Car nuts love to tinker around under the hood, but sometimes even dedicated mechanics just want to hop in and drive. Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad can’t hold a candle to full-featured (and full-priced) four-wheeling champions like Dirt, but its no-frills arcade simplicity still has a certain charm.
There’s no minimap, but turn indicators appear on the right side of the screen.You’ll burn through career mode’s 23 events in just two hours, but along the way you’ll churn through muddy jungle, power-slide across sandy desert scrub, and drift around snow-caked hairpin death-traps. Offroad includes just six tracks, but each offers a pleasing mix of hillside jumps, banked switchbacks, and tricky S-curves. Buggies, rally cars, and trophy trucks all behave pretty much the same, though, so don’t expect much in the way of handling diversity.
As you pass cars, destroy scenery, and otherwise throw your whip around with mad abandon, you’ll earn experience points to spend on simple upgrades. It’s not clear why handling, top speed, acceleration, and braking improvements apply only to specific livery paint jobs instead of to entire vehicle classes, and we never did figure out how the useless “clutch boost” feature was supposed to help us. But it’s hard to get too peeved about odd design quirks when Offroad’s budget price buys you the right to jostle happily enough among seven other online drivers in your favorite maxed-out sled.
Online races can restrict racers to the same class, or allow all five to compete together.PUBLISHER: D3 Publisher • DEVELOPER: 2XL Games • ESRB: Everyone • MULTIPLAYER: 8 on Xbox Live • ACHIEVEMENTS: Fast and easy • COST: 800 Microsoft Points ($10) • RELEASE DATE: June 27, 2012
+ Pick-up-and-play arcade handling; crisply rendered environments; good value.
+ Simple vehicle-upgrade system that carries over into hectic online races.
– Only six tracks; little difference between vehicle classes; short career; pointless “clutch boost.”
? Why don’t vehicles ever get dirty?
