, you reduce your chances of continuously restarting, but the tuning menu can be frustrating in its own right. In said menu, you can choose a skin for your vehicle, optimize the suspension, and determine which tires are best suited for the current race/event. These changes are shown to the player through bars representing essential characteristics, like Speed, Acceleration, Handling and a generic “Off-Road Ability.” These are supposed give a general sense of how your vehicle should perform, but I was honestly surprised that an off-road sim would lump all off-road performance in a single stat. Sadly, much of the resultant tuning became trial and error, and despite the tuning options available, in actual races it was hard to tell any distinguishable differences in performance unless extreme changes were made.
Despite all of this, there is a lot of good sim-racing gameplay to be had. The variety of event types keep the world-spanning career mode fresh (though do expect a bit of “grind” from time to time as you work to up your driver rating to unlock new vehicles.), while freeplay mode is great for practicing new driving techniques or for a quick romp in the mud. Once you enter an event, it is typically just your 4x4 on the track, with your goal being the best time on the track. Driving is accomplished by the four arrow keys, with other controls usually designated by on-screen prompts. While it is possible to drive well with the arrow keys, I would definitely recommend either a controller or racing wheel if you have one, as the extra precision will be to your advantage.
Graphically, the visuals in Off-Road Drive are generally well-done and polished, but look very dated. The vehicles themselves are rendered well, and the environments are pretty if a bit generic. I also appreciate the fact that driving through mud covers my vehicle in it, while driving through water will wash it off. However, when you look closer, things like the graininess of large plants/trees and water that flows through a truck’s closed tailgate can’t be ignored, and the ostensibly human crowd of onlookers seem like discarded character models from Goldeneye on the N64, even on max graphical settings at 1080p+ resolutions. There is a silver lining, though: you only need a DirectX 9.0 compatible video card with 256 MB of RAM, which means Off-Road Drive should run well even on older PC’s.
Verdict
Off-Road Drive is a bit of a mixed bag. As a sim, it excels in demonstrating how difficult extreme off-road racing actually is. However, that same realism makes for a difficulty curve that will probably be a significant barrier of entry for many, including racing sim veterans. Combined with dated graphics and a less-than-intuitive tuning system, and it becomes difficult to recommend for a general audience. For those willing to climb over the steep initial learning curve and learn its nuances, though, Off-Road Drive brings a decidedly different approach to the typical racing simulation.
