Microsoft
DiRT
By Matt Williamson
Aug 16, 2007, 7 :44 am

The Colin McRae rally racing games have always been a straightforward, solitary experience, but DiRT, the most recent outing of the series, is something more. The rally starts on a tree-lined dirt road, with a co-driver and a Subaru Impreza WRX. The light turns green and the clutch goes in. During a sixty-mile-per-hour turn at the edge of a hundred-foot drop, before a series of switch backs, the car clips a wall. The vehicle is now pulling constantly to the right, but that won't stop a dedicated rally team. Between pumping the break and holding on the gas something goes wrong when a tire catches on a rock just off the side of the road. Desperately trying to regain control of the car I know it's too late, as the world has turned sideways when the car catapults into a series of flips and rolls. I can only imagine how upset the manager is going to be when he sees the car.

While this may seem like more of the same since the last Colin McRae rally racing game, Codemasters has changed up quite a bit more than just their logo. Coming back to the series after a long break, I found things mostly as they use to be: long climbs up the side of gravel-lined mountains with switch backs that will make your rear end hang over dizzying heights, intensely narrow roads thickly lined with Douglas firs and autumn maples, and of course fierce rally races that will bottleneck at jumps and peel the door off your car. Added to the good old system is a fantastic lineup of new races and vehicle types.

These different modes and transports add a huge variety of challenges to the somewhat limited previous outings. The buggy races are insanely hectic with opponents who are constantly trying to push you off course into the deep brown mud. Big rig trucks at speeds of one hundred miles per hour travel up wide loose gravel roads with hairpin turns that will send poor drivers down the face of a mountain. Huge 4WD cargo vehicles will compete for the finish across the California deserts while trying to stay on all four wheels. There are even fairly standard tarmac races where you can compete against up to seven challenging cars for the lead.

Best of all is that the challenges and difficulty level of the game is so dynamic that no matter what their skill level, anyone can pick up DiRT without having to worry about tackling a steep learning curve. While the game is a happy medium between arcade racer (loose physics, unrealistic speed, and drifting that would rip the tires off any wheel base) and simulation racer (career management, garage details, and lots of breaking) it really works well for whichever style you're looking for. Both types of enthusiasts can enjoy DiRT from the start. The easier difficulties of the game will adjust the vehicle so that it sticks to the road a bit better and the response times are a bit looser, while going into the professional difficulties will cause an amatuer’s car to easily spin out of control when going from tarmac to gravel . The only problem with this is that the difficulty also comes with the realism: while you're sliding more on the dirt you're also going to have better drivers to compete against. On the other hand, those who never want to visit the garage and tune the front rebound suspension dampening for better control won't get to experience the more challenging head to head of other drivers.

Rally is still the focus of the game, though; so don't let all these other features fool you. Not only are the rally tracks all expertly built, but the elements that make racing great have all been thoroughly looked at by the developers to ensure that the player has the highest level of immersion. Environments have been built for the rally tracks that put any imitators to shame. The landscapes and tracks are exquisitely detailed to emulate the countries that the game visits. Top it all off with nearly claustrophobic surroundings and you have one of the best elements of what makes racing great: speed. By ingenious design, DiRT manages to take what had previously felt like RC racing in your backyard and upgraded the driving-esque sensations to a near go-kart level. For the first time in a while I found myself craning my neck and rotating my hands and controller through turns and over jumps. Getting first place will often have the player forcing themselves to drive faster through narrow, condensed forests and urban landscapes than their minds know is safe. And it pays off: this attention to detail and masterfully laid out landscapes make the rally and hill climb courses the most exhilarating elements of the game.

To tie all this together DiRT uses one of the most cohesive aesthetic designs of any game I've seen, let alone a racing game. Dirt is more than the name of the game, as everything is drowning in ambient browns. From the menus, to the ground, to even the sky, the world of DiRT is saturated in the most gorgeous tan, chestnut, and hazel hues. Most of the races are held around dusk or on an overcast day where the sun shines through clouds, casting a pale bronze light over everything. Races set during the day are usually reserved for the more desert-like settings or off-road dirt tracks, nearly filling the screen with deep burnt brown mud and copper sands. To tie these all together are the reds. Right-angled red corners float across the menu, which are also the same icons the game uses to identify where opponents are in your display. Red is also the color of most of the menus, timers, on-screen readouts, and of course the red line of your tachometer. Combining all of these aesthetic elements is the menu system that is so good that it has to be seen to be believed. As out of a sci-fi movie these menus float around in a fluid-like state. Layers and layers of cards fly around as you progress through them with ribbon-like arrows connecting your progress. It's complicated to describe, so I highly recommend playing the demo to see for yourself.

Unfortunately, the game is not all streamers and accolades. The largest letdown is the online play. While the game features many head-to-head races against opponents in the form of rally crossovers, rally raids, and championship off-road racing, none of this is to be found online. Solo racing against a group of people competing for the best time is the only option in the form of rally or hill climb events. The game is well integrated into Xbox Live for the single player by showing how you rate next for each event in speed, but that's just a bonus. DiRT also has some frame-rate issues during more hectic situations, causing the game to hiccup and decline from time to time. While this isn't very often it can be disorienting, as it seems to happen most when you need the highest level of control and the most visual input. Neither of these problems detracts from the game too much; they're just disappointing in light of how great everything else is.