No offence to Milestone and the WRC game they released last year (I actually quite enjoyed it), but let’s face it; we haven’t had a proper rally game since Colin McRae 2005, and that really is a shame. With developers everywhere trying to blur the lines between arcade and simulation to the point where everything feels the same, the rally discipline has always managed to serve up a refreshing change, even if it’s in the form of the flawed WRC 2010 or the bits-and-pieces rally events of Dirt 2. So when Codies announced that 60% of the career in Dirt 3 was going to be rally, Colin McRae could finally take a break from turning over and over in his grave.
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A lot has been said, shown and written about Dirt 3’s Gymkhana mode, but last week I had the chance to get into the meat of the game – the career. Gone is the elaborate caravan that formed the menus of Dirt 2, replaced by a more traditional, yet very slick (it is Codies, after all) menu structure. The career is now broken up into four seasons, each segregated into multiple sections containing several events. So it looks beefy enough. I only had enough time to play through one-fourth of the first season, and as promised, rally makes up a chunk of the events. The rest is shared across rally cross, land rush, and head-to-head events, all of which were seen in earlier games, plus drift events with a scoring system similar to Kudos in PGR.
The game now allows you to regulate AI difficulty independent of what assists you have on, so you could choose to have all assists on to make the controls easier and yet jack up the AI difficulty all the way (there’s a scale from 1 to 10). Turning all assists on wouldn’t be the best idea though, because that would mean the game pretty much plays itself. The braking and steering assists mean that all you have to do is hold the trigger button down and keep it held, and just turn when you see a bend in the road. Thank you, Forza 3! And that reminds me; Flashbacks return as well, but that’s a staple feature in Codies games now, so no surprise there.
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This is an EGO 2.0 game so there is noticeable improvement in the graphics department, but it’s not exactly a massive leap ahead from F1 2010, or even Dirt 2. Trees and foliage look much sharper and the draw distances are fantastic, but visual damage still seems at Dirt 2 levels and nowhere near the total distintegration you’d see in Dirt 1. With F1 2010, you got the feeling that Codies were finally getting over their obsession with the piss filter, but it’s back with a vengeance in Dirt 3, and on top of that, the excessive bloom that turned so many people off Dirt 1 returns as well. Still, in motion, you really can’t hate on these visuals. It’s a beautiful game, but I just can’t shake off the feeling that it could’ve looked a lot better.
For the uninitiated, rally events are like a series of time trials, and the beauty of it lies in the fact that your times from each rally stage accumulate towards your final time, and the damage you pick up along the way also adds up. Mid-stage repairs, tyre and set-up changes to suit the next stage; these are just as important as what you do out on the course. Unfortunately, the rally events I played only consisted of two stages each, which doesn’t leave much room for strategy, nor does it show any persistent damage. The only indication I had was a brief video that played before my first rally event, telling me that all these key attributes would be involved.
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So the depth of the rally discipline remains a mystery, but the controls and vehicle handling certainly aren’t. If you’ve played and enjoyed Dirt 2, you’ll feel right at home with the series’ signature floaty, twitchy controls in Dirt 3. Coming off other racing games, it will probably take you quite a while to adjust to the super-responsive controls, but once you do, you’ll be handbrake-turning around Kenyan hairpins effortlessly. That’s not to say that it’s an easy game, but whatever failures you may encounter, you sure as hell can’t blame it on the controls.
I loved Dirt 2, but my biggest gripe about it was it’s shameful representation of rally. Obviously, I wasn’t alone, because Codies really seem to be putting some serious effort into the rally events this time around. This probably still won’t be the proper rally game to succeed the CMR series, but it seems like a step in that direction. If you loved Dirt 2 just as it was, don’t worry; those race events are back too, with the addition of the showboating Gymkhana mode, and split-screen multi-player. So hopefully, come May 24, everyone’s happy.
Dirt 3 is scheduled for release on May 24 for Xbox 360 (Rs 2,499), PS3 (Rs 2,499), and PC (Rs 699).