Onrush

[illdog]

Arcade race, gimmie. But, an arcade racer with a difference. There's a lot to explain...

 

Made by ex devs of Motostorm under the employment of Codemasters by the way. I've been playing the single player campain which is called Superstar, so called because winning and fufilling certain tasks earns you stars which unlocks further progress. There is a multiplayer but I haven't bothered with it as of yet.

 

The difference as i mentioned is it's all team games, two teams of eight to be precise. You are always Blue team, enemy is always Orange team. There are no positions, just objectives. There are 8  different vehicle classes but what you drive depends on what kind of event you're playing. Sometimes you can drive what you like and even switch mid game, others you are given a specific vehicle to use. Each vehicle type has it's own strengths and weaknesses as well as unique powers. The bikes for example are easily taken down but they are super fast. The other end of the spectrum is the Enforcer which is a fuck off great humvee type thing which is amazing at taking down opponents but suffers a little with speed.

 

There are four event variants:

 

Lockdown - Kind of like King of the Hill. A moving circle will appear on the track and your team has to have the most vehicles within that circle for 5 seconds to win a point. The circle can be disputed, it's green if it's neutral and turns orange or blue depending on the team with the most vehicles inside.

 

Switch - You start off on bikes, fast but vunerable. Each player on each team can be taken down three times, each time you are taken down you go up a vehicle class (bike to buggy to humvee i think). The goal being to be the team that has the most remaining vehicle 'switches', so you need to try and survive in the weakest vehicle for as long as possible. It becomes a game of either being hunted or being the hunter.

 

Countdown - You drive through time gates adding time to a clock that's constanly counting down, the more of your vehicles that go through each gate the moe time you get. So your trying to get through gates whist trying to bash your opponent out the way.

 

Overdrive - This mode counts boosting as score. You earn boost by kumping, taking down both opponents and 'fodder' which are slow, weak and small neutral vehicles that drive round the track and also by tailing and scraping opponents. You try to link all these boost gaining opportunities together so as to use as much boost as possible, the more consistnet the boost the higher the score you get for your team.

 

So the campaign is made up of different combinations of these game types. What's universal across all modes is the ability to activate 'Rush'.  I explained how to build up boost, once you reach 100% boost used you can activate Rush to give you an advantage. This always involves you being faster and stonger for a limited amount of time but you also gain a special ability for the duration of Rush which differs with each vehicle type. Some vehicles will leave a harmful fire trail behind them, others leave like a warpfield behind them called Blackout that greatly effects your vision if you find yourself in it's trail. Ohters still have abilities benificial to the team memebers around them, like a shield or boost increase.

Fucking hell, i'm going on I know but there's a lot to take in. Each time you win an event you get rewarded with stars for victory and like I said above stars unlock progress. There are also side objectives to achieve whilst racing that range from easy to hard. Easy examples are to take down a certain amount of fodder or hit a certain amount of time gates. Harder examples are to achieve certain types of takedowns or a certain amount of them. With these awarding stars you need to go for them if you want to unlock the latter stages and some are only awarded to you if you fulfill the objective AND win.

 

Just a couple of random things worth mentioning are the fact that the game always tries to keep you in the action, if you fall behind it will automatically dump you back in the thick of things. Also, the tracks are large but circular so you are basically doing laps untill you complete your team objective. It looks great and it sounds great for the most part.

 

It does play well, it's incredibly addictive but equally fucking frustrating, mostly due to the takedowns. It can be bloody hard to catch up to enemy players despite them normally being not that far infront of you. When you do get to them the takedown can go tits up in seconds. Even if you swerve in to them with all your might it depends where you end up hitting them. If you manage to clock them in the rear part of the vehicle the takedown is yours but if you hit the front of the vehicle you yourself get taken down which is horrificly annoying. Actually it borders on pure bullshit. You are then forced to watch the replay of them taking you down (whilst shouting  FUCK OFF YOU CUNT I SHOULD HAVE TAKEN YOU DOWN YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE) and then you wait 5 seconds for a respawn which feels like an eternity.

 

Another big problem i have is visability. When it's night time in game you can't see fuck all. You have your objective to concentrate on, other vehicles absolutely everywhere and the track is littered with vehicle destroying rocks, trees and hazards. Sometimes I can barely race for getting decimated by a combination of shitty visbility and poor takedown recognition.

 

However, every time i put it on im hammering it for three or four hours because it's so much fun. Annoying as fuck fun.

 

 

[spatular]

this is on a free weekend, i started the single player, it's not really my sort of thing but i like the music and the chaos, and some of the tracks look nice. i just struggle with the concept, i want to win while not crashing into stuff, need to re-think that. and when i do try to hit the other main AI cars, i usually end up crashing myself.

 

On 6/17/2018 at 8:00 PM, illdog said:

It can be bloody hard to catch up to enemy players despite them normally being not that far infront of you.

yeah i keep activating the super rush thing, thinking i'm close enough to some bad dudes to get them, and it does something to the perspective or something to make it look like you're going loads faster but actually barely catch up with anyone in front.