DiRT 2 Review
Aside from a few hiccups DiRT 2 is a fine piece of craftsmanship from Codemasters. The main reason for its success is focused around the great feel of driving. Single player or online the driving just feels fantastic. There is excellent traction feel throughout the various vehicles and you get a real sense of speed. Not far behind the driving mechanics is the wonderful graphics engine creating a spectacular looking and feeling racing game especially if you can try DirectX 11.
The 3D menus are back with most of them being very smooth and pleasing to the eye. The game features some real rally drivers such as Ken Block and Dave Mirra although their place within the game was poorly worked and they come off as disappointing additions. The multiplayer functions much the same as the single player elements although with some more waiting required. You will progress through the single player gaining levels and unlocking liveries, vehicles and new race events. The game includes quite a few racing events against other vehicles in addition to the standard rally and trailblazer events against the clock. It’s a shame some things from GRID haven’t quite carried over to DiRT 2 but Codemasters have still pinpointed the driving experience and created a smooth ride.
Extensive research reveals four wheel traction is overrated
The pure driving elements in the game are really well done and it all starts from the control and feel of the cars. On PC there is native support for the 360 controller which works fantastically well and keyboard also works really well. You’ll need to get a feel for the tracks, the traction and speed required to take turns and the handling of your vehicle. You’ll learn this pretty quickly and if you stick with a vehicle for a few races you’ll start getting very good positions on the podium.
Races do often repeat, or reverse their direction so you’ll learn many quickly. It offers a variety of difficulties so you can tone back or ramp up how hard it is to win matches. The AI drivers seem really good here too, although quite passive. They will back away if you take the inside line and they foresee a collision, and take the inside line if you happen to overshoot turns. They do crash and will collide with other vehicles, offering some amusement during races although perhaps not often enough. Many of the rally tracks will have water puddles on them and these will slightly slow your vehicle on entry so avoiding them is another of your duties during races while you battle with the traction to stay ahead.
During the rally races against the clock you will be fighting against the track and your vehicle in order to keep pushing your car faster without losing control. Throughout competitive races you can play quite an aggressive roll due to the relatively low damage modelling. Most of the time all I received was minor wheel damage and it didn’t make a huge impact on steering direction, veering me slightly to one side. Taking the inside line and using other vehicles as a form of direction control is a good option for overtaking around corners. Players who make minor (but deadly) mistakes will be pleased to know that flashbacks are back from GRID. Providing a brief time rewind to fix catastrophic errors you may have caused and continue on your way. The number of available flashbacks decreases with difficulty. On Savage difficulty I was given two which seemed ample during races and rally sections. The flashbacks serve to really keep the single player flowing as you will not need to restart many races. Aside from the standard staggered rally races there are quite a few other race modes.
This won’t end well. Fortunately a flashback will solve this
Other races available include gatecrasher, trailblazer and domination. Gate crasher combines the time trial nature of rallies with precision control of hitting destructible gates to gain +2 seconds to your time. This combination really focuses in on your vehicle control so it’s a handy one to try out early. Domination involves getting the best split times in each section of the races and winning the race. Although sometimes Domination seemed to show how fast opponents drive when you are well ahead of them. Trailblazer is like a rally event only it’s set on very open, very fast tracks where you’ll be going flat out much of the time. One particular favourite of mine was racing through the canyons of Utah, listening to the engine revs echoing against the rock walls and enjoying the view.
The difficulty seems fair, with a friendly catch-up system but one that lets you dominate if you are driving particularly well. Multi-track races are easier; they always seem to be when perhaps it should be the reverse. Single races require you to be much more switched on and pushing your car very early without slacking off. Likewise if you are dominating a multi-race event the last race will be much harder with very aggressive catch-up systems especially close to the end. Throwdowns, which are optional challenges by other rally drivers, are also quite harder but they do contribute towards adding that driver to your buddy list. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any reason for there to be a buddy list, perhaps with the only exception being that they seem nicer to you during races. You can always restart races if you have used up all your flashbacks too early in the race and then have a bad crash. Because most of the races are generally fairly short you won’t be losing that much by restarting it.
My powers of deduction tell me one of us is going the wrong way
The game doesn’t really get harder as it progresses and in fact the opposite was happening for me. At the start the game quickly recommended I increase to difficulty to Savage. Initially moving upwards and driving with full damage was challenging for a while and forced me to work hard. However I repeated more events and races earlier on than when I was going through the world tours, x-games and the classic rallies after I was level 30. The game did not recommend a harder difficulty for me and I was quite enjoying the domination during some races. There weren’t too many laboriously long races either and only a few team events. Included later in the game is the Colin McRae Challenge, a nice touch to remember the late rally driver with a fitting movie and unlock upon completion.
As you progress through the single player you will level up your character to unlock vehicles and skins for those vehicles. Every level up to 30 you will unlock some skins or vehicles. In addition to this you can unlock some dashboard toys. Most of these unlocks are purely cosmetic and the dashboard toys were barely seen by me because I use the rear camera position all the time. Once you hit level 30 you’ve unlocked all the liveries. However you can score additional unlocks by completing some of the events, x-games, world tours and the Colin McRae challenge. These vehicles unlocked during these special events are useful for online racing because you’ll have the speed or traction advantage. The liveries provide you with alternative looks for your vehicles but sadly this means custom colour / livery design has been removed from the game since GRID. Although this makes all the cars look great you lose a lot of customisation options. Most of the single player experience is solid but it does fall a little way due to some commentary.
Get out of my way, I have an urgent Christmas Tree trinket delivery
Although the single player moves along at a very fast pace it does slip up with a few problems, mostly related to the commentary. You’ll notice very quickly that drivers such as Ken Block and Dave Mirra will talk to you a lot. This means before races, during races, after races and after events will all receive boorish quips. The only times I enjoyed listening to them was midrace when I managed to ram into them while they were mid way through a sentence, causing them to grunt and instantly stop talking. Part of the reason it’s so poor is because they repeat things too often and often say nonsense. Apparently this track will “blow my mind” and that in California “it’s cookin’ and sand seems to get everywhere”. Jet setting from one country to another will no doubt trigger Ken Block or one of his buddies to say the exact same line they already said 20 times previously. Even the fake rally drivers like “Katie Justice” don’t come off any better than the real rally drivers. If you like to hop around the map then you’ll find this gets very annoying.
Of course this commentary has been introduced because they want to try to inject some personality to the racing which can be quite lonely at times. It does tend to feel lonely because of events like Rally and Trailblazer is basically you racing against the clock. I don’t think their idea was anywhere near successful. Taking out the team options from GRID and removing the custom skin options takes away some of the character the player can infuse themselves. Of course once you get over the loneliness you’ll enjoy the pure driving action.
One of the great aspects of DiRT 2 is the great graphics on the PC. Not only did I get to play at high resolutions but I also got a taste of the DirectX 11 graphics. In Dx11 you’ll be treated to a general quality improvement across the board, the shadows are crisper and more natural and the lighting is also more realistic with less poorly coloured overzealous bloom effects. The water is also improved, when cars drive through the water it naturally spreads away from the wheels instead of causing a splash only.
DirectX 11 water effects sure look purty, too bad it slows your vehicle
It’s not just the DirectX 11 graphics that look good, the game itself looks fantastic. The tracks are highly detailed with good looking landscapes and road textures. Foliage and small objects on the road side will get knocked down if you drive over them. The crowd looks good but the cheer effect can get a little lost when you slam your vehicle into a barrier right in front of them. The game has pretty good collision modelling, which looks quite good after a long hard fought race. During flashbacks or at any time you can replay brief sections allowing you to pause time and rewind or fast forward as you please.
If there was one disappointing aspect of the graphics it would be the lack of weather effects. There is no rain, no snow and very little wind. Although the tracks have water it would have been nice to see them play around with some weather effects to change things up. Even if they decided not to change the driving mechanics it still would have provided some nice eye candy and the added visual variety when repeating tracks. It would have also been nice to allow you to completely total your vehicle when you drive off cliffs because instead it pauses you mid air and forces a flashback or restart. The other unusual choice on the design side is having your character look around twice outside your trailer after you finish an event, every single time.
Barely a scratch.
Multiplayer is almost as smooth as the single player with perhaps one exception. The exception would be the time you are required to wait a bit too long between races. You’ll be waiting after races, waiting as the votes are tallied, waiting when people select vehicles and waiting when people with slower PCs load into the game. It’s never usually a long wait, a few minutes between when you finish a race and when you start driving again. Considering the single rally races are only three or four minutes long it equates to a good chunk of waiting time versus playing time.
Multiplayer matches can include simultaneous starts for rally races, in these cases near vehicles become transparent before you. This works fairly well but you can often see tracks appear in front of you when there is no vehicle to be seen. Also people tend to abuse the humorous horns which can cheapen the experience. Staggered rallies are good fun, especially when you catch up to another competitor just ahead of you and manage to slip passed cleanly. The net code is mostly solid but for some cars it can do a lot of very weird interpolation, bouncing cars all over the track unrealistically. This bouncing comes with the annoying thud sounds too, even causing extra distraction if they are in close proximity. The difficulty increases with the multiplayer races simply because you can’t use your trusty flashback to correct mistakes, however unlike most single player races you aren’t out of the race if you crash early.
The game uses Games for Windows Live, so it has matchmaking and all the achievements to go with the system. The process of getting into a game is as simple as you expect from matchmaking, but you can easily filter settings such as race type and vehicle damage if you desire. There aren’t a huge number of people online so you won’t be able to go too specific, but you don’t need a high number of players to start a match and players will continue to join.
There is text chat support which is hidden away so you won’t be spammed with abuse unless you open the chat window. Sadly you can’t chat with your other competitors while some guys load into the track. You level up in multiplayer just as you do in single player and you will get quite a few points even if you come near the last. Multiplayer feels very much like the single player only without the flashbacks and obviously the human opponents.
Eat my DiRT.
DiRT 2 presents an almost flawless driving mechanic combined with some amazing visual design that is a leader among all genres, not just racing games. Although there aren’t a huge number of tracks, especially if you prefer to drive only rally tracks, they all still look fantastic. Rally purists may bemoan the exclusion of Citreon and customisation junkies might lament the lack of teams or a painting system. However this racing game is great even with these somewhat glaring omissions. The act of pulling off a good corner by sliding around and maintaining control at high speed keeps you going on for more. The single player pacing is fast and keeps you gaining levels very rapidly. At times it can be a little annoying and repetitive but it really only highlights how good the rest of the driving and visual experience is.