Off-Road Drive isn’t quite the off-road racing we’ve come to expect from the industry of late. The high-flying, somewhat unrealistic acrobatics are left behind. As is the just hop in and go of the previous Off-Road title. Now, Drive offers more of an Off-Road competition simulation. It’s being built in the Unreal 3 engine and could be one of the vehicle-only games on the platform.

1C Company has licensed eight major championship series to give a more authentic feel to the game. This included tracks and locations from the actual series. There are no licensed vehicles per se however there are all sorTs of components and parts.

The realism extends beyond just setting up your vehicle to handle properly based on the track, it goes into the actual driving and the terrain deformation on the tracks. With realistic terrain including mud, water and swamp you’ll really need to drive including shifting from high to low when appropriate. It’s more of a simulator than you might expect.

Tracks are based on speed but the speeds are more akin to a tortoise than a hare. That’s not to say that the game doesn’t look interesting. It will most certainly be challenging and give real off-road enthusiasts something to look forward to. During the demo we were told that there would be both circuit tracks as well as open area type, single pass tracks where you have to go from point A to B as quickly as you can manage.

They’re working on both single player as well as multiplayer and one can only guess they would have some sort of online leaderboards as the game is being aimed for the PC and Xbox 360 markets.