Quick notes as usual. I'm afraid I can't say anything about the multiplayer for this game, because no one else is playing online. I tried at release as well and there wasn't anyone online then either, so it looks like you'll just be doing single player in this game. Just for clarity's sake, I reviewed the Xbox360 version of the game. I'm always looking to become a better writer, so please post any comments or advice you may have.
Colin McRae DiRT, developed by Codemasters, is an incredible driving game. It has fantastic visuals, great sound and solid driving mechanics and is only let down by a handful of minor issues.
When you start playing the game, the first thing you'll notice is the incredibly stylistic menus and loading screens. The entire main menu is set out in three-dimensional space on two-dimensional panels, with catchy electronica music playing in the background. Any time something is selected the camera swishes around quickly to the appropriate panel in a flurry of excited movement. It's fun to see the camera flail wildly around in 3D space, and nice to see that Codemasters did something overcome the plague that infects most racing games of boring load screens by showing off your stats whilst loading and making them look really cool.
When you're done waffling around the menu screens, there's a fairly long career mode to sink your teeth into. Career mode is a long set of championships set up in a giant pyramid. You start at the base and work your way up, winning points to unlock new championships and prize money to buy new cars and liveries (paint jobs) along the way.
DiRT is a rally game but that's not the only sort of driving that you'll be doing. Amongst the traditional Rally events, here are Hill Climb, Rallycross, Buggy racing, Rally Raid and even Truck racing stages to be completed. The variety in the events is nice, and one of the things that makes the game stand out other racers.
Racing is fast and fun, and it's a real rush to be going over bumpy gravel and sharp turns at around 70 miles per hour. One thing you'll learn quickly is that cars handle very differently depending on surface, and that you have to change your driving style from race to race to stay on the road. Each of the countries in the game is clearly defined by a dominant type of road surface and driving style, such as Germany's long tarmac straights and wet gravel hairpins or Australia's claustrophobic narrow roads and penchant for launching you into a tree every time you go over a bump.
The physics engine does a good job of altering gameplay, such as getting your tyre stuck in a gutter making it harder to turn or a door coming ajar and swinging out causing the car to pull to one side until it's closed. It really shines when you are (un)lucky enough launch yourself into a roll, and you see your car careen dangerously down the road, leaving wrecked bodywork in its wake.
DiRT game looks superb on every front, with lush vegetation, well rendered weather effects and long trails of dust and mud as far as the eye can see, all without any framerate slowdown. The design team should be commended for the incredible detail put into the environments. The damage modelling on cars gets special mention for being so realistic. Things as small as scratches will show up on your car's bodywork if you hug the walls a little, but if you hurtle into a tree at 110 miles per hour your car will begin to resemble a scrunched up ball of paper. Good drivers will finish races with at worst, a messy car. Bad drivers will often be missing two doors, a windscreen and a front tyre.
Damage isn't just aesthetic though. It will affect your driving. For example, if the cooling system sustains too much damage, your engine will slowly overheat until your car just bricks, forcing you to restart. This can be prevented in the damage repair screen. At certain intervals during championships, you will have the opportunity to fix up a selection of problems that you may have caused in previous stages. You are given sixty minutes (not real world minutes, mind you) to fix your car, with different parts taking different amounts of time to fix, depending on what they are and how badly you've broken them.
While you're undoing the damage of your driving you can also customise just about every part of the car. You can change the drive train ratio, the suspension, increase or lower down force, alter the camber of your tyres, change ride height, edit rollbars, diffs, dampers, rebounds, toe angles and brake pad sizes, choose from a variety of healthy salads (or none at all) and the kind of underwear your driver wears.
If this sounds too difficult for you, don't worry because the game automatically puts your car into a setting suited for the tracks you're about the race. However, people with a degree in mechanical engineering will likely find this feature to be interesting, and spend some time tweaking their vehicles so that they're just right for their tastes.
Both repair and outfitting have narrated instructions available at a button press if you need it and will be quite handy to anyone who is clueless when it comes to cars, or just needs a little help.
Sound is a particular high point for the game, mainly on the attention to detail front. All the cars you can drive in game sound unique, echoes are realistic, crowds can be heard cheering faintly from a distance, but get louder as you whiz past them and the cracks of wood snapping as you drive just a little too close to a fence are very satisfying, but every so often you'll notice something else, like birds tweeting or a car alarm going off. Nice things like that, just adding to the atmosphere. Your co-driver gives clear and accurate calls, although he does sometime dump about ten instructions on you at a time, which can lead to a "wait, what?" moment in the game. As mentioned earlier, the menus have a catchy electronic tune looping over them that never seems to get old, so my only real complaint is a lack of variety music present during replays. There are about five or so instrumental pieces that loop as you watch a replay of a race, none of which are that great, but at least you aren't forced to sit through the replay.
One or two things do pain from time to time however. Your car steers from the middle, not from the wheels like in most racers. While normally this is unnoticeable and not a problem, getting unstuck from anything the side of your car is hugging becomes difficult without a reset. If you sit down to play this game over a long period non-stop, the load screens will become tiresome, as good as they are and while the career will last you longer than most driving games, perhaps twenty-five hours or so, after that there's not much to do. Achievements will do something to lengthen gameplay but even then it becomes a grind.
Overall, DiRT is a fun, well-put together package. If you're interested in racing games, then my recommendation is Buy It. There's nothing else quite as good on the market and it's well worth your money.
Extra Punctuation
Experienced Points
MovieBob: Intermission
First Person
Miracle of Sound: Encore
Loading Time
Hexproof
Ask Dr Mark
Backchat
Drinking Games
Escape to the Movies
Escapecraft
Escapist Podcast
Feed Dump
GinxTV
Jimquisition
LoadingReadyRun
Meatbag and Co
Media Sandwich
Miracle of Sound
No Right Answer
Pro-Gamer Gauntlet
Reviews
Tales from the Table
The Big Picture
The Escapist Presents
Trailers
Unskippable
Zero Punctuation
The Darkness II Review
Reckoning Review
Exodus Review
Final Fantasy XIII-2 Review
Scarygirl Review
Amy Review
Critical Miss
Name Game
Quick notes as usual. I'm afraid I can't say anything about the multiplayer for this game, because no one else is playing online. I tried at release as well and there wasn't anyone online then either, so it looks like you'll just be doing single player in this game. Just for clarity's sake, I reviewed the Xbox360 version of the game. I'm always looking to become a better writer, so please post any comments or advice you may have.
Colin McRae DiRT, developed by Codemasters, is an incredible driving game. It has fantastic visuals, great sound and solid driving mechanics and is only let down by a handful of minor issues.
When you start playing the game, the first thing you'll notice is the incredibly stylistic menus and loading screens. The entire main menu is set out in three-dimensional space on two-dimensional panels, with catchy electronica music playing in the background. Any time something is selected the camera swishes around quickly to the appropriate panel in a flurry of excited movement. It's fun to see the camera flail wildly around in 3D space, and nice to see that Codemasters did something overcome the plague that infects most racing games of boring load screens by showing off your stats whilst loading and making them look really cool.
When you're done waffling around the menu screens, there's a fairly long career mode to sink your teeth into. Career mode is a long set of championships set up in a giant pyramid. You start at the base and work your way up, winning points to unlock new championships and prize money to buy new cars and liveries (paint jobs) along the way.
DiRT is a rally game but that's not the only sort of driving that you'll be doing. Amongst the traditional Rally events, here are Hill Climb, Rallycross, Buggy racing, Rally Raid and even Truck racing stages to be completed. The variety in the events is nice, and one of the things that makes the game stand out other racers.
Truck Racing
Racing is fast and fun, and it's a real rush to be going over bumpy gravel and sharp turns at around 70 miles per hour. One thing you'll learn quickly is that cars handle very differently depending on surface, and that you have to change your driving style from race to race to stay on the road. Each of the countries in the game is clearly defined by a dominant type of road surface and driving style, such as Germany's long tarmac straights and wet gravel hairpins or Australia's claustrophobic narrow roads and penchant for launching you into a tree every time you go over a bump.
The physics engine does a good job of altering gameplay, such as getting your tyre stuck in a gutter making it harder to turn or a door coming ajar and swinging out causing the car to pull to one side until it's closed. It really shines when you are (un)lucky enough launch yourself into a roll, and you see your car careen dangerously down the road, leaving wrecked bodywork in its wake.
DiRT game looks superb on every front, with lush vegetation, well rendered weather effects and long trails of dust and mud as far as the eye can see, all without any framerate slowdown. The design team should be commended for the incredible detail put into the environments. The damage modelling on cars gets special mention for being so realistic. Things as small as scratches will show up on your car's bodywork if you hug the walls a little, but if you hurtle into a tree at 110 miles per hour your car will begin to resemble a scrunched up ball of paper. Good drivers will finish races with at worst, a messy car. Bad drivers will often be missing two doors, a windscreen and a front tyre.
Delta S4
Damage isn't just aesthetic though. It will affect your driving. For example, if the cooling system sustains too much damage, your engine will slowly overheat until your car just bricks, forcing you to restart. This can be prevented in the damage repair screen. At certain intervals during championships, you will have the opportunity to fix up a selection of problems that you may have caused in previous stages. You are given sixty minutes (not real world minutes, mind you) to fix your car, with different parts taking different amounts of time to fix, depending on what they are and how badly you've broken them.
While you're undoing the damage of your driving you can also customise just about every part of the car. You can change the drive train ratio, the suspension, increase or lower down force, alter the camber of your tyres, change ride height, edit rollbars, diffs, dampers, rebounds, toe angles and brake pad sizes, choose from a variety of healthy salads (or none at all) and the kind of underwear your driver wears.
If this sounds too difficult for you, don't worry because the game automatically puts your car into a setting suited for the tracks you're about the race. However, people with a degree in mechanical engineering will likely find this feature to be interesting, and spend some time tweaking their vehicles so that they're just right for their tastes.
Both repair and outfitting have narrated instructions available at a button press if you need it and will be quite handy to anyone who is clueless when it comes to cars, or just needs a little help.
Race Calls
Sound is a particular high point for the game, mainly on the attention to detail front. All the cars you can drive in game sound unique, echoes are realistic, crowds can be heard cheering faintly from a distance, but get louder as you whiz past them and the cracks of wood snapping as you drive just a little too close to a fence are very satisfying, but every so often you'll notice something else, like birds tweeting or a car alarm going off. Nice things like that, just adding to the atmosphere. Your co-driver gives clear and accurate calls, although he does sometime dump about ten instructions on you at a time, which can lead to a "wait, what?" moment in the game. As mentioned earlier, the menus have a catchy electronic tune looping over them that never seems to get old, so my only real complaint is a lack of variety music present during replays. There are about five or so instrumental pieces that loop as you watch a replay of a race, none of which are that great, but at least you aren't forced to sit through the replay.
One or two things do pain from time to time however. Your car steers from the middle, not from the wheels like in most racers. While normally this is unnoticeable and not a problem, getting unstuck from anything the side of your car is hugging becomes difficult without a reset. If you sit down to play this game over a long period non-stop, the load screens will become tiresome, as good as they are and while the career will last you longer than most driving games, perhaps twenty-five hours or so, after that there's not much to do. Achievements will do something to lengthen gameplay but even then it becomes a grind.
Overall, DiRT is a fun, well-put together package. If you're interested in racing games, then my recommendation is Buy It. There's nothing else quite as good on the market and it's well worth your money.