What do you do if you like the competitive adrenaline boost of a multiplayer shooter, but … hate all that messy trigger-pulling? And what if you dig cars and the sense of amped-up, high-octane video game speed, but you’re bored to tears with traditional racers? What’s a gamer to do?
Well, the creators behind a new hybrid car game think they’ve got just what your button-crunching fingers are longing for.
And they just might be right.
ONRUSH is one of those titles that’s hard to pin down at first. When you initially slip behind the wheel of this nitro-burner, things feel counterintuitive—like everything you naturally think you should do is all wrong. First, there are no finish lines to cross in this racer, no short cuts to find. Second, leading the pack in this game can be a quick path to disaster.
The game begins with a backstory narrating how the ONRUSH competition was created by a couple of thrill-loving friends who wanted to smash, jump and flip their vehicular way to metal-bending carnage. And that’s the real goal in this game: helping your team stick together to bash and smash its way around in spectacular, death-defying fashion (in both single-player and online modes). And while that, uh, crash course is unfolding, you must keep your car, truck or motorcycle rolling, racking up more points than the other team. It’s sorta like an odd mash-up of colorful games such as Burnout Paradise, Mario Kart and Overwatch, all rolled up with an eSport-like competitive fever.
Right out of the gate, you learn that earning “boost” and filling up your “RUSH” gauge will be the keys to success in all your competitive game modes. As you stampede along—and that’s really what this raging, smashing race is most like, a stampede—you rack up boost by taking out other drivers and their cars, performing special barrel rolls and flipping tricks, or picking up bonus bits that are sometimes dropped in any given level. That extra splash of horsepower boost can fuel just enough extra oomph to let you land on and wreck another car after a ramp jump, or cut off some unlucky sort and nudge him into a wall or tree.
As you boost and smash your way around, you fill up that RUSH gauge until you determine you’ve reached a key point where you can unleash that topped-off asset to full advantage. It’s kind of like shifting into hyperdrive as the screen stretches and your hurtling, glowing speedster uncorks some true car-careening chaos. It’s a risky and exhilarating, uh, rush. And just trying not to obliterate your own vehicle while hitting some rocky landscape outcropping tends to be your biggest concern.
There are lots of different vehicle types to hound the opposing team with, each with its own set of super moves and abilities. For instance, one vehicle can actually help charge up the boost of teammates racing near you. Another drains boost away from opponents’ cars or trucks. Some give you a larger-than-normal RUSH bonus. Others can blind drivers behind you at key moments, or smash a foe’s vehicle with a magnetically charged aerial crush. Choosing the right vehicle with the right combo of benefits can give you an edge in any given mode.
Oh, and speaking of which, and there are four distinct modes for the two teams of six players to rampage through here. Overwatch mode essentially challenges you to boost as much as possible, engaging RUSH, and chaining it all together with destruction-derby takedowns. Lockdown mode is something of a king-of-the-hill match that tasks you with sticking with your teammates and occupying a specific moving zone in order to earn points.
During Switch mode all racers start out on a lightweight motorbike and then, when taken out by an opponent, switch to a bigger vehicle. Eventually, the mission changes from simply trying not to be wrecked, to eliminating any scragglers and their remaining switches. Finally, Countdown mode offers a competition closest to what you might think of as typical racing. In this mode you have to make it through checkpoint gates while keeping the opposing team from doing so.
Smashing through farm fences, leaping over icy mountainside slabs, tearing up sandy construction zones, crumpling up sheet metal in so many tortured ways: That’s what ONRUSH has tucked into its gaming trunk.
The worst content here is the wanton vehicular destruction of it all (and an occasional male or female motorbike rider who’s sent tumbling tail over tea kettle). But as long as young wannabe drivers don’t take it as aspirational, it’s the kind of pedal-to-the-metal destruction that can come with a rearview mirror smile.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
