Overpass is an “extreme” off-road racing game from Zordix Racing. It puts you in the seat of name-brand buggies and quads while you attempt to navigate your way through different tracks and ridiculously difficult hill climbs. Overpass puts an emphasis on physics to make you approach each obstacle from a tactical standpoint. There is good track variety and different options for vehicles to choose from, but that doesn’t always make a great game.

What is Overpass?

The idea of Overpass is something I enjoy. It’s essentially Ninja Warrior but with cars. The only time I’ve watched a race of this nature is on Netflix’s Hyperdrive series, but that is more of a Gymkhana race type and not off-road. When I saw that Zordix was planning to take that style of racing and put it in a different setting, I was all aboard. Having to read the terrain and decide how you’re going to approach each obstacle is really where this game shines. It makes you think differently – about terrain, especially – than other racing games, which is a nice change of pace.

How could we make hills tougher to climb?

The Importance of Physics

The physics are really hit or miss in this game. There are times you’ll be hitting clean lines with the different obstacles, but when you reach the base of a hill climb, your vehicle ceases to properly function. The hills in the game really stand out as the most frustrating part of any race.

There are so many times I was really having fun navigating the various obstacles to only come to a complete standstill on a hill. You also run into issues on ATVs where I would be heading up a hill to only be randomly thrown off my quad.

The physics issues are exasperated any time you are racing on an ATV. I think that’s due to the fact that you are able to shift your racer’s weight. This is necessary to make certain turns or to maintain balance while driving over certain rocks, but it seems like the weak point in ensuring your driver stays on the vehicle.

Everyone loves a log!

The Look and Sound of Overpass

The overall look of the game is nice. We’ve reached a certain point in the current generation of hardware that you can have a competent looking game, but if there is no style to surround that look, it falls flat. Nothing really stands out in terms of looks, and the sounds can drive you insane.

Zordix licensed music, but it only plays during the menu selections. What you’re left with, while racing, is the steady sputtering sound of a small engine. It doesn’t seem to naturally change based off the amount of throttle that is being applied, either. On ATVs, I would routinely get to a point that it just sounded like someone was sticking their tongue out and making raspberries at me.

I assume the lack of music was to give the game more of a sim element, but if that was the case, they should have done a better job at adding realistic sounds of each vehicle scraping against the world. That would have at least added some nice variety to the audio.

Oh, those dastardly hills!

Split Screen Is a Welcome Addition

I will say that I am happy to see split screen in this game. Very few racing games put split screen in nowadays. You also have the options for Career, Quickplay, Custom Events, and Multiplayer. The online mode is interesting because Overpass is ultimately a time attack racing game – so you don’t race against a bunch of physical cars, just ghosts. I wish the online multiplayer were more like Nadeo’s Trackmania. This would allow you to better learn new paths, and I think it would help to foster a larger online community.

Overall, I think Overpass is just OK. The concept seems really cool, and if Zordix were able to get a better working physics model, they could really be on to something. I would also love to see them shorten the length of the races, because spending 10 minutes on one race can get boring.

I think there’s a nice variety to the track locales, which helps break up the monotony, and they look nice. Throw in a good soundtrack and expanded online multiplayer and you could turn this title into a real winner. Maybe next time around.

Overpass was provided for free for this review.