Over the Hill
Review
4WD adventure
by Brett Woolgar
reviewed on PC
Outdooor adventure
Have you ever seen a game pop up on Steam and thought “This was made for me”? That was me when I saw Over the Hill for the first time - Funselektor had managed to pinpoint my love of hobby offroading, camping, and nature photography in a single experience. With five sweeping landscapes ripe for exploring and a fleet of the finest of last millennium's offroading vehicles to use, the game promises a relaxing arcade style driving experience for you and up to three friends online and manages to deliver - if you overlook a few niggling issues.
Over the Hill pops you into the mountains of the Canadian wilderness with a golden Buddha explaining your controls and the mechanics of the game before letting you loose to explore, and they truly are letting you loose. There are no overriding goals or objectives to complete, no journal to fill in and manage, just you and the not oft-beaten path before you. For better or worse this is the experience you can come to expect for the whole game, driving until you see a trail that catches your eye, or a point of interest off in the distance to head towards. It's an experience very reminiscent of Breath of the Wild, with always something over the next hill. As you explore the wilderness you'll find cosmetic upgrades in crates, scenic outlook points, and challenge trails that will give you rewards upon completion. Aside from these static features, you can find animals throughout the maps to photograph and document - the closest thing to an objective the game has. Lodges or camps scattered around the maps serve as repair and resupply points, allowing players to pass time or act as fast travel points - if you need to get around the map a little quicker.
Hitting the (off)road
Each of the five maps has a purposeful craftsmanship to it, with three in the Canadian alpine forests and two set in the Algerian desert, all with a distinct feel and style of driving that they require. The Canadian maps feature ample dirt roads to guide you along, and some decent elevation changes to traverse and explore, while the Algerian maps feature significant verticality and altitude levels, often needing some careful scaling to reach the right rock flat or a considered approach up a dune else you never reach the top. The challenge trails can be frustrating as a solo player as a single mistake will often mean you're restarting the trail rather than waiting for a rescue from a friend. Some trails may be 10-15 minutes long with some particularly difficult climbs right at their ending, however each trail is clearly created with every vehicle in mind and once you recognise it you can generally tell how you should be approaching each checkpoint along the way without too many issues.
Similar to their previous title, Art of Rally, the team at Funselektor have created an experience that is somehow involved yet relaxing at the same time. With pared down driving controls and limited car customisability, you don't get lost in the nitty gritty of a setup or having to manage the particulars of your car to climb those rocks on your way to the next area. Each vehicle feels familiar but unique, with a variety of body sizes, shapes, and engine sounds. All will be able to manage any obstacle in the game, but some will have an easier time than others depending on what you're doing. To make your life easier, a variety of simple upgrades is available for each vehicle. The engine, tyres, suspension, winch, and durability are all upgradeable in two steps, and you can increase your inventory of useable items to assist when between checkpoints. In the early stages these upgrades can make some challenge trails feel trivial, but in the later maps or on the hard trails you'll be glad you got them as you struggle you way up a near vertical cliff face, especially if you're playing alone.
The damage mechanic allows you to take risks without serious consequences, but you'll want to consider not accruing too much, as your car will slow to a crawl as you max out the beating it can take. This is a nice balance of allowing you to go in full tilt where necessary, or using a cliff to traverse the overworld a little faster, while still keeping you in line on a challenge trail. Nicely enough the damage will never hard reset you to a checkpoint, so with enough grit you'll always be able to finish the task you were attempting.
Bringing someone along for the ride
Gathering three friends to play with, or jumping online into a public lobby, the experience changes significantly from a relaxing drive through the wilderness to something far more meaningful. At no point did the game feel like the typical recent 'friendslop' that you expect from a 4 player online arcade style game, but it's an experience where you can take or leave the multiplayer aspect. Having a friend along on the trail means you can be a little more daring in your approach since you have a helpful winch point if you flip, or you can cause a ruckus by ramming your friend off the cliff they just climbed, or you can even go your separate ways to explore the map and compare notes once you get back together an hour later, often exclaiming something like "where you did get those flip-flop mudguards!?" when you see each other. You'll also find yourself being very inefficient in the name of cooperation, with my group taking the better part of half an hour to mount a rescue mission up a sheer cliff to grab one of our members who had 'fallen' (not rammed off, surely), just before the final checkpoint of the map. It would have been wiser to just reset and spend the 2-3 minutes driving back, but the half hour of barely disguised sabotage as we attempted to retrieve a car up a rockface clearly not intended to be scaled was one of the most enjoyable experiences we had playing.
What really lets the experience down is the netcode or the servers, finding a stable online instance was a struggle with my friends, often needing us to restart the instance 3 or 4 times before we found a stable connection for all of us, which is quite concerning considering the listed Australian servers with around 15 ping for all of us. Without a stable online instance the game becomes nearly unplayable on anything but flat ground, as the physics will lag and catchup with you all at once, causing vehicle damage and throwing you in a random direction like a dog toy. That being said once its stable it stays that way and you really don't notice you're online, so hopefully this is something the devs can fix with updates over time, especially as playing single player is particularly smooth even on a system close to minimum specs.
Whilst driving you'll be able to enjoy the in-game soundtrack, with a few cassettes to play that are inoffensive but nothing to shout from the rooftops about. They certainly set the mood and each have a distinct tone that means you'll find at least one you enjoy having on while you explore. The other main feature of the game is an always accessible photo mode, complete with a drone style camera and a variety of filters you can apply to your shots. I found myself stopping mid trail to grab a few photos of my car or my friends as they came up the trail behind me, or just sitting in a spot and watching the weather pass through with the sun rising in the background.
Heading out, again
When push comes to shove, the game is exactly what it offers up front, an arcade style offroading adventure with charming graphics and well crafted maps that you can sink some good hours into. It may be a struggle to return to once you've experienced all of it, unless it is just to relax and take in the views. If the team can clean up the online experience I can see it being a longer lasting game with my friends, but until then we'll be clearing all the maps and leaving it at that.
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8.5
fun score
Pros
Beautiful scenery, relaxing experience, fun mechanics
Cons
Online experience can be a struggle to get stable, replayability probably won't be there for most.
