Dakar Desert Rally (2022) - Every PC Rally Game
12Dakar Desert Rally by Saber Porto / Saber Interactive, 2022.
Makers of Dakar 18, Bigmoon Entertainment, were bought by Saber Interactive and were renamed as Saber Porto (being based in Portugal). They then took until 2022 to make this sequel, now named Dakar Desert Rally, as the event took place entirely in Saudi Arabia.
The game contains the cars and drivers from the 2020, 2021 and 2022 Dakar events (cars, quads, bikes and trucks), plus classic cars, and then extends the line-up by bringing in some novelty vehicles from the Snowrunner game, also published by Saber. The Saudi Arabia map is genuinely huge, taking hours to cross.
On top of this, they added a huge new USA map, allowed free roam around the locations and multiple time-of-day/weather conditions (snow in the desert!). Modes include a multi-vehicle Sport arcade mode (with big flashing waypoint beacons), a Professional mode (which I've used here) and a Simulation mode, which is the most difficult and only applies to the Dakar events.
Sound is generally good and the graphics can be spectacular (Unreal Engine 4), so what's the catch? A couple of things: firstly there's an onerous unlock process, so players can't even play Simulation mode without hours of gameplay on lower modes. Then there are the Unreal Engine crashes... a lot of them. I found just changing the weather causes crashes in the USA stages (almost always) so I have stuck with default weather for the most part here. Also the quads are nearly uncontrollable (I've heard, I don't really like anything except cars!).
There are a wide range of classic cars in the game (everything from a Citroen 2CV to Peugeot 205 T16 Grand Raid and Citroen ZX Rallye Raid). But those again require hours to unlock, so I've stuck with classic cars that are available from the start; the Peugeot 405 T16, Porsche 959 (DLC) and, erm, a Lada Niva!
At least they dropped the part of Dakar 18 where you could climb out of your truck and put down ramps/use winches to rescue yourself or your rivals. Some things are true-to-life, and some things are just not that fun in a game (unless you like games like Mudrunner/Snowrunner of course!).
Overall, when this is working (and if you can understand and follow the roadbook navigation) then this game is a lot better than Dakar 18 and undoubtedly the best official Dakar game ever (so far).
This is part of the Every PC Rally Game playlist, which you can find here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYDobL0b26ugFuXASCIC9qmFb9_k4_fqU