Dakar Desert Rally Review – Fun in the Sand

Developer Saber Porto wants you to head to Saudi Arabia for their video game version of the Dakar Desert Rally. Is it worth your time and money to take the trip, or should this game get buried in the sand?

Read on to find out.

 

In 1977 Thierry Sabine got lost on the Tchigai Plateau in the Sahara Desert, near the isolated mountain of Emi Fezzan during the Abidjan-Nice Rally Race, and realized that the desert would be a good location for a rally where amateurs could test their ability. In December 1977 he established a race from Paris to Dakar and devoted the rest of his life to its organization. His motto for the Dakar Rally was, “A challenge for those who go. A dream for those who stay behind.” Game Developer Saber Interactive has now brought that rally race to the gaming world in their latest creation Dakar Desert Rally.

Dakar Desert Rally Review – The Vehicles

Dakar Desert Rally has five categories of vehicles for you to jump into, and the opening sequence for the game introduces you to them. There is no offline quickrace, but you can create an online lobby, private or otherwise, to check out all of the rides available to you, and there’s a bunch of them. All of the rides were used in the Dakar Rally in either 2020, 2021, or 2022. You have hundreds of choices from teams  like Rockstar, Redbull, Yamalube, and Hero Motorsports.

For us, the most fun we had was in the cars, the trucks, and the SXS classes. While the dirtbikes and quads were impressive to see in action, controlling them was no easy task. We tried our Thrustmaster T150 set up and we tried the controller, but neither tamed those beasts. The quad had a tendency to cut donuts all on its own when launching and the dirtbikes would turn on a dime at high speeds, causing our rider to take a tumble. The other three classes, on the other hand, handled incredibly well with our T150 and with the controller. The problem with the bikes and quads seems to be the inability to shift your weight while riding.

Dakar Desert Rally Review – The Desert

Dakar Desert Rally has locations from the Saudi Arabian desert where the latest Dakar Rally was held, and the developer claims the maps are over 20,000 square miles of open world racing areas. The terrain ranges from beaches to sand dunes that seem to stretch out for forever, with changing weather that can take you from blasting through sand, to zipping through the mud and the muck. The graphics are impressive on the PS5, with next to no load times to speak of. It is an impressive looking game that we have come to expect from the latest of hardware.

The Dakar Rally Race has seen only a few video games based off of it and were not really sure why. The settings have been epic over the years and the vehicles are always impressive. Developer Saber Porto has found an untapped niche in a racing market that screamed for an entry, and they did a decent job of fulfilling that need. The game isn’t flawless, and the driving can be unforgiving at times, but all in all the game is a lot of fun.

8


Dakar Desert Rally review code provided by publisher and played on and PS4 and PS5 using Thrustmaster peripherals. For more information on scoring, please read What our review scores really mean.

 

Louis Edwards

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