Review - Jeremy McGrath's Offroad

To be honest, I can't say I'm all that surprised about my final opinion on Jeremy McGrath's Offroad. It's like cafeteria food - the moment I saw it, and especially when I first started playing it, I knew it was going to be bad. I just didn't realise how bad. Future game designers, experienced design veterans and diehard gamers, take note: this is a great example of how not to design a racing game.

My Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad career ended in just two hours with me coming third in the championship table and winning almost all of the 23 races, for which I received no recognition at all. The game just went straight from the end of the final race to a tiny credits screen and then… nothing.



There isn’t even much to be said for the varying difficulty levels (Amateur, Semi-Pro and Pro) because even on Pro, you’ll be racing past your opponents and finishing in an admirable position. Of course, since you gain more XP for playing Pro (150 per cent more, in fact), you can then apply yet more upgrades, which make the game even easier than it is. Needless to say, if you’re looking to improve your driving skills then you're better off searching elsewhere – even though Jeremy himself tells you that you’ll require careful throttle control, he pretty much means you have to use your breaks on tight corners and little else.

As mentioned, the 23-race career only takes between two to three hours to complete, featuring just six tracks (mostly in America, with one in Netherlands and one in Ecuador). Starting with simple, single lap races in basic buggies you’ll progress onto slightly longer two or three lap races in cars or trucks, with the occasional point-to-point time trial thrown in every few races. And if things weren't already easy enough, you don’t even have to come in the top three positions to progress.



Still, it's not just about the Career mode - there's plenty of other things to do, right? Actually, no. Arcade mode is as obvious as it sounds, giving you the opportunity to race on all six tracks in three different modes (Practice, Time Trial and Single Race) while a fourth Stage mode seems to only be available on the Rock Springs track. In fact, you'd probably spend more time playing the game on Xbox Live… and by playing, I actually mean 'waiting for another player to show up' since in all my experience of trying it out, not a single other person popped up for me to race against.

The graphics are probably the only thing the game has got going for it, but they're still nothing to get excited about. The vast desert, icy slopes, and forest backgrounds do look rather good though and it’s great fun ramming over signs, fences, and making the opponents go flying. However, there isn’t a lot of attention to detail – the trees, and bushes may look real, but you can race straight through them and they don’t obstruct you in anyway, which is totally unrealistic. Even the boulders, planes, snowballs and parked trucks make no effort to stop you in your tracks, which is laughable in a game that's trying so hard to be taken seriously.



Unfortunately, laughable is an apt way of summing up Jeremy McGrath's Offroad as a package; there's almost nothing to it and since winning seems to be a simple matter of letting go of accelerate at the right points, you could almost reach the podium with your eyes shut. Suffice to say, there are better racers out there for the same price… hell, even the rubbish ones aren't as bad as this. Avoid at your own peril.