Colin Mcrae: DiRT ^{(Xbox 360)}

Genre: Racing Publisher: Codemasters Developer: Codemasters Players: ?

By Keith B (21st Jul 2007)

The Mcrae series gets a facelift, and a new direction.

If good things come in threes, then there must be something nothing short of awesome around the corner, because with Forza Motorsport 2 and now Colin McRae DiRT on the shelves of your local game store, fans of console motor sports have never had it so good.

McRae and video games are no strangers to each other and the pairing of the Scot with Codemasters has churned out some impressive titles in the past, but with dear old Colin getting a bit long in the tooth and the fact that he doesn’t actually race much rallying any more becoming glaringly obvious with each passing game, the time had obviously arrived to give the series a facelift and send him off in a new direction.

That new direction happens to be pointed squarely at the US, with the introduction of racing modes that are popular over there but maybe not so much anywhere else. US racer and X-Games medalist Travis Pastrana is your host this time around, and his very American commentary, while certainly well done and very detailed, doesn’t seem right, I tell you.

The game is split into two main parts �" the career, and the championship. The career is the first place a new driver will go, where they can try their hand at a multi-tiered set of challenges, with an increasing number available as challenges are completed. It is here that you get to try the more unusual of the modes, and where the player will win money and cars to expand the garage.

It all starts out well, with the menu system being the best I’ve seen on a video game yet. Sort of Windows Vista-esque, the 3D interface is a pleasure to work through. The momentum is carried into the loading screens with details of your stats zooming past as the stage loads. It’s a good way to disguise the fact that the loading times are perhaps a little longer than you’d accept otherwise.

The game certainly comes with shiny badges proclaiming amazing graphics and the sensation of speed, but I have some pretty big reservations too. There are a variety of new vehicle classes to drive, from buggies to jeeps, off-road trucks to tricked out big rigs. It’s certainly a bit of fun giving these a spin, but I couldn’t help feel that they served more to dumb down the driving experience than add to it. I couldn’t tell you that I had an incredible time driving around a track at 50mph in a truck, although the Hill Climb events in the big rigs were enjoyable enough.

The new modes are less, well, serious than the typical WRC approach to racing. The vehicles are very bouncy, and they don’t handle well, meaning that most of the time I came to one of these races I stuck it to the Novice setting just to get pas it.

And while we’re on the driving, it’s not as good as in previous games. The vehicles feel like they all have the exact same centre of gravity and thus they all feel the same (obviously the big rig doesn’t feel like a buggy, but you get my point). In previous McRae games there was a lot of importance on managing the power output of the car by specific levels of pressure on the controls but now it’s a matter of full speed and full braking being all you need to do to get around the track. It sometimes feels like the car should exit the road in a disintegrating ball of flames, only to sweep through effortlessly.

When you do manage to fling your car off the road, the system used to bring you back in line needs to be polished. If you exit the road and cruise across the grass, then make it back to the track, often the game will choose that specific moment to replace you back to where you were before you left the road. While I understand it’s probably there to ensure people don’t cut large portions of the track, it’s frustrating that after navigating a field at 100mph, avoiding trees, sheep, rivers �" whatever �" that as soon as you come through unscathed the console gives you the two fingers and puts you back to where you were before the crash course in field-driving started.

Comparing it to some of the other games out at the moment, it may seem that DiRT is a little light in some areas. Only having 46 vehicles could be perceived as a shortcoming but it’s actually a great representation of the sport, with all major categories catered for and even some old school Fiats and other dinosaurs to get behind the wheel in. Multiplayer is the one thing that is light though, and doesn’t offer much diversion from the single player campaign. Some of the race modes would have been excellent online, but all you get is the chance to race one track over and over with a load of other players watching the times click up in real time.

One thing that left me baffled is the exclusion of Scandinavian courses from the game (and Greece, by the way). Where is the 1000 Lakes Rally in Finland? The snow and ice setting perfectly suited rally games and it is disappointing they were not included.

However, the remaining circuits do offer a lot to the gamer. Japan features wet tracks which place a lot of emphasis in braking early to avoid sliding, while some of the Australian courses are pure killers, with the player navigating a narrow track which is both intensely dark and dappled with pools of light from trees, making it a real test of driving ability. There are hill climbs, racing with up to nine AI racers, track sprints and head to head circuits. There’s a lot to play, in other words.

While rally fanatics may find the changes a little hard to stomach, for those of us that enjoy their games for pure fun this certainly delivers. The graphics, as mentioned earlier, are stunning. The full damage modelling allows for some interesting alterations to a race as a track gradually becomes littered with chunks of dying vehicles and some with terminal damage line the side of the track. The backdrops are also brilliant, and suddenly watching the replay of a race is more interesting than it’s ever been.

So, in short, DiRT is a very impressive game all round, and bar the handling, lack of Scandinavian stages and what have you this is well worth a recommendation. Purists may not agree, but what can you do about that?