Gravel

A competent arcade-style racer that mostly excels in the amount of cars and the number of tracks available. It also fills a gap if you've been craving for a decent off-road title recently. The Smash-up races take away from the fun to be had however because the difficulty soon becomes frustrating. The AI occasionally pulls off some crazy antics as well, but that doesn't hamper the fun in any major way.

GRAVEL is a refreshing arcade racer that delivers a fun handling model within a package that can't visually hold up. If you can look past that, there's some charm with the cheesy presentation, reckless AI and surreal crash physics. It's a budget title that sadly carries a full price but there's a level of creativity here that makes it stand out from Milestone's licensed work.

Milestone's latest is a fun romp through a variety of off-road locations, offering both quantity and variety in terms of tracks, cards, and modes. It's not the most ambitious racer ever, but the non-serious style of the flagship Off-Road Masters mode will be very appealing to those wanting an enjoyable arcade experience.

Gravel is a nice change of pace from the simulation-heavy racing games available elsewhere in the industry. While decidedly light on content outside of the main campaign and devoid of any real multiplayer options to speak of, the most important part of any racing game, the driving, is consistently fun.

Gravel is a solid title, with an old school gameplay, but few game modes. There's a good variety of cars and locations, with a strong connection to the past and the present of the off road story. There are, however, some technical problems.

Another challenging and entertaining racing game from Italian developer Milestone... but not enough to compete with the best titles in the genre.

Gravel is a game that you'll enjoy if you like this type of racer, although it falls short of ambition when it comes to gameplay and content.

With its relatively realistic physics, Gravel is a game on the hard side. However, if you are looking for an arcade-like offroad race game, you should be able to appreciate this one.

Gravel is undoubtedly better than we expected but it's still quite far from the best in the business like Forza Horizon. Nevertheless, the game should appeal to the die-hard fans of arcade racing in spite of it's shortcomings.

While Gravel looks good and plays well, it suffers from never deciding whether it wants to be a simulation game or and off-road arcadey racer.

Intermittently fun, but not consistently hair-raising enough to keep you glued to the steering wheel. [Apr 2018, p.80]

It is certainly not difficult to find faults in Gravel. On the other hand, it's just as easy to put the pedal to the metal and enjoy the wonderfully exaggerated races. Rarely has a racing game been this fun and varied, although It could – and maybe should – have been better in a lot of ways.

Gravel is a game that holds up, but which, like the races it offers, skids and slips often off-road. It will therefore satisfy the ones that likes this kind of games for fifteen hours to complete the Off Road Masters mode and probably a half dozen for completers who want all the stars and liveries. Its launch price price under the bar of 50 € can help to make a decision and remains finally very coherent with the proposed offer.

Gravel is fun enough as an arcade off-road racer, but it feels like it was designed to compete with the hits of five or six years ago, not the racers of today. While there’s something likeable about its no-nonsense, rough-and-tumble action, it lacks the poise, power and polish of a mud-flinging, tyre-spinning champ.

Gravel offers fun racing with a variety of cars and environments. The Off-road Masters mode that includes the Gravel Channel storyline is a unique way to include a story that features boss battles with the one-one-one challenges. Otherwise the modes in Gravel are lacking and the visuals are severely hurting. There’s better car models in some mobile games, but at least the selection is enough to get past this and the game looks good in motion with the colors and the lighting. Unfortunately, while advertised as PS4 Pro Enhanced, HDR isn’t included even though Milestone’s latest Supercross game included HDR. What makes the negatives more forgiving is that Gravel retails for $49.99, rather than a full-priced game. It has its moments and its variety, but it can’t be compared to something like the DiRT series.

New arcade racers have been few and far between over the last half decade, and Gravel is just one attempt to reignite the genre. There’s some good racing to be found here, with plenty of licensed cars to take through some lovely scenery, but it doesn’t get your heart pounding with excitement. Gravel might be a fairly decent racer, but its biggest sin is that, despite the fireworks and exotic locations, it’s just a bit boring.

All in all, Gravel is a mediocre racing game; one that cannot challenge any of the top quality racing titles currently available on the market. The game has many qualities that the other recent release from Milestone enjoyed, but unlike the motorcycle racing genre, the car racing genre is too crowded.

Like the fireworks that occasionally ignite throughout select races, Gravel's attempts at excitement don't quite dazzle.