Dakar Desert Rally Reviews
Dakar Desert Rally fully surprised me: It racing onto the winners' podium of racing games for me. Dakar Desert Rally can be brutal, but is offers a great experience on the tracks while being accessible for everyone.
Review in German | Read full review
Dakar Desert Rally is one of the most accessible rally racing titles on the market. Combine that with gorgeous locations and thrilling driving, and you have a game with something to offer all racing enthusiasts, regardless of their niche.
Despite some performance issues and minor bugs, Dakar Desert Rally delivers bags of fun. The stunning environments, wild weather and plucky opponents paired with the excellently realised sense of speed make for some truly epic racing. Danger lurks around every corner.
Dakar Desert Rally brings the most dangerous competition in the world to our consoles four years later. Despite the failures that it may present, we are facing a delivery that has everything to become a very beloved and fun franchise.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
I commend Dakar Desert Rally for being a lot more polished and accessible than its predecessor, but it’s still a hard game to sell to a wide audience. Don’t worry, the game itself is actually pretty good, despite its technical issues, but it is a very niche rallying game that pales in comparison to its vast amount of competitors when you put them side by side. Maybe a follow-up will add a quick play mode and fix its technical issues. As it stands, it’s janky and still brutal towards newcomers, but it’s a step in the right direction for the series.
This game is very ambitious and to some extent is able to fulfill that. The environment is gorgeous and driving through the different areas each have their own challenges. The game doesn't fully feel finished. Technical issues ranging from superficial to gamebreaking and some key functions are simply missing. The AI really isn't very good, and the game really needs the promised photo mode and free roam. The game really has potential, and if the promised additions are there, it might be able to deliver.
Review in Dutch | Read full review
The vast open world is truly breathtaking and doubling down on the Dakar experience with great orienteering is a welcomed challenge.
Dakar Desert Rally promises a lot, and delivers on a good portion of it, recreating the renowned rally event in spectacular fashion. While players may have to wait for all of the features on their wishlist, there's a huge amount of enjoyable rally racing to get stuck into.
Dakar Desert Rally is almost great with its beautiful environments and nice variety, but falls short because of its inability to nail down some of the basics.
Dakar Desert Rally still feels like an Early Access game, and while there is huge potential and the driving will win you over, there is very little content and important options and features are missing.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
Dakar Desert Rally is among the main games of the genre and offers a series of great possibilities to honor the legacy of the brand, that still lacks good representatives in the world of games. With beautiful visuals, spectacular world-building and a great level of customizable challenge, the game ends up suffering from inconsistent physics, overly stiff controls and some performance issues, but the balance is still quite positive.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Dakar Desert Rally shows great potential accompanied, however, by many minor shortcomings, but it succeeds in effectively transposing the spirit of desert racing, its colors, breathtaking views and sense of adventure.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Dakar Desert Rally, has good foundations but is unfortunately imperfect on many points.
Review in French | Read full review
There’s a lot to like about this game. The sense of scale and visuals is amazing. However, the core aspects of the game, such as handling and getting access to the main rally, are frustrating. Saber Interactive has done a good job on the macro level of the game. With upcoming pledged updates, I’m hoping they enhance the micro aspects which are badly needed.
Very ambitious, Dakar Desert Rally is a good game with a pleasant open-world. Sadly the weakness of the AI and physics of the game reduce the fun considerably.
Review in French | Read full review
Dakar Desert Rally is a game full of peaks and troughs. Your heart will be racing when you’re hurtling through a desert during a sandstorm in a rally car, but when just a little too much throttle causes you to spin your bike and move from first to last in the middle of a snowy battle, you’ll be beyond frustrated. Still, it captures the essence of the controversial rally pretty well. And those willing to put in the time to master it will find it very rewarding.
Dakar Desert Rally is a way to experience Dakar in digestible chunks, that never overwhelms the player. Admittedly it’s in dire need of some patching, but what’s here is absolutely playable and enjoyable until then. It’s so close to greatness, but the bugs and missing features make it feel not ready and incomplete. Dakar Desert Rally is still a great introduction to the sport, and when the dust settles, what remains is a solid racing game that’s like nothing else.
Dakar Desert Rally has a fabulous sense of scale and is capable of some great, unique racing, but it's undercut dramatically by frustrating handling, uneven performance, and some progression-killing bugs.
There is a good game somewhere under all of this, but it is buried under the weight of every part of Dakar Desert Rally being unlikable for some reason or another. There are the briefest moments where it shines through, the sun is hitting you just right, and you're blasting through the stage skillfully at top speed. The problem is it's at that moment that you round the bend and slam into a random truck or the game hitches and you suddenly understeer into a rock wall. Substantial patching would do this game wonders, but as it stands, it's a joyless mess that delivers frustrations at a far greater rate than podiums.
Even with all the beauty and event variety, Dakar Desert Rally drops the ball when it comes to the driving itself. Be it in a quad, a motorcycle or a truck, you will either lose grip very easily or get hit by the extremely aggressive AI. Not all is bad though, the simulation mode shows promise, but it would only shine after a couple of much needed patching.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review