Onrush is a new online team-based tactical arcade action racing game. Think of it as Overwatch with cars. It’s by a new studio at Codemasters, made up of developers who worked on Driveclub and Motorstorm, so maybe a better name would be Motorwatch. If you want more lines like that, please watch my video.
Onrush‘s tutorials consistently refer to the action as a “stampede”, not a “race”. This is somewhat successful as far as buzzwords go. Onrush is not about crossing the finish line first; that would be too simple. Instead, teams compete to fulfil various goals across multiple modes, while always driving real fast and extra angry.
It has the online team experience of Driveclub, the big wide-open playground racetracks of Motorstorm, and an art direction that asks, “What if Monster Energy Drink had existed in the UK in the 1980s?”
I genuinely love this game. My continuing to love it, however, relies on it becoming popular enough for my friends to want to play it with me.
My experience as a game developer tells me that Onrush‘s design is a work of sparkling beauty. My experience as a game developer also tells me that even the most mathematically perfect game design is worthless if people don’t latch onto the game. My personal assessment is that Onrush deserves that popularity explosion.
Though as I get older (tomorrow is my birthday, by the way) I realise that maybe my tastes aren’t perfectly mainstream, so what do I know?
Onrush is available now for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. (It will be on PC at some unspecified point in the future.) It’s $99.95.
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