We finally got some Dakar Desert Rally gameplay

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A Dakar Desert Rally gameplay has been officially released, courtesy of Saber Porto. Here is why you might want to keep an eye on this open-world rally racer.

With the Dakar Desert Rally release date of the 4^th of October 2022 not far in the distance, it did seem odd that the developer, Saber Porto, and publisher Saber Interactive of SnowRunner fame had not yet released any gameplay footage.

This is the videogame equivalent of straight to tape. Or these days, straight to Netflix. Turns out, the plan was to give journalists, influencers and idiots like me a go at Gamescom – sadly, I was unable to attend.

Anyway, those who found Dakar 18 tedious may also have rather low hopes for Dakar Desert Rally – an open-world rally racer coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X and Series S.

But as you can hopefully see, Dakar Desert Rally goes far beyond its predecessor. Without trying to jinx things, the visuals look great, the trucks appear to move in a realistic way and the user-interface is suitably shiny.

As said in the video, Dakar Desert Rally lets you race in trucks, motorbikes, quads and SSVs – lightweight vehicles, basically. Specifically, all are official vehicles with official drivers from official teams. More than 150 vehicles in total.

Or you can create your own team to undertake the annual off-road endurance rally, which these days takes place in Saudi Arabia.

Please note: This is the script from my YouTube video, click play above to watch or go here.

Read: Dakar Desert Rally review

“Authentic and epic”

Saber Interactive describes the game as “authentic and epic”, which is hopefully reflected in the fact it is said to be the biggest open-world racing game ever made. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Forza Horizon 5.

Of course, many of those thousands of square kilometres will take the form of empty desert. So it is good news that Dakar Desert Rally includes four seasons and dynamic weather, meaning you may battle unrelenting sun one on day and a blizzard the next. Day and night are a thing too.

Not only that, the latest Dakar Desert Rally Saudi Arabia gameplay shows small towns, boats, stunt planes, camels, lighthouses and even people camping out underneath the stars. How romantic.

As we can see when the user-interface pops up, there are on-screen directions to each waypoint – with your bearing displayed on the dashboard or handlebars. Get close enough to said waypoint and the next will appear, giving you the job of navigation. Rinse and repeat until the section is complete.

Catering for a wide range of players, Dakar Desert Rally includes Sport, Professional and Simulation gameplay modes. Sport uses easier-to-follow navigation as well as arcade-style rally beacons, repositioning if you get lost, lower repair costs, easier AI opponents and waypoint autosaves.

Professional, meanwhile, has “realistic” navigation for the roadbooks you follow, no rally beacon, medium repair costs and tougher competitors. But you still get an autosave at each waypoint and the option of repositioning if things go too off-piste.

And for those who want the game to take the piste, we have “Simulation”. This makes Dakar Desert Rally most unforgiving, where you get lost a lot and damage can be fatal. Navigation is realistic, repair costs are at their highest, competitors are ‘legendary’ and saving is not an option.

“Faithfully recreated”

In terms of content, Saber Interactive says we are getting 30 stages “faithfully recreated from the most recent years of Dakar Rally events”, with career experience points given out along the way to let you increase your level and unlock new things.

Vehicle customisation is also included. Here you can choose your paintjob and slap on some stickers. You can also customise your race helmet and race suit.

In addition, you can even tune each vehicle, with suspension strength, ride height, anti-roll bars, tyres and brakes among other things adjustable to your liking.

For those who like the idea of making their own Dakar events, meanwhile, there is an in-built roadbook editor. Your creations can be shared with the online community. I assume you can just play whatever other players have made.

Lastly, Dakar Desert Rally includes competitive online multiplayer, leaderboards and hopefully a drive-thru in the desert so that you avoid going hungry and thirsty. Allegedly you can wonder round on foot, too, which sounds amusing.

Honestly, I am pretty excited to see how this game pans out. With decent steering wheel support, as hinted at in a previous video I made, Dakar Desert Rally could well create that feeling of speed, isolation and endurance.

And on that note, I shall work on getting early access for a full review and guides. Thank you for watching. Be sure to like, subscribe and all that jazz. Take care, bye.