Overpass Review

"Like Sliding Into Mud"

Campaign

February 29, 2020 at 8:36pm
By Jason Stettner

This is a racing title where it’s less about speed, and more about tactical driving as you attempt to finish challenges. While that sounds intriguing, and it certainly did to me. This game is actually rather mind numbingly boring and very difficult when it comes to the campaign. The quickplay is far easier as vehicles are ready to go whereas when you go back to the campaign you have awful vehicles that get banged up.

You’re constantly needing to repair them which sucks up your money and you’re never able to upgrade or get ahead with better options. They do have neat repair choices since you can manually do it, but costs wise you just get into a deeper hole. I never felt like I was progressing, and that only made it more frustrating when I went to quickplay as it was much easier to compete on the tracks. This is a silent game, there’s no background atmosphere aside from tires roaring loudly and no other competitors.

You actually have to pause in order to see your goals on the track medal wise and it’s just largely poorly put together. You play through an ugly web selecting race options, and then if you have multiple scenarios in a row it’s going to seriously smash your vehicle to bits. It’s a hard balance as you’re never doing well enough to place, while the vehicle just continues to get broken up.

It’s also difficult to unlock upgrade options, and just a dreadful time when it comes to the campaign. An aspect that makes up the majority of the game. The multiplayer is a similar experience where you’re competing against ghosts. This is about the same when you do splitscreen, which with vertical splits is very hard to play without any sense of peripheral vision. You’re driving tactically looking for grip and yet you can’t see sideways to know where you need to head in the splitscreen mode.

Gameplay

You do get a couple viewing angles, and in the close proximity it doesn’t look too bad. That being said, on Xbox One X it’s enhanced and constantly screen tearing. On top of that, I noticed some performance issues and these were just a further annoyance to the quiet, boring gameplay. I really like the concept of mud getting torn up in racing titles as that’s cool physics wise but it’s really just a cosmetic element in this game.

You’re rarely ever digging into actual dirt, just getting stalled on the side of hills as you can’t actually seem to find grip. It does have a neat system where you change your input such as to all wheel which is adjusting your differential and drivetrain options for those that understand the more technical aspects of vehicles. You can also select to use either a UTV or ATV with the latter being ultimately useless. Vehicles handle oddly at times, and definitely flip around. Momentum is handled poorly as well.

The checkpoint system is also an oddity, at times pushing me past where I was when I try to correct or other times sending me far backwards. Often, I was placed in a position after spawning that I couldn’t do anything with it and would have to go back further in order to progress. It features a correction, but not a rewind. I did find the vehicles to look great model wise, as did the characters. The backdrop is however somewhat ugly, with bland repeating textures and I noticed countless floating trees. The levels have a decent terrain setup, but the items feel like they were sort of lazily piled onto the maps. The biome range is alright, and there’s a fair quantity of levels to race on.

The Conclusion

Overpass has some interesting elements, but is largely a very basic and issue ridden racing title that sends you spiraling into a silent mind numbingly boring ride. It is seriously boring, there really isn’t any fun to be had unless you’re in the quickplay mode. That way you can somewhat enjoy the vehicles and the track layouts.

It still can just be annoying as nothing is designed for entertainment to any degree. It’s mostly about frustrating attacks on mud mountains while knowing that clock is ticking away. Matches are about eight to ten minutes, so it just feels like a massive waste of time as you’ll always find a spot to get caught on. If that’s not enough, the vehicle destruction is an extra layer of cruelty.

There are performance issues, constant screen tearing and a number of other minor issues that pop up as you play. I didn’t have any fun with this, and that’s a shame as the concept is entirely unique. There aren’t many racing titles like this and I think there’s something here. This one just doesn’t hit the mark though. They could have had least pushed for more dirt deformation or weathering effects.

Read our Need for Speed Heat Review
View our Game Hubs

Overpass Review on Xbox One X
Review Code Provided by HomeRun PR

Rating Overall: 2.0