Review
Release Date: 06.19.2007
Platform:
Xbox 360Developer:
TBAPublisher:
Codemasters USAReviewed by
Justin Fassino on 7.6.2007
| Review Rating: 9/10 | User Rating: 5/10 |
You're flying through a European forest in a small, four-wheel drive sedan with the road all to yourself. The only sounds are the whine of the engine as it accelerates and decelerates, the shifting of the gears, and the voice of the man sitting next to you. You do not know the layout of the track you're on. You don't know where the next corner is, or how sharp it will be. Your partner is reading hand-made notes out of a spiral notebook, telling you where to turn, while the surface beneath your tires is made of gravel, or worse.
This is the spirit of one of the most dangerous and intense forms of motorsport on the planet: rally racing. It's not a competition against other cars but instead pits the world's most fearless drivers against the clock in an effort to be the fastest through some of the worst driving conditions known to man.
This is the spirit that the games in
Codemasters'
Colin McRae series have been trying to capture since the inception of the franchise on the PlayStation 1. Their newest effort doesn't bear the name "Colin McRae" except in Europe. Instead, Codemasters got right down to the core of what makes rallying so enjoyable: the dirt.
DiRT features six off-road racing disciplines. Rally is by far the main focus here, but the additional modes include American Championship Off-Road Racing (such as pickup trucks and buggies), Rally RAID (off-road circuit racing featuring large SUVs and even Russian semi-trucks), Hillclimb (which is like rally, only without the co-driver to help you with direction), Crossover (a race between two cars on the same track where each car starts at opposite ends of the course), and Rallycross (circuit racing with a mix of pavement and dirt conditions). Without a doubt, there's something here for everyone to enjoy, and while a minor few of the events just aren't as fun as the rest, the overall divsersity of racing in
DiRT means that each time you play, sommething different can happen.
There are four modes in the game. A single event where the player sets up what discipline, vehicle, and track they want acts as a good introduction to the racing types. There's also a Championship mode in which you pick a car and race multi-stage rally events across one of six countries (or even all six in a row, if you want). Then there's the online mode, which is perhaps the most divisive element of
DiRT (more on that later). The bulk of your time, however, will be spent in Career mode. This is similar to what the
Gran Turismo games offer; you'll begin at the bottom tier of events and work your way up, unlocking new tracks and earning cash to buy new cars with your victories, until finally you reach the Champion of Champions event, which is a compilation of the six disciplines all rolled into a single set of events. What's nice about Career mode is that if you prefer a specific discipline to another, it's not hard to breeze through just those events. But if you want the full smorgasbord of what
DiRT has to offer, you can tackle each race in order.
There are 46 cars in all, representing the best of their respective classes, both modern and classic. Rally mainstays like the Subaru Impreza and Peugeot 207 make their appearances, of course, but you'll also get cars like the Lancia Delta S4, which was a death rocket in its day, and the Audi Quattro of the mid-eighties, which was a hillclimb juggernaut. There are more exotic vehicles, too, like the Kamaz truck, which is best known for its presence in the Dakar Rally. All in all, the car list is as diverse as the racing, and each one handles differently.
Speaking of the handling,
DiRT strikes an odd balance. On the one hand you have recreations of some of the world's most infamous tracks (like the daunting and deadly Pike's Peak International Raceway), but on the other hand, control of the game is tough to identify. Is it a sim or an arcade racer? The best description I can give you is that it's a sim racer with arcade influences. You won't have to be a virtual driving wizard to get the hang of
DiRT, but you'll need to know how to steer, brake, and accelerate when appropriate. For the hardcore sim fan, though, there are plenty of modifications you can make to your car setup. Everything from the camber and toe angle of your wheels to the limited slip settings, brake bias, and suspension stiffness can be adjusted to give you that perfect ride (and in fact some courses demand that you make alterations; the Australian Rally's unforgiving terrain and jumps will cause your shocks to punch through your windshield if you aren't careful).
Graphically, this game is a beast. It would not be a stretch to say that
DiRT has the best graphics of any video game thus far in the history of gaming. Cars don't suffer from a "carved block" syndrome; the development team painstakingly modeled all the individual parts of the car. The wheels, suspension struts, springs, and body work are all independent of one another and deform realistically through the game's amazing damage model. This means that engine blocks vibrate realistically through gear changes, body panels deform and dent according to collision angle and speed, and suspension damage affects wheel angle and handling. Everything is interconnected, and everything
feels like an attached part rather than part of the car model. Superb work from the game creators.
But the graphical prowess doesn't end with the cars. Track details are top-notch: the draw distance goes on seemingly forever, roadside barricades will deform realistically if you hit them, and spectators follow your car as you whiz past. It's quite a treat to be racing along the wet roads of Japan and suddenly catch the serene sight of a misty lake just off the road before sliding around a hairpin and up into the hills. Care even went into the menus of the game, which are presented in a slick, "floating slideshow" format that's both stylish and functional.
If there's one aspect that needs some improvement, though, it's the track surfaces themselves. The pavement stages and courses look fine, but heavier gravel track don't actually look like heavy gravel, and in the end, most of the dirt types are hard to distinguish from one another.
For those of you who prefer multiplayer in your racing games, you might be disappointed to discover there is no split-screen mode. In fact, the only events you can participate in are rally and hillclimb, which also rules out head-to-head racing...in a sense. You can take your skills online, however, and race against other players if you desire, though it may not be what you're used to. After joining a session lobby, which can hold up to 100 people at a time, you vote on a track and car from a list. The option with the most votes wins, and you're thrown onto the track. Since rally and hillclimb are point-to-point with no direct competition against anything but the clock, you'll be by yourself. As you race, a live timing display shows everyone else in your session and their current times, and this time updates itself in real-time, meaning you'll be able to see when someone is faster than you and passes you. You just won't actually see it in the game. For rally purists, this is good news and stays closest to the actual sport. To gamers unfamiliar with this style, however, it will seem lackluster. It's a shame Codemasters didn't include some of the other disciplines that have more than one car on the track in their online plans, and this is the biggest reason why the game failed to get a perfect score.
Still,
DiRT is this generation's best off-road racer by far, and it could arguably be called this gen's best racer period (so far). It's graphically impressive, fun to play, and features a wide variety of gameplay modes. It offers plenty of material that caters to the hardcore racing fan as well as to the casual pick-up-and-play gamer. Codemasters has really set a benchmark by which all future racing games will be judged, and you owe it to yourself to experience the sense of speed and intensity that grips you through the screen.
