➤ Dakar 18, the review of a too arcade simulation 🎮

The Anglo-Portuguese developer Bigmoon to date he had worked behind the scenes, participating in the creation of 3D models for titles such as Jagged Alliance: Back in Action and FlatOut 4, and the conversion to PS4 of Lichdom: Battlemage. In his curriculum, however, the collaborations with our Milestone for the WRC series stand out: an experience gained over several years that provided the basis for the first solo project, the ambitious (perhaps too much) Dakar 18.

Dakar: after years a new title

It is not surprising that video games dedicated to such extreme competition are white flies: excluding a handful of them released in the late 97s (when the fame of the Paris-Dakar was at the highest levels) for Amiga and Atari, the latest attempts to set a game driving in the Sahara desert are due to Acclaim with the catastrophic Dakar '2001 and the best sequel Paris-Dakar Rally dated XNUMX. These were arcade-style titles released for consoles. After more than seventeen years, things have changed radically andU used by Bigmoon allows a much deeper simulation level. The title presents the tracks and official cars of the latest edition of the Dakar, which in 2018, starting from Lima (in Perù), and passing through La Paz (Bolivia), concluded in Cordoba (in Argentina): in practice 9.000 km that covered a large part of the west coast of South America.

Dakar 18, the review of a too arcade simulation

Despite the historical name, the Dakar has not started from Paris for more than ten years and ends in the capital of Senegal, where it stopped for the last time in 2007; the following year's edition was canceled due to terrorist dangers in Mauritania and since 2009 the competition has moved permanently to the southern part of the New World. Even the crews and vehicles are official, albeit with some absence (for example the Ford F-150 and Iveco Powerstar are missing): there are therefore five categories which include car, truck, motorcycle, quad and SxS.

More simulation than arcade

Despite what one might be led to believe at a quick glance, Dakar 18 comes much closer to a simulation than an arcade driving game. For those who do not know, in fact, the tracks are "imaginary": unlike traditional rallies it is not enough to start from point A and get to B, since you have to pass through certain waypoint which can also include turning back from the direction you were traveling on. The brief "forced" tutorial that even anticipates the initial screen sets the record straight from the very beginning: after a few hundred meters on the dirt road the desert begins and, if you do not follow the directions of the co-driver to the point, there is certainty to end up in the middle of nowhere.

Therefore, do not expect punctual assistance like that of DiRT Rally: here while driving you have to keep an eye on both the "roadbook" (the bible of the Dakar participants) at the bottom right and the compass at the top. They are both fundamental tools, with the notebook containing tables divided into three columns. The first shows the km from the starting point, the second presents a drawing of how the landscape you are traveling should be like and in the third there are warnings about dangers (divided into three categories), such as the difference in height of a dune or the presence of stones in trajectory. Bed to table is quite simple, but it becomes very challenging while driving at high speeds, perhaps being careful not to destroy the car (or motorcycle). The compass it is equally important and indicates how many degrees to turn the vehicle to enter the "imaginary" track. There is also a GPS which, however, is activated only in the vicinity of waypoints, which you must "touch" if you want to complete the stage successfully.

Let's try to shed some light with a practical example. In the first test, which required 8 attempts to complete, after the start we are told to follow the direction for 500 meters up to the dune; then you have to turn left at 160 C for another 2 km continuing on the ridge; arrived at that point (morphologically indistinguishable from the previous ones), it is necessary to make an imaginary bend of 90 degrees and follow the direction taken for another 5km. Needless to say, it is sufficient to err on the side of the steering angle by a few degrees to find yourself in a completely unknown point, without the co-driver being of any help. You can then try to go back to a known area, in which you may have already passed (an abandoned hut, a fence) and try again to follow the directions of the roadbook. The assistance of the navigator it naturally fails in those categories where the rider is left alone to himself, such as in quads or motorcycles.

Unconvincing driving model

If all this is not enough, you should know that to raise the bar there are two other fundamental aspects to take into consideration. The first is obviously the state of health of the vehicle which, while not suffering cosmetic damage, it can wear out more quickly the more violent the stresses it is subjected to. Not all elements are repairable and in any case fixing one involves time penalties, so it is necessary to pay the utmost attention to the dangers noted in the roadbook.

The other is the length of the tests, able to put even the most experienced player on the ropes. Although the game world is not in full scale, it is still extremely vast so as to require over 50 minutes to complete the second tappa, which measures 230 km. If you consider that the longest one reaches almost 1000 km you can get an idea of the concentration required just to touch all the waypoints. The auto-save function still allows you to start over from the last intermediate milestone reached, but with severe penalties in terms of time. The extreme realism of the navigation system (perhaps even exaggerated) clashes with a predominantly mold driving pattern arcade. Certainly it cannot be said that there is no difference between driving a motorcycle or a truck; however, the problem lies above all in a physics that we could define at least as "creative". This can be understood since the tutorial, where it seems that the Toyota Hilux weighs 20 tons, it is so difficult to steer, or that the super Peugeot 3008 DKR (winner again this year) is as indomitable as a Formula 1. They also arouse more than some perplexity. the bikes that seem to plant themselves on bumps or after jumps with a little too much simplicity. The competition in this sense is very fierce and the economic limits that the programmers have had to respect have not made it possible to reach the levels of the most important productions. A comparison that is difficult to hold even from a technical point of view: i vehicle models they are very basic and do not impress the particle effects (such as sand and mud) that dirty the bodywork in a somewhat too schematic way. One aspect that has bothered us tremendously is that of the traces left by the cars in front, which disappear under the eyes of the player. If you can overlook certain ugliness (even the sky in low resolution is a punch in the stomach), graphics and sound they do their duty and allow, on sufficiently powerful systems, to maintain a stable frame-rate even at the highest resolutions (we successfully tested it on the Asus PG348Q at a resolution of 3440x1440 with a GeForce 1080 without dropping below 60fps). There are four shots: a tilting camera on the rear of the vehicle, a cockpit view, a first person view and a "playful" helicopter view that will rarely be used.

PC System Requirements

Test Setup

Sistema operativo: Windows 10 (64-bit)
Processore: Intel Core i5-4690k @ 3.5 GHz o AMD Ryzen 5 1600 @ 3.2 GHz
Memory: 8 GB of RAM
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB)

Minimum requirements

Operating system: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 (64-bit)
Processore: Intel Core i5-2400s @ 2.5 GHz or AMD FX-6100 @ 3.3 GHz o Intel Core i3-7340
Memory: 4 GB of RAM
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 or AMD Radeon HD 7870

Lots of bugs

Unfortunately Dakar 18 is marred by a series of bugs, and oversights that programmers are trying to solve by dint of patches (3 in five days from launch) that we can not fail to report. The first and most serious is the lack of checkpoints which are sometimes physically absent: in order to load them, the title must be restarted from the last save. Then there is the question of damage that remains even when you load the game from the previous point: it follows the risk of being halfway through the stage with a completely unusable vehicle and with the need to start the game all over again. If we add to this aspect that the subsequent stages are available for exploration only having completed the previous ones, we are faced with a situation in which it will probably take weeks just to access the final test. Added to this is very limited support for steering wheels: we used the Xbox 360 joypad without any problem, but the Steam forums are populated by users who do not see their peripheral recognized.

But the thing that annoys the most are the errors of the co-pilot who often provides completely bizarre and different indications compared to the roadbook, with the certainty of finding yourself traveling kilometers into thin air and having to restart from the previous check-point with all the necessary penalties. As mentioned, this bug disappears (inevitably) when using quads or motorcycles which, however, further raise the level of challenge. The sector multiplayer offers a wide range of possibilities (in addition to the classic internet network, split-screen and LAN are supported) and provides a sort of head-to-head between the participants who all leave at the same time despite being able to select different means. Our tests were disappointing because we never found more than three people populating the lobbies, and once we got into the car, we saw severe stuttering.

Comment

Tested version PC Windows Digital Delivery Steam, PlayStation Store, Xbox Store Price 49,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

5.5

Readers (7)

6.7

Your vote

It is difficult to judge a title like Dakar 18, which deserves credit for translating the extreme conditions of the famous rally competition onto the screens for the first time. The length of the stages, combined with the attention required to avoid damage to the vehicle, but above all the difficulty in orienting yourself, require a commitment that will cut the legs of the average player. These are entry points that would be acceptable if the driving model were just as rigorous, but the physics of the vehicles are not convincing. If you add to this a considerable number of bugs it becomes very difficult to recommend, at least for the moment, the title of Bigmoon even to the most hardcore fans.