Racing games have been a constant genre since the early days of the Atari and very rarely have they ever deviated from the same format. The idea is race from point A to point B and be the one to do it first. Often, this format works well and makes for some rather amazing racing games, but maybe—just maybe—a change was needed from this theme. Enter Onrush, a game that acts like a destruction derby married the ideas found in an off-road racing game. If you are just sick and tired of the slew of same old racing games then Onrush might be your salvation.

Onrush is a racing game that focuses on team-based themes and destruction orientated racing. Players choose their character as well as their type of vehicle and must hit the road to destroy the competition in varying ways. Gone are the traditional rules of racing where hitting an opponent is considered taboo and grounds for disqualification. In Onrush, you’re encouraged to go fast and slam your opponents off the road to end their career. Onrush enters you into a racing world that feels new and unique for some adrenaline focused gameplay.

Onrush talks about friends who decided racing was becoming old and stale. In order to change the game up, these friends united to create something called Onrush. Within Onrush, the ideas of who can make it to the end of a track first were removed and the primary focus was to destroy your opponents as a team and not as a singular driver. Now with their game set up, the world will soon realize a new form of racing is emerging. Destruction and speed blend together in the world of Onrush.

The Burnout series and Need for Speed series have always stood out from other racing games because their mechanics take traditional racing and turn it upside down. Burnout focuses on causing wrecks to get points while Need for Speed usually tries to give you the feeling of what going 250 mph feels like but in a gaming world. Yet, what if we here at Honey’s Anime told you that there is a new game out that takes both series themes and makes for a rather different game entirely? If that sounds appealing, then we direct you towards developer Codemasters’ latest game called Onrush. We sat down and played Onrush ourselves for quite sometime and wish to share our opinions. Welcome one and all to our review of Onrush!

Onrush, from the moment you enter the tutorial, tells you that this isn’t going to be like other racing games. Trust us folks, that statement isn’t lying. Onrush removes the usual racing game themes and instead focuses on team-based races that have different mechanics and settings. For our review, we’ll begin by talking about the gameplay elements of Onrush, what works about it and equally what doesn’t. Let us first begin by describing what you’ll be doing exactly in Onrush.

As mentioned a moment ago, Onrush is a team-based racing game that, like Burnout, wants players to understand destruction is a big part of the game. Onrush has several modes such as Countdown, where teams try to keep their timers going by hitting checkpoints and Overdrive where teams fight by boosting and thus gaining points to win against their opposing team. Lockdown is similar to King of the Hill where players must move as the Kings to keep their “hill” safe from other racers and then you have switch which gives players stock lives—3 to be more precise—and must survive as long as they can all while knocking out their opponents. If you noticed, none of these modes say reach this area or out race your opponent. Onrush wants to be more like Burnout but equally keep the speed of Need for Speed within its title. All modes are honestly amazing and the various tracks you play on as you unlock them, keep the modes from ever being stuck to just one track or track type.

Now when you’re “racing,” players will realize there aren’t many buttons to Onrush. All you have is accelerate, brake, boost and handbrake. That’s it, folks; Quite literally, Onrush is arcade-like as it keeps things simple. Equally, that explains why the driving elements of Onrush work so well at a technical level. Turning at high speed is easy, boosting and slamming into enemies isn’t too hard to do, and ultimately, all cars—which there are several of, but more on that in a moment—handle well based on their class and model. This keeps Onrush accessible by all gamers even those who might not be too privy with most racing games and how they work.

Unlike most racing games, Onrush doesn’t have thousands of cars to choose from. Vehicles in Onrush are almost akin to classes in multiplayer games. There are several to choose from with each car class having special abilities like being able to give boost to other team cars and or gaining boost quicker when you take a daredevil approach to racing. It might seem odd to not have a lot of cars and for those who love selection, Onrush might not provide that. Yet, thanks to numerous customization options for cars and players—some of which are unlocked with currency in game or loot crates obtained also in game—that even with only a handful of cars to choose from, you’ll find ways to make your car class feel like an extension of yourself.

Online wise, we played several matches and loved the experience of playing with humans versus the sometimes overly aggressive AI. All the single player modes are available online and the game itself runs silky smooth. We were surprised by this seeing as how Onrush looks great with its environments having so much detail and the speed of everything would make other games crumble online. We commend Codemasters and Deep Silver; their team did an excellent job keeping Onrush stable in an online format.

Now if we had any issues with Onrush, it would come in two forms. Mentioned previously, the AI sometimes, in Onrush, can be almost too good and aggressive. There were times we found ourselves barely winning races because the AI was just that amazing. Likewise, spawning when you are wrecked in Onrush isn’t the best in the world. After several seconds, you are returned to the track with temporary invincibility but even then, we had a few occurrences of immediately dying due to some random enemy car hitting us as we spawned in or being thrown into a turn with no time to move. These issues aren’t big enough to ruin Onrush, but they do keep it from being nearly perfect.

Onrush clearly tries to mirror elements from similar racing games like Burnout and Need for Speed, but there’s clearly a difference between these titles. Onrush incorporates a bit of everything in its racing title and it makes for one heck of an adrenaline thrill ride. We loved the speed of events, the various gameplay modes and the way that cars are more so class-based setups. Onrush makes a few errors here and there, but these problems are minor and rarely ever made us annoyed for longer than a second or two. More often than not, we just were enjoying our eyes being glued to the screen as we whizzed past trees and buildings to avoid smashing our cars to bits. Onrush is a spectacular racing game that removes the common themes of most racing games to be something that stands out as an individual title. That’s why if you’re tired of most racing games, you’re going to want to buy Onrush for a truly liberating experience.

If it wasn’t obvious already, we’re saying that Onrush is a game you need to buy if you love the Burnout and Need for Speed series and wondered what it would look like if those two games merged together. Onrush is a game that we don’t think we’ll be putting down anytime soon as the adrenaline rush you get while playing is so satisfying and enjoyable. Codemasters aren’t new to the racing game scene, but with Onrush being so different than anything else they made, you’d almost believe they only ever made racing games and were shaping their previous works to make this excellent title. Are you excited to rev into Onrush for yourself? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below! For all your gaming reviews and article needs, be sure to keep stuck to our hive here at Honey’s Anime.