Available now, the ONRUSH beta is in full swing over the weekend. ONRUSH is a fast-paced action-packed driving game developed by Codemasters (DiRT, F1) and published by Deep Silver (Saints Row, Dead Island). While it looks like a racing game, ONRUSH is actually a circuit battle game where the blue team takes on the red team to see who can cause the most havoc. There’s no finish line, just a finishing score. Rocket Chainsaw had a bit of fun with the ONRUSH beta today, and our impressions are below.

The ONRUSH beta runs you through a tutorial teaching you the basics. There are different vehicle classes and each of them have unique perks, so finding what works best for you will be key. You can do tricks on the motorbike, however the cars will quickly crush you if you get in their way. Each vehicle has a super ability that can be executed when you’ve used enough boost. These abilities will often be devastating, causing massive damage across the track if timed properly.

Once you’ve completed the tutorial, you’re given an option to pre-order the game and then taken to the main menu. You can choose a quick online race, race against AI, or check your level and rewards. Rewards begin once you reach level 3 and you’ll keep unlocking content for the full game until you reach level 15.

We found the online quick race to be fun, but sometimes it was a commitment to find a match. The first attempt, the game simply got stuck in the loading screen and we had to close the application and try again. Hopefully this is just a server issue that gets patched out by launch. ONRUSH also attempts to connect you to existing lobbies, and so sometimes you’ll join a game that’s just finished, causing more painful loading. Once we found a match though, everything worked pretty seamlessly and given the amount of vehicles on the track at any one time there was barely any noticeable frame-rate issues or lag.

Scoring points can be done multiple ways, but the most effective way to beat the other team is to take them out. This proved difficult at the start, and it looks like teams will have to work together and formulate plans which could be quite tricky given the pace of ONRUSH. If you get taken out, you re-spawn in the midst of the action and continue the fight. There are random AI drivers on the course as well which you can take out to gain extra boost, and most of your boost will either come from doing this or from jumps. It looks like there could be a lot more tricks and techniques that will unlock in the full game, so hopefully ONRUSH will get more complex.

The beta features two maps and two different gameplay modes, as well as different weather conditions and both day and night, however these experiences will all be cycled throughout the ONRUSH beta weekend, so you’ll have to keep coming back if you want to check out everything there is to offer.

In summary, our ONRUSH beta impressions were mixed. While it was fun to play, the graphics weren’t overwhelming and the gameplay doesn’t really offer enough diversity to make us want to sit and play for hours on end. At $99.95 RRP for the Day One edition, it will be interesting to see how well this game does. With the huge backing of Deep Silver and Codemasters though, we wouldn’t be surprised if it sells better than expected.

ONRUSH launches on Tuesday the 5th of June, 2018 on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. For more information on how to download the ONRUSH beta, head to the official website’s beta page here.