User Review : DiRT 2

DiRT 2 Review

Collin Mcrae DiRT 2 was one of the most anticipated racing games of 2009 ever since its announcement in November 2008. The dev team have a difficult mission this year because of the competition and reputation this game has; it is being released in the same period of Need for Speed Shift and Froza Motorsports 3 and in the same time DiRT was the best selling off-road racing game of 2007. Will the game stand strong in front of this huge competition ? Will it hold the crown of the off-road rally racing games once again ?

One of Codemasters strongest points is the presentation of the game: it was special in DiRT with all those animated menus, revolutionary in Grid where the background is affected by your career mode progression. Things where not different with DiRT 2 as codemasters once again exalts us with its creativity. All they did this time is taking the interactive menu idea from Grid and put it in a first-person perspective. In a more descriptive way I say: You wake up every morning from the bed of your RV, check the magazine for some news/updates, than go to check the DiRT Tour map (career mode). Turn your head to go to other menus such as multi-player, stats. You can even go outside the RV to check on your cars, change the game option form the jury table and the environment outside - similar to the one in NFS Pro Street - is affected by your location (Japan, Baja, ...) and by your driver level; the higher you get more fans are walking by your position.

Another structure of the presentation is the in-game graphics and animations. Once again Codemaster does a very good job in that sector and they improved it from the previous Collin McRae Game: Better environments, better visual damage, better in-car details as well as car details. Even compared to its direct competitor (Shift), DiRT 2 has an obvious win when it comes to graphics.

Sound is the final presentation option I would like to talk about. I am not a sound engineer nor an expert but I can notice quality and detail in sounds. First let me begin with the soundtrack witch is basically based on rock songs and this works well with the game style and looks. To bad you can only listen to the music in menus; I would have preferred during the race also. So the in-race the sound focus was on the car, you can hear every detail: engine, tiers, exhaust, brakes, road nature, ... Other than that, While racing there you can hear the sound of your rivals commenting on the way you drive. If you are aggressive they will start telling you not to do that again, perform something clean and nice and you will hear "I can't drive like that", win a race and they will be congratulating you.

Another field Codemasters usually pioneers in is the gameplay. Without it the Collin McRae franchise wouldn't been such popular with a positive reputation. Although the gameplay is good in general but there are some points and very important ones the dev team failed to accomplish.
Let me start with the positive ones:

Like we are used to in previous titles of this series, the car's handling is perfect. Every car feels unique once you get to the driving seat, but this year it also feels much easy to control; I was able to do tricks I would never dream doing in previous Mcrae titles. Not also the handling is easier now but the car customization system is much simpler. This allows Novice cars fan to manipulate theirs without getting in a lot of details.

The flashback option is transferred from Grid is for sure the best feature a race game can have.

The dev team really worked on a career mode (aka DiRT Tour) and improved it in its every aspects. It contains 100 event divided between 9 countries and several major such as the X Games. We should not forget that all the presentation is build in a way to let you feel that you are in a DiRT Tour for real.

The drivers' AI is good, due to the friendly spirit they will rarely hit you or cause any harm to your car. Perform one driving mistake and they will take advantage of that.

Rally is more realistic cause it not you driving alone anymore. Each driver starts after the other, be fast and you can out drive the one in front of you. Plus you can see sometime some accidents on the roads.
Now on to the negative points:

I will start this part of the review buy a question. What do you expect from a Mcrae Rally game ? The answer will be obviously lots of rallies and rallycross. This was not the fact in DiRT 2. Every player will clearly notice the focus on racing outside of the game’s comfort zone. This could be disappointing for the hard core rally fans. Yet, i think that this is not as bad as the second black spot in this game. For 100 events (approx 150 races) there is 41 race tracks. On paper, this does not seem bad, I mean you will play each track from 3 to 4 times, but take a closer look and you will notice that the 41 race tracks are in reality no more than 15 ! Why ? The answer is simple: you have the same road but different start and finish positions, you have the race track and its reverse, you have merge of two race tracks in some maps (Race A + Race B = Race C), ... Driving on the same roads all the time is frustrating and reduces the playing time. Impossible to play more than 1.5 hours you will get bored, but be sure that you will play this game again the other day witch a good thing.

When it comes to the damage system, I was shocked this time. With all my damage options on and at hardest difficulty I can barely feel the damage while playing. This is not a bad thing, but I am not used to that in a Mcrae game since it is considered as a simulation racing game.

Verdict
This game would have been perfect if it weren't for the repetitive tracks. Other than that there is little or nothing to complain about. Personally I found it much more fun that Shift.

Lots of fun, Speed and GS mean this is the game every 360 gamer should have. And for the poor PC gamers, i can tell you it is a game worth waiting for.