12DOVE Verdict
Pros
- +
It's like Test Drive Unlimited
- +
But not really
- +
Lots of brown
Cons
- -
Brown is ugly
- -
Brown
- -
brown
- -
brown
- -
Oh and the handling sucks
Why you can trust 12DOVE
Ford Off Road is what Test Drive Unlimited would be like if you took out all the really cool cars and removed the sense of freedom. You start off with the choice of a Land Rover or a big Ford pick-up to drive around the desert - hardly the most hair-raising selection of full-blooded motoring.
And things don’t get much better. The game is split into three rough parts. Events start off in a dustbowl - yellow - and then slowly move to take in mountain scenery - grey - before some forest - green/brown - then they wind up skittering over some icy plains - white. It’s hardly the most inspired colour palette, and its drab nature suits the game. It’s dull. Insipid. Throw all those colours into a paint mixer and you’d doubtless get a foul bland beige, the most boring colour known to man.
Maybe it’s the vehicle lineup, all four-by-fours. Made by Ford. So no Porsche Cayenne. You do get a Range Rover the size of a Challenger tank later on. Or it could be the utterly lackluster races on offer, some of which set pointless tasks like collecting almost invisible ‘artifacts’. Oh no, wait, the worst part is the horrible handling. It’s the way the cars handle like shopping trolleys, with no palpable sense of feedback from the terrain you’re riding over, and so where there should be giddy joy at throwing expensive cars through muck there’s nothing; except a sore thumb. It’s like waking up in bed with Ray Romano.
Mar 21, 2008
More info
Genre | Racing |
Description | Ford racing goes off road. Featuring 24 different tracks and 12 race modes set over 3 different environments. |
Platform | "PSP","PS2","PC","Wii" |
US censor rating | "Everyone","Everyone","Everyone","Everyone" |
UK censor rating | "3+","3+","3+","3+" |
Alternative names | "Ford Racing Off Road","Off Road" |
Release date | 1 January 1970 (US), 1 January 1970 (UK) |
Simon was once a freelance games journalist with bylines at publications including GamesRadar. He is now a content designer at DWP Digital - aka the Department for Work and Pensions.
Fallout New Vegas director's first D&D RPG launched on the same day as Diablo 2, "which sounds like it would be catastrophically bad," but it ended up helping it instead
Artist reimagines Elden Ring as a Baldur's Gate-style top-down RPG "despite my love-hate relationship with the game," is surprised to see it's absolutely stunning
Meet Metamorpho, the weirdest member of the Justice League in James Gunn's new Superman movie