Dirt 3

Review from AJ - Monday, 20 June 2011 @ 2:49pm

Although Dirt 2 felt like the series was becoming the next Tony Hawk franchise, especially given that Colin McRae had been bumped for the likes of Ken Block and Dave Mirra, Dirt 3 brings back the clean simplicity the Colin McRae series is renowned for. Gone are the slang talking X-Games crowd, the RV filled with gimmicks and the crowd hanging around burning 40 gallon drums with giant waving dancing tube-men. The interface is clean and simple, like my favourite Colin McRae titles of old. There is less of the skater attitude and more of the european style. For me, this is a good thing.

One of my biggest complaints about Dirt 2 was the fact that there was too little Rally and too much X-Games nonsense. Hardcore rally had been well and truly replaced with gigantic jumps, gimmicky “last man standing” races and big stage stadium races. I’m happy to say that Dirt 3 sees the big return of Rally and Rally-X, although not without complaint. Whilst there is still a fair share of X-Gamishness, it is now more balanced with the traditional Rally sections.

Not shown - All the trees I just crashed into

So first of all, some complaints. I’m glad to see that Rally has made a resounding comeback, but whilst Rally is all about variation, Dirt 3 seems to have a lot of really, really repetitive Rally courses. This is a big negative. When you race through a 5 section Rally you expect each stage to be a distinctively different experience. Dirt 3 flat out cheats. Each stage is really a variation on the one course. Just like some racing games will have one circuit with 4-5 variations in layout, Dirt 3 recycles the same “area” with several tracks running through the region. This means that rather than heading from snow capped peaks down steep cliff lined tracks into a grassy valley, you’ll drive through the same villages, past the same Radar dishes and around the same landmarks over and over and over. It leaves you feeling a little cheated. The tracks aren't exactly the same, but you'll zig and zag through some "common" areas frequently enough that it feels like you're racing the exact same course.

Sadly, the same goes for the Rally-X circuits. Whilst the snow capped circuit of Aspen is pretty nice, driving it forwards, backwards, through a blizzard, during a sunny day and at night is still driving the same circuit. For these circuits it’s hard to imagine that the developers couldn’t come with at least a few more variations of the circuit. Overall, there are still plenty of tracks, cars and modes to add enough variation to the game, but for the third iteration of a title, you expect to see a lot more in the way of content.

Split screen.. So you can see how much better your friends are at racing games

Speaking of cars. A major frustration for me was borne from the fact that my review copy of the game came with a JB Hi-Fi preorder card. Racing well results in earning reputation. Reputation unlocks cars, simple as that. The preorder card unlocks the top "reputation" earning cars from the start. These earn 2,500 rep, compared to the starting point of around 250. Even at level 20, you're still way ahead with the car you start. Whilst this strictly speaking isn't the fault of the game, it does make every single car in the game completely redundant. You would never ever drive another car if you got this pre-order card with the game. It basically ruins the progression of the game.

Now a technicality. In rally racing, split times are critical. You want to pushing hard enough to win, but not so hard that you end up into a tree or off a cliff. The split timing in Dirt 3 is quite simply broken. Every Rally event has you first cab off the rank. As you past the first timing point you get your split time. Unfortunately, by the time the second driver has past the timing point the split times have faded from the screen. At no point do you know whether you’re doing better or worse than any of the other drivers. This means for the first leg of any Rally you actually have no idea how well you’re doing until the end of the race. It shouldn’t be that hard to give you an update on your split times throughout the race.

You need to be in front to see anything but snow

Ok, so now on to the positives. Dirt 3 replaces a lot of the “same old” game modes with a new Gymkhana mode. Gymkhana is basically obstacle courses for cars. Featuring zones which require “drifting”, donuts, spins (yes they’re two different things!), jumps and crashing into giant foam blocks. It’s a fun challenge to do all of these things whilst keeping control of the car, building up your combo multiplier without crashing into anything. It’s basically a skate park for cars, and it's fun. Utterly pointless, but fun nonetheless.

It may be an “expected” thing these days, but the day/night and weather effects in Dirt 3 are simply astounding. Some of the snow races are amazingly difficult simply because if you’re 5th place there are four cars in front of you spewing up a snow drift in front of your eyes. It’s a real challenge. Whilst I do complain about the variation in tracks, the weather adds a new dimension to each race.

I cant see this ending well

Another addition to Dirt is the DC playground. This is an abandoned power station with similar obstacles to the standard Gymkhana courses. In this case there are a series of missions which require completing tasks like spins around lamp posts, or slides under truck trailers, not unlike what you’d see in Tony Hawk or Skate. These missions are fun challenges and are an interesting diversion. Unfortunately the presentation of the missions requires jumping in and out of the pause menu to see what you need to do next. It would’ve been better to have some sort of markers in the game itself (like there are in the Gymkhana modes themselves) to give you an indication of what you need to do. It’s a fun sandbox, but the presentation is a little lacking.

As is always the case, Codemasters have done a bang-up job (hurr hurr) of the damage modelling. Each scrap, crash and bash leaves your car gradually worse for wear. It's an amazing time to be playing games when we start taking these things for granted. It's worth mentioning here, if only to point out how utterly horrible GT5 is and how badly Polyphony Digital "miss the point".

Pros

• Best of the Dirt series to date
• More rally
• Less X-Games BS
• Looks as awesome as they always do

Cons

• More than a little repetitive
• Rally is still not as good as Colin McRae Rally series