Dakar Desert Rally.... a poor man's Dirt (2.5/5)

Burticus

FPS Junkie
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kid = "Mom, Can we buy Dirt 5 or Dirt Rally?"
mom = "We have Dirt at home"
the Dirt at home = Dakar Desert Rally

Got this for free on Epic games giveaway. I like rally games and I really like the Dirt series, played them all. This is like someone watched a youtube video of a Dirt game, and whipped up a game that kind of LOOKS like Dirt.... but it plays like sh!t. The gamepad controls are horrid. I turned steering sensitivity down to 25% and still, you have to just flick the stick a little in the direction you want to steer. If you try to really turn the stick you'll be flying off the track into a mountain real quick. The audio is bad.... first off the music is terrible, I turned it way down (if I ever play this again, I will be turning it OFF). Your co-pilot voice quality is really weird, sounds like he is on an AM radio not sitting next to you in the car. Also, he is wrong a lot. "checkpoint ahead, get ready to turn right" and you clear the checkpoint and immediately have to turn LEFT then RIGHT.

The game feels janky and a little stuttery even though FPS showed consistently high. On a 5700x/ 32gb / RTX 4070 / installed on NVME. It doesn't LOOK stuttery, but it feels like it. Not sure how to describe this. I might try 1440p instead of 4k but I think it's the engine, not the resolution. I was getting over 100fps in 4k, but I had to turn vsync on bc my monitor only goes to 60 and the screen tearing was not enjoyable.

I dunno I only did a couple of races and I think I'm out. I'd rather replay Dirt 5. Even for free I find it hard to recommend this one.

If anyone else got it for free (please don't spend a dime on this game, it's not worth the $20) and has any comments I'd love to hear another opinion. I might try it one more time before I uninstall and get my 65gb back.

IGN didn't love it either
https://www.ign.com/articles/dakar-desert-rally-review
 
Thanks for the heads up. I've seen this game, but didn't get favorable reviews. Even so I thought about picking it up, but after reading your mini review I'll pass.
 
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