Ridin' Dirty -- Colin McRae: DiRT Review

DiRT is captivating. Actually, it's enthrallment on wheels. This mix of arcade and sim rally racing from Codemasters will draw you in, even from a position of innocent spectatorship, and make you a DiRT fiend. It's a good thing the game is fun, or else the previous statement would be a big problem.

The first thing you will notice about Colin McRae: DiRT is that it's drop-dead gorgeous. From the cars, to the drivers, to the forest, desert, and mountain vistas, the game screams, "look at me!" Even the menus are some of the most attractive that I have ever laid eyes on. Their web 2.0 design is a real visual feast, and a good starting point for the rest of the game.

DiRT features six different racing disciplines across it's four gameplay modes. The types of races include rally, hill climb, rally raid, rally cross, crossover, and CORR. If you have no clue what any of that even means, it's ok - neither did I when I began to play. The good news is that the game does a great job of making everything accessible, even to beginners. A guide is in place to let you know exactly what every discipline, track, vehicle, event, and option is all about, and you don't even have to read. The entire help system is voiced by a "presenter," who will describe whatever item is in focus after a simple tap of the Y button.

The racing disciplines basically cover timed point-to-point sprints, busy circuits full of vehicles, and treacherous cliffside runs, all of which happen over a variety of terrain using cars, trucks, buggies and even big rigs. There is a lot to do here, and players will be sure to find a combination of favorite and despised vehicles, disciplines, and tracks as they progress through the game's piece de resistance, the career mode.

DiRT is very single-player oriented, but luckily its main solo mode is a good one. The career is arranged into a tiered structure of all the different types of events. As players complete races, they earn money and points based on their finishing position (hint: it's better if you win). Money is used for buying new cars and liveries, and points unlock access to later events. There are over 45 cars and 66 events in all, and you'll definitely want to handle the career mode right off the bat, because cars and races available in the other modes are limited to what has been acquired in the career mode.

Players can advance through the career at their own pace, as DiRT offers five different difficulty levels that are selectable on a per-race basis. If any particular event is kicking your ass (and I guarantee some will do just that), then you can simply drop the difficulty, finish the race, and be on your merry way. Adjusting these difficulties allow the player to race at a competitive level, no matter how skilled (or unskilled) they may be. Other little options over the course of the career mode include a sizable amount of vehicle performance customization, and test runs with your modified racers. It's not as involved as buying all kinds of parts, but focuses more on tweaking brake, shock, wheel, and other variables to make the cars run better. If you're not into that sort of thing, then you'll be happy to hear that it's entirely optional - it just might be harder to win on the pro difficulty level.

Like the title suggests, DiRT is as much about the surfaces you drive on as the vehicles you drive in. Navigating the terrain is half the battle, and doing it quickly enough to win is another story. The cars all have very distinct feelings of weight to them, as well as varying degrees of power and handling. Depending on the vehicle and the terrain, players will find themselves implementing many different racing techniques throughout their Dirt career. For example, properly navigating the same turn with four different vehicles might require simply letting up on the gas, braking and then accelerating, e-braking to slide, or just powering through the turn. The gameplay variety is pretty vast.

There are few annoyances one might notice as he or she plays DiRT, however. The first, and most gigantic, are the horribly long and almost painful load times. Waiting 40 seconds between selecting a race and actually racing it is not far-fetched. The game offers a bunch of interesting statistics to look at while you wait, but after the first few times, you really don't care anymore. Playing the game is a little bit more interesting. The other gripe I have with the career mode is that players can't test more than one vehicle for a particular event in the "shakedown" portion before deciding which to race with. To do so, you have to retire and take the loss each time you switch. It's a small point, but is still rather bothersome.

Multiplayer as a whole is pretty shoddily designed. There is absolutely no local, split-screen multiplayer mode, so don't worry about having extra controllers for your buddies. All multiplayer is either via LAN or Xbox Live, and those options don't offer a very favorable gameplay experience. Each individual player has little say in what vehicle and location he or she will be racing in. This is determined by a vote of all the players in the lobby area of the multiplayer game session. Although up to 100 gamers can compete in one race, each races alone while tracking opponents in a small on-screen leaderboard. The final slap in the face from DiRT's multiplayer mode is the lack of support for voice chat. Weak.

The only person who will be talking to you during DiRT races is your crew man, and the comments he makes before and after races get old pretty fast. During races, as he calls out turn distances and angles, I love him, but hearing him call me "tiger" or "my steady" makes me want to staple his face shut. Aside from the aforementioned commentary and the strange menu music with moaning women in the background, the rest of the game's audio is standard racing fare, and generally pleasing. The roaring engines and other sound effects all sound realistic, and although they don't quite match the game's graphics, they still get the job done.

Like I said before, these graphics are GOOD. I didn't know much about rally racing before playing DiRT, so I decided to watch a few videos online. What I discovered was that DiRT is exactly like real-life rally, only with BETTER graphics. The visual damage modeling is top-notch. Besides getting DiRT-y (lame, I know), these vehicles get trashed. Each bump into a guard rail, tree, or opposing racer causes deformation of the car's shell, with resulting effects ranging from slight concavity or re-applied texture-mapping of the car's surface to completely lost and/or obliterated sections of the vehicle. It is some of the best car damage I have seen in a videogame. Before the damage, too, each car is just about as photorealistic as a gamer could ask for (besides those really demanding types), with smooth lines and intricate details, as well as superb representation of the vehicle's reflective properties. As races progress, you will see cars go from shiny and new, redirecting the sun's rays right into your eyes, to dull and dirt-laden, with varying degrees of specularity in-between. The settings are just as beautiful than the cars, and feature amazing real-time light and shadow, blur effects and of course stunning views. Race replays are especially astounding.

Still, the game is not without its flaws, even visually. Although it is sometimes difficult to notices as you're focuses on the coming corners, DiRT suffers from lots of pop-in and occasional slowdown. Bushes, rocks, trees, and even some textures don't show up until they reach a certain distance from the camera, and in a few cluttered races, the frame rate can dip below the desirable range. The only other downfall of the graphics tech in DiRT is that the vehicles don't leave accurate furrows in the ground. The ones you see as you race are not yours.

DiRT is fun and addictive, and offers quite a bit of gameplay for a single player. The career mode is long and rewarding, with a wide variety of vehicles and races to choose from. Although the visual presentation is through the roof, there are still a few flaws in the design, graphics, and audio departments, and you might as well have a book or handheld gaming system strapped to your belt to keep you busy during the ridiculously long load times. Other than that, DiRT is certainly a great game, and I think I'm going to go play some more of it right now.