If you’re a fan of racing games, you’ve probably noticed that the last couple of years most of these have been more geared towards realism and simulation than arcade or over-the-top action. Codemasters has noticed this too and decided to bring the arcade racing experience back to gaming.
ONRUSH is not your typical arcade racing game like Ridge Racer or Motorstorm are. Instead of earning the highest score by finishing first, you have to score points by completing different kinds of objectives with your team. Yes, you read that right, ONRUSH puts you in a team of six against another team. Every racer’s score adds to the team’s overall score and the one who has the highest after a certain amount of time wins the match. There are several modes that change the way of earning points. In the first, Overdrive, you simply have to use your boost for the longest time possible while in Countdown your team has to pass through time gates that add to your team’s timer. The team whose timer reaches zero first loses the match. The third mode, Switch, changes your team’s vehicles to more powerful ones the longer team members manage to avoid crashes. The last mode, Lockdown, basically works as a King of the Hill mode in which you have to stay inside a moving zone while avoiding attacks from your opponents. All four modes require you to work together with your team members, which be a little difficult to get used to at first if you’re more familiar with realistic racing games like Need for Speed or Forza. The team-based gameplay does work once you get the hang of it and is a nice change to the generic ‘finish first’ design most racing games have nowadays.
But the team-based gameplay is not the only difference ONRUSH has to offer. The game also offers you eight different types of vehicles that all have their own unique modifiers. One car gives you an extra boost when you successfully pull off a barrel roll in the air, while another leaves a tombstone after you’ve crashed that blinds other players once they hit it. These modifiers are not always that useful, but there’ve been some situations where I thought I was losing but managed to turn things around in my favor by changing the vehicle I was driving. It’s obvious that this was the intent of the developers since they made it possible to change vehicles every time you crash. It’s not always possible though, as some matches limit your choice to two vehicle types or less.
Another unique mechanic in ONRUSH is the RUSH system, which rewards continuous use of boost with an ‘ultimate boost’ that is even faster and practically makes you invincible for enemy attacks and makes it easier to wreck other cars. The RUSH can also help your team by sharing boost with them when they’re close to them, or affect the enemy team’s performance by stealing their boost if you’re driving the right vehicle type that has such a modifier. Again, it’s clear Codemasters focussed on the team-based gameplay with the RUSH system to make sure ONRUSH has its own unique gameplay design as a racing game.
While the gameplay itself is pretty fun, ONRUSH doesn’t offer a lot of gameplay modes to prevent the game from becoming repetitive. There are the four modes I described earlier, a multiplayer quick-play mode, a custom mode that gives you the options the create your own match and Superstar, the so-called story mode. In Superstar all you do is play one of the four modes against AI bots and earn enough points to eventually become the winner of the first ONRUSH tournament. It doesn’t offer much variation and could definitely benefit from additional types of matches or the inclusion of minigames. However, it’s an easy way to earn EXP for your profile and currency to unlock new cosmetic items, which works as a loot box system. Don’t worry, these can only be bought with in-game currency and you earn them quite easily by simply playing the game. Maybe that’s why the Superstar mode was made in the first place, to easily unlock new items and skins. There is also a ranked mode planned in the future, but right now you can’t play it.
Not much can be said about the multiplayer mode. You easily connect to other players and compete in of the four match types to earn EXP and currency, just as in the Superstar Mode. One concern I have with it, though, is if the community will stay around for more than a couple of months. Every match consists of two teams of six players, so you always need eleven other players to start a multiplayer match. I never had any trouble finding players while writing this review, but I’m not sure if that’ll still be the case after a few months. Not a major issue at the moment, but it could become one.
The graphics in ONRUSH are great. As expected of an arcade racing game, it is filled with vibrant colors and over-the-top level design that is expertly built with visual cues that effectively tells you what’s coming next in the track. It also runs pretty smoothly, although the base PS4 and Xbox One versions run at 30 fps, while the Pro and X versions have the option to run at 60. Since this is a team-based racer, I don’t think the advantage 60 fps players have is that big or even noticeable. One complaint I do have to mention is the lack of visual damage to wrecked cars. Every time you wreck someone (or get wrecked), they leave a trail of bits and pieces behind but the car itself doesn’t look damaged. Since wrecking cars is an important mechanic in ONRUSH, I expected it to have the kind of visual chaos like Burnout or Motorstorm have. Yes, expecting this is my fault, but don’t tell you wouldn’t expect the same thing from a game so focussed on crashing cars.
Conclusion
ONRUSH is not a flawless game, but it’s surely a fun one for those who miss arcade racing games. The low amount of game modes will hurt the experience in the long-run, but it contains enough to keep you busy for a while, especially if you want to unlock every cosmetic item. The multiplayer is fine but may become unplayable in the future since it always requires twelve people to play. The visuals look great, although the cars never look damaged once they get wrecked. The game is not good enough to make this a recommendation for most racing fans, but it is for those who want to play a modern arcade racer.
