ahh finally after months of waiting its here, but is it worth the wait? I decided to take it out for a spin both as an eager petrol head and someone in need of good "i cant be arsed to get the g25 out" racing game. DIRT 2 can best be described as the ******* love child between DIRT and GRID, better then GRID but not as good as DIRT, "but Gunsmith, your talking ****!" i hear you cry "GRID was awesome" well yes it was but at the same time it was overly simplistic in that you couldn't get gritty under the bonnet and the handling was atrocious in that you had little feedback from the car, it felt like you were driving on glass + it was impossible to drive properly without using a joy pad/wheel. DiRT2 handles fine on a keyboard as well, i havent tried my G25 yet but i will when i can pull myself from it for long enough You start DIRT 2 in your "tin shack" with an eager Ken Block humping your leg like a rabid Jack Russell, he buys you your first car and introduces you to your first race, its a rally-cross set in the remains of battersea power station London. off the line you first think "crikey this is twitchy" and you'd be right, but give it half an hour and you'll be gliding around like a pro occasionally stopping to high five Kenny for the ride. Drivers have there own personality's and often chatter amongst themselves after a while some of them will be your buddy's and some of them you'll hate, and by hate i mean CAPSLOCK BOLD UNDERLINE ****ING HATERED! they'll nudge you at the most inappropriate times, spin you out brake in your face and put "kick me" signs on your back and rub cheese on your engine. Nightracing is AWESOME After each race you gain XP which builds towards your reputation, certain events are locked out until you build enough reputation and later on you'll need some "buddy" drivers to compete in TEAM races; where both of your results count towards and final score. each driver has their own strengths and weaknesses and its down to you as to who you take into combat, just be sure not to take them out when trying to get in front of the pack. Visually the game is smart with proper tyre deformations, suspension animations and night racing being among my favourite parts of the replay + when the soundtrack falls on the right track, you'll reach for the volume control and ram it to 11. My only gripe with DIRT 2 is that whilst DIRT 1 consisted of about 70% rally here its the other way around, rally is really skimpy here, courses are short and the physics engine doesn't offer enough detail to make the experience of rally as exciting as any of hte other McRae titles + you can kiss the idea of tweaking vehicles, its just like GRIDS, grab a car and go motief which is a real shame tbh but given how exciting bumper/nose racing is in dirt 2 you can forgive it. What we have here is an game that suffers the same problem as Rainbow 6 Vegas; ultimately a great game but shouldn't be labelled as a rainbow 6 game, its the same with DIRT 2, excellent game that is unworthy of the McRae title but still worthy of a purchase. Non Rally Fan 9/10 Rally Fan 4/10
Just played the demo. Thought it was awful. My car did about 8 rolls and I just kept driving with "Minor Wheel Damage" - no copilot, no realism whatsoever. Nothing like any of the real rally games I've played in my time.
but surely it shoud be a rally game and not another arcade racer on dirt tracks. I dont think they should have changed the series to this. Dirt was fantastic although graphics dont seem to be as great as they did first time i played it.
Graphics are awesome but I can't take the arcade handling. After playing games like iracing, live for speed, rfactor etc. These games don't interest me, wish they did cause they're great eye candy!
+1. I also agree Dirt 1 was better. Apart from that it's OK I suppose, but it's not like the Colin McRae games I fell in love with as a kid. They've become too focussed on trying to cram as many different off-road racing styles into the game. Rallying is so unique it deserves its own game, rather than just being shoehorned into yet another bland, soulless racing title.
Agreed. In some games, I enjoy the fact that I can do 40-50 different types of racing in a single game. In others, I just feel that it should be about the one racing type, and they should just aim to make it the best damn rally game they can't. As said above, this isn't a rally game, it's an arcade game on dirt tracks.
those days are gone unfortionatly, now its a case of who can reach the biggest audience and who can get the largest coin.
If they did a decent job of a pure-rally game though, surely it'd revive some love for the genre? There hasn't been a decent one in quite a few years.
ah but thats the problem, trying to revive the love for a game isnt nearly as profitable as selling something the masses want. specialist games are pretty much dead in the water
I suppose they are really... Ah well. We'll have to rely on the probably awesome Rally mode on GT5... I've been hoping and praying for a decent F1 game with the resurgence of the popularity over here, but all we got were titles for handhelds... :\ Seems daft considering how popular trigger-touting controllers and flappy-paddle steering wheels are.
I too love the rallying, but i suppose codemasters wanted too expand the series by including all off road styles and sadly rallying has been neglected. It might be an off road arcade racer but it's still a damned good one and looks and runs sweet on the pc. Codemasters are making an f1 game but i don't know when we will start seeing stuff about it, they did '09 for the wii and they are making '10 for 360/ps3/pc, i think. I really hope it's awesome, love them screaming f1 cars !
'tis a shame it so diluted now, like has been said devs have moved on to what is popular, I used to like the old mcrae titles and the WRC stuff from those guys that now doe Motorstorm, its a shame they moved to that, whilst MS is great fun, every iteration of their WRC titles seemed to be getting better and better, reckon they could do something cracking on hardware now. Still my fave rally game that I still crack out is Mobil1 Rally Championship 2000 sense of speed and level of feedback through the wheel still trumps most games since.
iirc there was an announcement at the tail end of last years WRC of a small team working on the official WRC rally game. its being made by a dev team called "Black Bean Games" however i cant find more info then that
I'm getting this one free with my 5870 next week, any suggestions on control scheme setup? I have a ps2 to usb adapter that should work in Windows 7, and I can use the analog stick on there. Also, how's the surround sound on this game? I just setup my Logitech X-540 5.1 speakers to surround my office chair, and I can only imagine how awesome a racing game would sound.
Like most of you i miss the proper rally games, The early mcrae games were awesome!! By the sounds of it it should be "Ken Block - Dirt2" It seems the McRae name is now solely a marketing gimmick, Which makes me a little sad tbh. He was the name that got me into rally, i wanted an impreza because of him. The thing i dont get is in todays market would Ken Block not be easier to market/advertise?
rally games have always been a european thing, they never sold well in the US, the original dirt was made to get attention over the us but they slapped mcraes name on it to help it sell over here i think theyve done the same again
