Gravel (Xbox One)
Gravel isn’t a game looking to make waves. It has no major standout feature to draw eyes, and it has no unique twist to command attention. It’s a game made with the simple goal of giving an audience it knows exist just what they want. Gravel is an off-road racer pure and simple, realistic in appearance but not so realistic that it would be as difficult as actually driving off-road. It’s a game made for a certain audience, and it’s hard to disagree with a game looking to provide a pretty standard example of the exact type of gameplay some folks want.
Gravel’s name is shared with the framework that connects the races in the game’s solo play. A fictional television channel called the Gravel Channel is running a competition known as Off-Road Masters, with a few major racers depicted by live action actors meant to serve as the major challenges along your journey to come out on top. While most races are simple contests, you work your way up to taking down these masters in one-on-one competitions, but besides the commentary from the group at Gravel Channel, there isn’t too much that makes this feel like a reality show. This can be good in a way, it doesn’t get in the way of hosting a set of races by trying to add any extra frills, but it also means working your way through all the races feels like a matter of course rather than something with strong build-up or satisfying pay-offs.
When competing in the Off-Road Masters though, you need to earn stars to unlock new races. Generally, completing a race at all earns you one, doing fairly well by placing around 3rd or so earns you another, but after the first few races, if you want the last star a race offers, you need to come out on the very top. There are more stars than you’ll ever need to face the final rival driver so you can afford to let tighter races slip you by, and the competition in Gravel can be quite competitive even on Normal. There are two major race types in Gravel, those being races where you’re on the track at the same time as other vehicles and ones where you’re racing alone and trying to beat times set by other drivers. These can take on a few different forms, the group races having long sprints where you need to hit each checkpoint, regular races comprising of a few laps, and elimination races where drivers are gradually eliminated based on placement. The solo races are a bit simpler, often just getting a few laps to try and tighten your time for a single lap, but they also contain one of the game’s more unique challenges. On some tracks, you’ll be driving alone and the road will be blocked by a set of signs. As you approach, their displays start to spin before revealing either a check mark or red X. You need to hit a sign to continue, but if you hit the X, you lose all speed, while the green checks don’t slow you down at all.
Most of the time, the races in Gravel can be complicated by course design or the presence of other racers, but the races with the signs run into a small issue. The displays won’t lock in until you’re fairly close on some tracks, meaning it can be hard to maintain a competitive speed while hitting the check marks. These signs are not necessarily going to display the same things on repeat attempts either, and while they don’t ask you to drive too strangely, it is likely to throw a few curveballs at you per race to avoid you getting complacent. This format ends up less appealing than the others for it, but it is also the only one to exclude a key mechanic. In most normal races outside of multiplayer, you have the option to rewind the last few seconds during a race. This is a fairly smart feature, it can allow races to be close without a player’s chances of winning being completely ruined by one bad crash. You can’t rewind back too far, meaning you need to be smart on when to activate it or you might miss your chance to regain control of the situation. At the same time, it can also make many races a fair bit easier. Since its scope is limited, you may not win even with this useful tool since less than optimal racing can lead to you not getting the requisite times needed, but it also makes the occasional unexpected sabotage by other racers easier to stomach.
In Gravel, the less than realistic racing can lead to some impressive outcomes to aggressive play. Running up against the back of another car can see its rear lifted up off the ground, and bullying other races into colliding with the environment can send them tumbling away. The physics certainly don’t fall under realism in these moments, but Gravel actually allows you to tune the game’s general physics quite a bit from the pause menu. If the suspension feels a bit off you can tinker with it until you find what you like, the options quite intricate even though generally the racing isn’t too hard to get the hang of. There are no boosts to try and time, no special controls, just braking and gas pedal management to help take turns more sharply and a need to get a good feel for how vehicles react to uneven terrain and how fast you can afford to go on specific courses. There are rewards for flashier driving, the player able to earn points by doing things like maintaining a high speed, drifting, and hitting jumps and landing them perfectly, and connecting these without a crash or using rewind will earn you points towards new vehicles and paint jobs. Your garage will get quickly packed with a range of recognizable real car brands, but while there are noticeable differences between driving a Hummer and a Volkswagen Beetle, you won’t need to alter your playstyle all that much just because you chose a Porsche over a Toyota.
Despite the heavy focus on off-road racing, Gravel isn’t solely restricted to racing through unpaved environments. The standout races are definitely off-road, driving across sand dunes in Namibia or along coastal beaches more exciting than the small and windy arenas in Las Vegas. They do often test different skills though, the paved race tracks heavily focused on frequent turns while off-road tracks can offer much larger spaces to drive in to the point you can almost lose track of where the next checkpoint even is if you’re not careful. Races might have you contend with driving through shallow water and muddy roads, but where the danger of off-roading really shines is under inclement weather or at night. Racing through heavy snow in Alaskan race tracks where hitting the wrong mounds or colliding with walls is far more suspenseful than the wider open areas found even in forested tracks, and trying to cross the Namibian desert when your headlights don’t show much of where you’re going makes you a bit more anxious about the route you’re deciding on with limited information. While many of the course go by at high speeds, they can look quite beautiful, many eye-catching sights and detailed environments making some courses a joy to return to, especially at different times of day. You will encounter some courses a bit too often in the Off-Road Masters competition, but adding a rainstorm can shake things up a bit even if it doesn’t make driving as hard as it would be should the weather have a more drastic realistic effect on physics. Interestingly, you can alter the game to be harder to earn more points, changing little things like the strength of your brakes or larger features like whether changing gears is automatic or manually done, but all the customization options does make one wonder if some of them should have been enforced standards instead to increase the need for more involved and attentive driving.
THE VERDICT: Gravel knows what it wants to be and sticks pretty close to that, even if its off-road racing focus is sometimes broken away from for tighter driving on paved roads. Driving the dunes of Namibia at night or barreling through an Alaskan snowstorm still pack a thrill and the racing remains generally accessible due to simple controls and a handy rewind feature. Its T.V. show framing barely feels like a presence, but with a wide range of cars, a lot of tuning options for the game’s physics, and some interesting course design approaches, you still get the kind of off-road racer that can scratch a basic driving itch and fill the specific niche it is aiming for.
And so, I give Gravel for Xbox One…
An OKAY rating. It doesn’t feel right to call Gravel run-of-the-mill even though its design isn’t very adventurous. It has no strong feature to make people who wouldn’t normally play a racer with a realistic look gravitate towards it, and it doesn’t have any sort of exceptional touch when it comes to car control or track design. However, it does most of the little things right, and there’s value in a no-frills experience. Contending with uneven roads, seeing the wilderness whizz past, little features like that makes the idea of the racing work, and even if you tinker with the difficulty or driving, you will find tighter stadium races can still demand some solid driving to beat times or overcome poor play. There could be ways to crank up the excitement, more expansive, rugged, or dangerous off-road tracks feeling like they could wow players, or maybe tightening up the driving to be smooth and satisfying could lure in mechanics-focused players. But Gravel is truly about giving you a reasonable experience, not frustrating with difficult realism but not dipping into the realm of fantasy. It’s important for games to cater to different tastes, and if people weren’t making games like Gravel, an audience could feel underserved or be left only with older games to sustain their interest. Gravel can look nice, play relatively well, and design some solid courses to host a decently long campaign, so it’s hard to knock it too much for catering to its dedicated niche.
Gravel’s unassuming name suits an unassuming game. It can create a good sense of speed or make some tracks where you really feel the roughness of driving off-road, but it’s not demanding much from you and it’s the kind of racing game you can dip into now and again without feeling like you’re missing out on much. It tries a few different ideas within its concept, but Gravel will mostly give you an okay driving experience, and on some days when you want something to do that isn’t too deep or difficult, Gravel will be there for you.