Exocross

I initially didn't understand why it took the iRacing creators and indie developer Orontes Games a full four years from showing off a playable version of Exocross (which initially went by the working name "Drag") to its launch date today. But I see now, I've realised what this has been all about. The quality has dipped. What Orontes Games has developed is most likely the physics base that iRacing 2 will be based on, and that obviously takes a lot of time. Exocross is based on a proprietary game engine where all four wheels are physically simulated, independent of each other, as are all four individual shock absorbers, and adding to this is also chassis flex, which extremely few racing simulators have ever dared to approach in terms of emulating what happens to a real car under heavy load.

Exocross is a strange product, perhaps even one of the most conflicting games I've tried in years. Basically, it's an arcade racer in the style of Mario Kart, Motorstorm, or Flatout where you drive a sort of moon buggy on an alien planet and are asked to win by any means necessary against a range of other cars on tracks that look like they've been ripped from Wreckfest. It's all about going as fast as you can on gravel roads, outdriving your opponents and constantly pushing the limit, no matter what the road in front of you looks like. Arcade racing, plain and simple. The crux for me is that the focus of the developers has always been realistic and detailed off-road physics that kind of get in the way of the game's 'fun factor'. Exocross thus feels slow and lacks that sense of speed, excitement, explosiveness and adrenaline that the genre's best games always boast.

Another aspect that doesn't really work for me is that Exocross has a far too realistic aesthetic to suit the arcade racing setup and it lacks imagination, playfulness and colour - which gets pretty boring pretty quickly. The developers should have spiced up the design with something that doesn't just look like a big, grey-brown gravel pit and, above all, decorated the tracks with things like spectators, houses or other buildings to create a better sense of speed. Exocross (released in Early Access in December 2020 and now rolled out in a 100% finished form) feels more like a physics prototype than a full-fledged racing game if you ask me, and the fact that it costs £34 is hard to digest.

There is no real career mode, the multiplayer part lacks variety and immersion, and the races are often very monotonous. The four (only four!) tracks are boring and lack interesting or original elements, and I think the artificial intelligence of the opponent cars is poor, at best. The car physics are clearly impressive and I absolutely believe that iRacing will be able to make really impressive things out of this system in the future, especially with how realistically the chassis moves. However, as it stands, Exocross it is not a very fun game.