The Dakar has long captivated the minds and hearts of its competitors and viewers alike. As one of the longest running and most grueling rally raid events, it has claimed countless lives and yet remained a staple on the motorsport calendar despite its very real perils to its participants. With thousands of kilometers across uncharted desert and mountain wasteland, countless iconic images have been seared into the minds of enthusiasts, and yet, birthed only a handful of mediocre video game tie-ins. The last entry Dakar 18 was a poor, albeit ambitious attempt from Bigmoon Interactive. With the release of Sabre Interactive’s Dakar Desert Rally however, the future is looking bright.



The first and almost most obvious problem any Dakar game has struggled with is scale. The Dakar is a monstrous event, covering nearly 10,000kms in its roughly 2-week span. Translating this into a scale-accurate and visually engaging environment is an incredible feat. Previous titles have doubled down on this by implementing a more linear approach, which, while effective, detracted from the scale and freedom the Dakar presents as a race. Sabre Porto haven’t cut any corner however and proudly tout the title of the largest open-world racing title with a whopping 20,000 square kilometers of Saudi Arabia.

In a single stage you can skim across dunes, sink into rocky valleys and thunder through open tundra.

This sandbox isn’t just sand either, despite the Saudi’s endless dunes, the environments shift and morph as you progress, ranging from sun-kissed shores to otherworldly mountain ranges and beyond. In a single stage you can skim across dunes, sink into rocky valleys and thunder through open tundra. It is truly impressive. Some liberties have been taken to a few more interesting obstacles along the game's 30 stages; crashed aircraft and beached shipwrecks litter the landscape, adding some unique challenges along your route.



This is all complimented by a visceral dynamic weather system and a full day night cycle which makes for some breathtaking scenes. Dakar Desert Rally doesn’t pull punches visually, but it does struggle to maintain the promised 60fps in performance mode when rain, sand and terrain combine and get a little busier on screen. But these dips are easy to ignore when you toggle the chase camera to helicopter view as you watch your lonely KTM rider undulate across the dunes with a rooster tail of sand following in tow.

Often, games within the rally genre struggle to cater for a broad audience, with titles like DIRT Rally wholly embracing the hardcore simmers, whereas DIRT 5 strays off from the formula and is far too arcadey. With Dakar Desert Rally, Saber Porto has done their best to make this title approachable to all levels of the potential player base. The game is divided into 3 separate levels of difficult: Sport, Professional and Simulation.



Sport presents a very palatteable, albeit unrealistic depiction of the Dakar. With a group start, you’re tasked with following a series of checkpoints in a bilstering race to the finish, this is a very rudimentary but enjoyable interpretation of the Dakar, which, despite some very aggressive AI, serves as a great way for newcomers to enjoy the genre without the need to dig into orienteering.

This is Dakar at its core: a mix of orienteering, full throttle riding and miles of uncharted desert to get lost in.

Professional and Sim are a different creature entirely and are the way Dakar Desert Rally is intended to be enjoyed. This is Dakar at its core: a mix of orienteering, full throttle riding and miles of uncharted desert to get lost in. With the choice of up to 5 vehicles in your garage, you assume to role of a real-world entrant from either the 2020, 21 or 22 seasons. There isn’t much by way of team management sadly however, and while Saber Porto have roadmapped custom creation, this is unfortunately not available at launch.



Unlike sport, with professional and sim, you’ll begin each stage apart from the rest of the field, in more typical rally fashion. Depending on your vehicle of choice, you’ll have a co-driver who guides you, albeit rather poorly through pace notes all while you keep your eye on your notebook, looking for landmarks, tracking distances as you navigate your way to the next waypoint. It’s here that Dakar Desert Rally really shines. It's such a fresh experience for even long-running rally fans.

The constant need to keep your eye on your notebook while scanning the land for notable landmarks is a great challenge and a welcomed change from the standard point-to-point style of most rally titles. For my first 10 hours I fumbled through my notebook as I tried to discern it's complex script, but once I got to grips with it, it became a real joy to blast through checkpoints with confidence having brushed up on my orienteering.



Although the game does offer up a short tutorial on this, there are many other rules of rally raid you may not be familiar with. For example, passing any kind of settlement over 90kph will net you a time penalty, and I often found myself completely restarting a stage through trial and error. In a similar vein, progression is a little too slow. Each major stage of the Dakar is unlocked by reaching a certain level, and only after level 25 does the Dakar properly begin which I found a little frustrating. I found myself grinding through the same events more than once with different vehicles to rank up and unlock new stages which felt a little counterintuitive.

I found myself grinding through the same events more than once with different vehicles to rank up...

There are 5 vehicle types that compete in Dakar, all well represented in Dakar Desert Rally. These range from lightweight bikes and quads to middle of the road UTV’s and Cars to the monstrous trucks. While impressive, especially considering the large roster across 3 seasons in each discipline, some handle considerably better than others. Quads for example feel like they are driving on ice and are prone to snap and spin on a dime which is very inconsistent.



Cars and UTVs are a little more reliable but lack a lot of feeling which can be hard to predict especially on softer surfaces. Bikes and trucks are great however; oddly enough the latter are probably the best feeling in the game with a great sense of weight. Bikes are nimble and easy to maneuver but one thing I wish they had included more was the ability to shift a rider's weight especially when navigating particularly tricky berms.

The impressive roster is something avid Dakar followers will enjoy, and you can spend time between stages hanging out in your team’s bivouac fine tuning suspension and changing tire pressures or repairing the stage-induced damage. It’s nothing truly hardcore, and most sim grease-monkeys will likely laugh it off, but the fundamentals are there. Accompanying all of this, some decent sound design, most notable when revving across the dunes listening to the desert intakes sift out the sand and suck in hot air. There is a soundtrack to it all, but it’s a very poorly chosen generic rock one that I almost immediately turned off and replaced with a middle eastern spotify playlist.



Dakar Desert Rally is a great step forward in a very particular genre of racing games. Saber Porto have to be commended on a really ambitious open-world racer that’s easily the most enjoyable interpretation of the genre in years. The vast open world is truly breathtaking and doubling down on the Dakar experience with great orienteering is a welcome challenge. Seasoned racers will find a new and unique challenge here that will keep you more than busy until the planned updates arrive.

*PS5 Review code provided by Saber Interactive