Dakar Desert Rally Review 

Which device and with which peripheral are you playing Dakar Desert Rally with? Let us know below!

Racing game in 2022 with licensed vehicles and proper damage modeling - unbelievable

Looks promising. And we should applaud their move regarding price point. Does not feel too greedy. As consumers and reviewers, should encourage this move!

I bought this yesterday, off your review. I agree on everything you said. There is definitely a good game there with a lot of potential. It looks the part. Let's hope the Devs stick to the roadmap and it will be outstanding

I'm glad at all that we have a dakar game, and the best developers needed at least 5 years to make a racing game properly. We should look at more positive things and criticize in the future

Been looking forward to your review!

Excellent review thank you

Excellent work on the review guys, keep up the great content👍👍

The aim for the SImcade is a big let down. You can no longer get stock in the sand or help other drives.

I think it’s very promising. Especially at the price point on steam.

The roadmap they released a few days ago includes basic features (for 2022) that should've been on "the disc" day of release, and if they abandoned the last game I'm not sure how much confidence I have in the developers to deliver fully and on time.

Between your review and ACG’s positive take, I picked this up for Series X. The weather effects are great and every race is nail biting! There’s one bit early on: sand, trees and standing water. It looks like the infamous (fake) Motorstorm E3 trailer from 2005/6. Except instead of being pre-rendered nonsense, this is in real time in 4k!

dank, I guess Video Games nowadays can't deliver a full game in general into a box on Day One, glad I didn't pick it up immidietly it seems now Video Games can only called that if its had an update (user policy) lol

Thanks, guys!

Has it motion control for the dualsense controller? I cannot find an answer and it's a really big aspect for me buying it or not.

When playing the sim mode is the handling and physics more like forza horizons (really arcady) dirt 4 (less arcade) or dirt 2.0 (sim leaning)? Just saw the notice for the sim mode review. Looking forward to it. Hopefully still on sale when it debuts

The gameplay, control driving/riding, and so on, it's good and okay, but little bit frustrating & lacking driver's face, but shame about the driver face either, i give a score 7/10 for dakar desert rally ps4

I am a sim racer but I love how much more arcade this game looks from Dakar 18 I feel bad for people who love mini tho

Wait the extended map is coming a couple of days after release? Damn that’s awesome! A shame it performs so badly on the PS5…

Missing free roam is disappointing as that was one mode I really wanted to play. Did they speculate on adding that in the future too? I can't imagine it would be too hard.

I’ve only been playing since this morning but does it seem “on controller” that the cars feel a bit twitchy, some turns feel okay, but then some I need to turn back and fourth like 3 times before I can get the vehicle to center out and drive straight again… and am I missing it or are there just no toggles for traction control, abs, and other driver help options

This gives me Motorstorm vibes.

It's a fix for the Motorstorm starvation. Good amount of damage modeling Off road racing Different vehicle classes Beautiful environment with changing weather conditions and day-night cycle With a some changes the motorstorm can be revived!

will it have split screen as dakar 18?

I wish there was a demo.

I’ve played it solidly for a day now, and I’ve enjoyed the hell out of it. I had my reservations, but apart from the missing content, it’s worth it

I believe Dakar 23 is going to be what 2k11 was to 2k10. We saw the potential and they delivered the next year.

Just started playing, and I wish there was a way to know in advance that progress follows vehicle/bike and not the player. I bought a 2nd bike because my first one is too slow on the straights, only to find out I would have to start from scratch again. I also feel the bike physics is a bit on and off(I've changed the terrible automatic bike handling to manual) as well as the AI actually try to murder you even though they got the width of Sahara to pass by you with they still try to ram you down. I also struggle to see what the actual differences is between certain vehicles where one vehicle can cost 1/10th of another and still have pretty much same specs. One bike for 500 credit and another for 5000 credits, and I even tried both and didn't really feel all that big a difference. I wish it would be much clearer as to which vehicles/bikes to go for(especially given that progress follows the vehicle/bike), because I don't know what is important or not given it's my first time playing. Another thing(playing on PS5) is that I'm some how not allowed to bind what I wish to bind to the right stick on my controller, and it also says I'm unable to customize controls until I've completed the tutorial, which I have completed. I want and need full custom options for controls.

I bougth the deluxe edition on digital form and instead i can only download the regular version. Called playstation and they said it might be something with the developers. Does anyone else have this issue?

One thing they definitely got right ... The sense of speed Omfg on a bike or quad You flying down the sand dunes It can feel good. I'm on xbox series x It plays good . 7.5 outta 10

I've bought it but yet to play it, does look good tho

This should have released next year. So many feature missing and poor optimization effectively force me to do a 180 turn from extremely interested to "I'll wait for a year until they fix this"

This frankly looks just like the previous one, except with somewhat polished presentation, but also simplified a fair bit. Getting into the previous one was rough due to various issues, but if you did (and if you tolerated some, like the barebones wheel support and such), there was a surprisingly enjoyable Dakar experience hidden in there, navigating the vast environments and getting lost and all that. So it's really unfortunate they decided to lock this mode behind a grind in this one :( Also they've done the same thing last time, releasing the game and then a long list of features that will be coming later. They mostly did deliver in the end and the game changed a fair bit for the better overall, but it's a really annoying release model. Do some DLCs, that's more or less fine, but adding entire missing features later...nope.

Tried playing with the csl dd but it has o forcefeedback at all. Shoddy

What ever happen to the second review for sim mode?

Hello TraxionGG Can you Answer this Question Please , In the Controller Setup Can you Assign any Buttons For Steering or is this Game Steering Only Via the Sticks . I hope you can Help .I have emailed Saberinteractive Several times over the last 4 weeks and Cannot get a Reply I hope you can Help Cheers Francis

it seems like a game made by the milestone ...

Smashing into a tree should smash the tree and car

It could have been such an awesome game but they released a full price game as a beta yet again. So many advertised features are missing.. no own team, almost no classic cars, no track editor, no freeroam. Add on top the wonky navigation tools, samey weird handling across all types of vehicles and the the horrendous performance issues you can´t help but feel betrayed as a customer.

That’s a very clear Scottish accent … would love to hear the real accent though !!

free right now on EGS

I am just happy there are more sim racing games on PC.

Anyone with Fanatec wheel? Thanks.

Wish it had VR....

They don’t all have the same face

About the Simulation mode: It is ridiculous to lock it behind progression so i open Cheat Engine and made it to level 26 in just 1 race (All i wanted is the real Dakar experience). But then after i tried it several times there's some questionable things about the "simulation mode". Not talking about the physics here. 1. The AI need huge works in this mode. 2. Auto-drive through control zone, understandable but having your speed limited and manually drive the car suit better since you called it "simulation mode" 3. Never meet another category of racers? You race in a Car, you'll not seen a single bike, trucks, quad? 4. More camera setting please. 5. I am not sure if 500 km are 1:1 scale or not, or is it just because the road are too wide and barely any bumps and danger so it easy to just open the speed let you finish 500km in 50 minutes, 500 km feels more like 60 km. Sorry to the fans of casual games. I do put 5 bad things about this game but i do enjoy it. Although from my perspective, they seems to rush this game into retail before its 100% ready. So if you like me, who just wanted a real Dakar experience, no bullshit Dakar for Babies. Sadly this is not hardcore enough. And Simulation mode right now is disappointing. Try this game again next year if they still updating and work on this project. Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention this, For the current price of this game. Yeah you can expect what its included. And expectation were very low if they going to maintain this game and make it a true Dakar Experience.

Review Trail Out Game

A year for just a livery editor....

The biggest racing sand pit ever with no free roam oh Jesus.

I dislike the fact that you have to grind to unlock pro and sim modes.........

Please can you show online play in other videos?

still no patch for wheel support, wait until 2023

Such a shame that this just didn't turn out better in performance and handling.

This looks a lot better than the hot garbage of the last one

So they released a game before it was finished? Shocker...that's getting far too common in the gaming industry nowadays

Is anyone else's game freezing during every checkpoint!? I put it on performance graphics and it's still doing it every time it saves. What a joke

you can't play it jet on epic games and that is a shame becouse i preorderd it there a few weeks back but can't play it. and i was realy exitet i couldn't wait befour school was over so can play it but now i am back from school i can't play it.

IMO the cars are too fast for a navigation game Another issue is the game is not very challenging about navigation. Its very difficult get lost in this game. You can make a wrong turn but find the right way is very easy. I started today and never I need to use help and if I did a wrong turno I found the way back in just seconds. A bit dissapointed there. In the original one the navigation and speed was much better implemented and if you get lost was a real challenge go back to the right route (like in the real dakar race) Maybe because the speed or maybe because the checkpoint are very close one to another, this game feels much smaller than the original Dakar18

Missing ton of support for wheels, embarassing, lots of people are refunding/not buying because of that.

I find the game incredibly hard, even in "Sport" mode. The opponents are stupid and have "rubber-band" AI, they knock you off the track, and they're ridiculously fast, no matter if you have the best-in-class vehicle. Vehicle stats don't matter at all. Yet the final standings are completely different to how you actually arrive to the goal, the game cheats with AI time penalties (often to your favor). Vehicle controls are bad, there are no difficulty or driving assist options, it's not possible to counter a drift. Motorcycles are the worst, the rider falls over basically anything. Framerate on consoles is terrible, the "performance" mode varies between 30 and 60 fps wildly, it stutters extremely badly on most stages, especially at night and with weather. Unstable controls, terrible framerate, stupid AI and overly hard difficulty keeps this game from truly shining.

"this is still the best dakar game" -- lol, it's the only dakar game available!

Removed from my wishlist. Game turned out to be an arcade game. Fun if you are into that sort of thing but with a full sim racing setup, this game is trash. Wheel support is severely lacking, Fanatec, Moza or any direct drive wheels have no support at this time and no indication when or if they will. They removed getting stuck and manually shoveling yourself out. They removed stopping to help other teams. The AI is programmed to ram into you (developers said so) which is absurd in a Dakar race. They locked the actual Dakar experience behind a 20 hour grind through small individual races. Steam reviews trash this game for what it is. Still playing Dakar 18 and waiting for someone to make a real follow up, rather than just a Forza Horizon Dakar Rally game.

You Tube ist ein Forum voller Blöder!!!! Was soll ein Racing-Game "OHNE JEGLICHE FAHRPHYSIK" Objektive Tests gibts es nicht. Und dieser Schwachsinn wird auch noch angeschaut!