Dakar Desert Rally Review

Reviewed by Luke Reilly on Xbox Series X. Also available on Xbox One, PlayStation, and PC.

"To its credit, Dakar Desert Rally has a fabulous sense of scale and is capable of some great, unique racing – especially when bombing over barren, building-sized sand dunes in a big rig while kicking up huge rooster tails of sand in search of a mysterious navigation marker. It is, however, dramatically undercut by unstable and annoying handling for several of its vehicle classes, its uneven performance mode frame rate, and some significant bugs that can cost you hours of progress. This game needed more time in the service area before being cleared to compete."

[UncleRJ]

If the bugs are fixed, this is actually an incredible game. An open world racing with beautiful scenes? This is very promising.

[NonstopRam]

Two things that might help.
For the bikes, you got to trail brake.
Aggressive braking makes them unstable.
Also, on awd vehicles, try setting the acceleration bias to the front as this can help with vehicle handing.

[RandomShinigami]

“Get to da choppa!”
“It’s at the airport, how are we going to get there?”
“Get in Dakar!”

[mafiacat]

Having played this, completely agree.
It's got the bones of a great game, but it's hampered by some very annoying bugs and choices.
It's a solid reccomend...in like six months.
That said, trying to read the roadbook and race at the same time is a SUPER fun challenge.

[kimzinho]

There's a new update.... "Improved overall framerate performance and stability across all platforms, multiple visual improvements and tweaks, including headlight shadows, increased terrain texture resolution, improved cockpit mirror quality on next-gen consoles and PC, enhanced shadow quality and resolution scaling on consoles."
Resolved the issue of crashing in the garage.
Resolved issues with cloud save issues.
Improved Steering Wheel Wizard’s compatibility for brands without official support.

[theLV]

This looks very intriguing. Glad to hear the main issues are stuff that sounds like it can be fixed with time. Will keep an eye on this.

[dougr]

AC origins proved deserts can be incredibly immersive and not boring at all

[DevilRoom]

This guy's reviews are always on point, plz review all other upcoming games.

[SpartasEdge]

Does anyone else remember when game company's had Q/A department's, and released their games polished and completed? What a concept.

[notoriousbmc]

Really tempted to buy this. Think I'll wait for any performance/bug fixes

[frankbob]

Don't know why people are complaining about the physics of the vehicles. Motor bikes do wander and fish tail in sand. The quads have a very sort wheel base and are basicly a square vehicle meaning they will spin out. In real life both quads and SxS vehicles are notorious for rolling very easily.

With all of these 3 vehicles its more about throttle control rather than braking. Anyone who has driven in soft sand in real life knows braking hard or turning abruptly is the worst thing you can do as these are the main causes of rollovers in sand.

[Chrassi]

I'm playing on PS5, sometimes you have a solid second freeze, sometimes no sturdy 60 fps, but it's still very enoyable. It feels like Motorstorm, but with better graphics and even more aggressive AI.

[petervarlas]

The whole steering thing is probably because they play without manual gears. When you go sideways in sand you need to drop one gear and keep it on the redline until you straighten up the car. When the gearing is on auto, the car just keeps on gearing down when you lose speed or hold the brakes.

[tpw]

Hopefully this is worth getting in a month or two looks really fun

[FastTquick]

6:40: Really frustrating for the player to deal with, but really entertaining for YouTube viewers to watch. 😂

[Yungbeck]

Heavy Motorstorm energy! Looks pretty sick

[AMNEZA]

Free on Epic Games currently, did it get better? My main concern is the vehicle handling, was looking forward to riding a motorcycle, but if it's just obnoxious I'd rather not make space to install this game.

[naffantait]

Excellent game, needs a few bugs ironing out but it's so packed full of content

[xGooglyYT]

Why are studios just so hell bent on releasing unfinished games these days … it never pan well.

[anels]

A year on, how have these issues been addressed?