Arcade racing game Onrush threw out the finish line, and eight years on nobody has copied it

Onrush does not care whether you finish first. Codemasters built a 2018 racing game for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One where nobody crosses a finish line, and it is better for it. Twelve players split into two teams of six, driving everything from motorcycles to buggies over large, hilly levels, and the only thing that matters is how hard you push. Deep Silver published it.

Trailer, via IGDBcom.

No Finish Line in Onrush

That is the idea that sets Onrush apart. Racing games usually hand you a track and a place to finish. Onrush hands you a team and a job. You earn boost by pulling stunts and by slamming rival racers to take them out. Boost makes you faster, and boost is also how you win. The whole game runs on that loop, and it holds up.

Overdrive and Countdown

The modes take that loop and bend it four ways. In Overdrive, teams score by boosting, and the first team to hit the target score wins. Countdown runs on checkpoints and a timer that drains over time. Teams keep the timer alive by passing checkpoints, and if either team’s timer hits zero, the other team scores. Lockdown is King of the Hill, with a zone that moves along the track and teams fighting to stay inside it.

Switch Gives You Three Lives

Switch is the one that changes the feel most. Each member of each team gets three lives, and the goal is to take the other team down. Crash, and you respawn in a more powerful vehicle if you still have lives left. That last detail is the smartest thing in the game. It turns a mistake into a promotion, and it keeps a losing player in the fight instead of parking them on the sideline.

The Boost Loop Holds Up

The order of what Onrush does well:

1. The boost economy, because stunts and takedowns feed the same meter that wins matches.
2. The team structure, because six-on-six forces you to read where your side is, not just where you are.
3. Switch’s respawn rule, because losing a life can make you stronger.
4. The vehicle spread, from motorcycles to buggies, because it changes how you take a corner and how you take a hit.

What sits lower is the terrain. Large levels over hilly ground give the game its speed, but they also blur one match into the next. The modes carry the variety here, not the maps.

A Team Game That Refuses the Finish Line

Onrush is a third-person game, and it plays in single player, multiplayer and co-operative. That range matters, because the team design is the point. A solo player can still run the boost loop, but the game is built around six people acting like six people. When that clicks, Onrush feels like nothing else in the genre.

It also did not last. Online servers officially shut down on 30 November 2022. That is the fact that hangs over any review of Onrush now. A team game with no teams to play against is a museum piece, and the modes that depend on twelve live players are the ones that suffer most.

What Onrush Got Right

Here is what this paper makes of it. Onrush is a genuine design success. Dropping the finish line was not a stunt. It gave the back of the pack a job, and Switch’s respawn rule gave them a reward for staying in it. The mode design is the reason to care about a game most people never played.

The servers going dark in 2022 does not undo that. It just means the best version of Onrush is the one nobody can play anymore.

That is the part worth remembering, and it is the part worth regretting. A game this sure of its own idea deserved a longer run.

Onrush scores 7.9 of 10.

Codemasters · game review · Onrush · PS4 · racing games · Xbox One