Overall, Gravel is Milestone’s finest game to date. It combines a surprisingly high amount of racing types together and does an exceptional job with all of them. The handling is far better than most of their prior work, and the level of on-screen excitement is at its highest point yet as well. There are some rough edges when it comes to the overall presentation, and the FMV-laden story mode of sorts is somewhat of a groaner, but it doesn’t take away from how fun the core racing action is. It uses rumble better than most games on the market today as well – at least for Xbox One controller users, and is a solid pickup for anyone craving some off-road racing.

While it won’t unseat Forza as king of racing games on the Xbox One, there is a lot of good fun to be had here. Gravel is both visually and audibly satisfying, and comes with a decent pool of content. It’s a shame that the game lacks a dynamic commentary system, but outside of this, only a few technical issues linger, pulling it just shy of greatness.

Gravel was a pleasant surprise, although it’s not as exciting as some may like. I enjoyed the various racing environments, and the different racing disciplines, that are offered and I think many other racing fans of all levels will too. What is disappointing is that there seems to be very few to no gamers racing online, which is a shame. I found that my time with Gravel was enjoyable, and without many issues.

It's never going to overly impress you, but it lays solid foundations for a series that could go somewhere. With its stunning scenery and fairly open track design, I'd love to see Milestone throw caution to the wind, add a boost button and go all-out arcade. Just then, we might have a worthy successor to Motorstorm on our hands.

Gravel is a lot of fun, offering an enjoyable arcade-racing experience with oodles of sideways flare. It's well presented and has plenty of appeal for fans of single-player games that just want something they can pick up and play without much of a learning curve...The lack of HDR is disappointing, but at least the Xbox One X has been considered, though personally I'd trade 4K support for 60 FPS every day.

Gravel is a true arcade racer. The game has a lot of cars and types of events to keep you going for some time. The problem is that the tracks look very similar and that the most tracks are rallycross tracks. More tracks would create more diversity.

It’s a competent and occasionally pretty pick-up-and-play arcade racing game at its core, but it has the whiff of a game released in the wrong era – a scent it just can’t shake.