Dirt Rally (2015)

I am a long-standing player of CMR and Dirt series (I didn't play the first CMR, but apart from that I've completed every single one up to Dirt Rally). In the last years Dirt series became more as a fun arcade racing game than rally simulator, so I was excited to return to a classic rally genre.

There are 3 separate career modes: classic rally, rallycross and uphill. I've finished only the first one. Rallycross was way too hard for me (I was able to win just one championship), and I was already had tired of game when tried uphill mode.

So, what about rally career? I wouldn't say that it was fun to complete it. Career has 5 mastery levels and a lot of repetitive stages on each of them (the last championship contains 72 stages, which is TOO MANY). There are only 6 countries with a small track selection, and it's not enough for such a long career. Cars are really expensive, so you can't try all of them without grinding. To the end of the game I had only one car in each class. Besides racing it is possible to hire an engineers to your team, which is necessary to improve car repair between races, but it is also not a fun mechanic.

Driving itself was fun, I enjoyed it. And I would've enjoyed it more, if it had had a reasonable challenge. Finland was a last country in a career and it's the best example of what I mean. Finnish stages are fast-paced narrow gravel roads with a lot of deadly jumps (I wonder how suspension survives here) and I considered myself as a winner when I finally managed to cross finish line after dozens of restarts. So, on my usual ride with no critical faults I lost from 30 to 60 seconds to a race leader. I'm sure I can't improve my driving skills so high to win in Finland at least one stage. I believe I won no more than 15 stages (out of more than 200) in the career at all, mostly in asphalted Germany. Fortunately it was enough to be in top-3 in the end of every championship to move further.

Graphics and sound in Dirt Rally are really good. Vehicle physics sometimes went crazy, but overall it felt well-made. One upsetting detail about sound is a lack of in-game music (probably because we have to listen to co-driver), so don't forget to turn on your own playlist.

In the end I mostly enjoyed this game, but the difficulty and the career mode slightly ruined my impression. I hope they made it better in Dirt Rally 2.

The racing in DiRT Rally is really, really good. The only real flaw is that some bushes and barriers are solid, unmoveable objects while they clearly shouldn't be. The game looks and sounds great, although at least one car makes somewhat annoying sounds when shifting gears.

DiRT Rally is also quite hard. There is no map (there are callouts in Rally mode) and there is no line indication the best route/speed like in DiRT 3. If you're like me and only play racing games casually you may struggle to get into the top 3. Combined with how races are set up, how cars are unlocked and the team management this might get a bit frustrating. In DiRT 3, GRID and GRID 2 i could easily keep progressing and unlock new cars/races. Here it's much slower, so if you're more into casual/arcadey games get one of those instead.

With the good and the neutral out of the way, on to the bad. And sadly, it goes from bad to worse.

• The team management nonsense is a pointless annoyance. You hire engineers to repair your car, you have to pay them €100+ per race and they level up unlocking lame perks. The perks just level up your car 5% faster.

• Yes, cars have to level up. It's another stupid, pointless addition. You have to drive a certain amount of distance (i think?) to unlock the full potential. This adds nothing to the game other than annoyance. "Yay, the AI has faster cars the first few races, how fun!"

• You have to buy all cars. You start with €50.000 and gain ~€10.000 per race early on. To buy the cheapest car in each class you have to earn €3.209.500. On top of team fees and repairs. Ouch. And you can't compete in new classes of races until you buy a car for it. The other games would give you at least one car per class to start with. Now you have to grind.

• You can't pick a track to race on in Career mode. Not even in "custom championship". You have to go with whatever randomly generated championship you get. In previous games you could at the very least pick the order and sometimes avoid certain tracks. It's awful.

• You're locked into championships. In clubman league (difficulty 2 of 5) you have to compete in 36 races to be able to rank up. These are divided in chunks of 6 races, and you can make repairs before race 3 and 5. If you total your car once you finish last in that race and any subsequent races in that chunk, making it practically impossible to progress in the league. If you damage your car substantially in race 1, 3 or 5 this will seriously hurt your chances in the next 5, 3 or 1 race(s). Oh yeah, and you have to use the same car for the entire league too (AFAIK). It's repetitive and punishes the unlucky too harshly.

TL;DR: Other than the racing itself DiRT Rally is a bad game and worse than previous racing games by Codemasters. But the racing itself is excellent so if you want a not-so-very casual game get this on sale.

DiRT Rally is an incredible racing sim. The game features a simple yet robust series of championships at a decent range of varied environments and tracks. Each car is unique in terms of its driving style, interior and design, mastering different cars is a lot of fun. The attention to visual and auditory detail is very good, especially the car interiors, environments and chassis/suspension sounds.

Story

DiRT Rally features somewhat of a career mode. You begin with a small amount of money and limited team size, and you can only afford to enter in a couple of championships as you supply your own car. In this regard there is a fairly standard if barebones career mode, after doing some events your crew will expand in size and skill and you will be able to afford cars for new events that spread across from the 60’s to 10’s and each decade features a great variety of legendary cars such as the Mini Cooper S and Lancia Stratos. There is no real story here but as you compete you will move up in skill and earn bigger rewards, you're free to jump around to different championships such as rallycross whenever you wish.

Gameplay

DiRT Rally is a sim and best played with a wheel that features force feedback (FFB), to be honest I cannot understand how it would play without the wheel, full assists would be necessary I imagine. The FFB is essential because you will need to feel when the car is slipping too much and when you need to counter steer to correct. The different types of cars all drive wildly different and each decade of cars is very unique compared to other decades. For example the 70s are generally high powered but difficult to control with a lot of drift, whilst the new cars are high powered with a lot of down force and 4WD so they have a lot of control. Stepping into a new car is a difficult experience, but as you learn the tricks required there is no racing sim that can compare to the feeling.

There are several different stages (tracks) at several different events (location), for the standard rally championship there are about six events each with about six stages so there is a lot of variety here but not too much so you still learn each stage. The events are set in real world locations mostly in Europe but there is at least one event in the USA. You compete against roughly fifteen other competitors in a series of relegation style championships that comprise of six events, I really enjoy this system and to be able to map your improvement as you progress into higher championships, it's a simple but effective system.

There is a bit of a management system in the game in the form of your crew, I'm not entirely certain of the system but I'll do my best. You start with limited crew, a crew chief and a mechanic, as your chief levels up you gain access to three more mechanic slots. The mechanics have their own skill levels that affect how quickly they can repair the car, which is important as you only have a limited amount of time in each event to make repairs. The mechanics also have individual contract fees and contract lengths which is good to keep in mind especially early in the game. If you maintain a mechanic for a while they will unlock perk slots which you fill with perks that increase their specialisation such as 4WD specialist, further increasing the rate you complete upgrades. Upgrades happen as you drive the car, so the longer you drive the more upgrades you will unlock, these are flat performance boosts such as engine upgrades. Each car has a select number of upgrades and you have no choice on what gets upgraded or in which order. The management and upgrade side of the game is fairly minimal for a racing game but I think it's best this way because it focuses more on the importance of your driving.

Presentation

DiRT Rally, like most modern racing games has excellent graphics. The terrains are varied and each with a unique visual style from snowy Sweden, to the Alps, dusty Greek tracks or swamp-like Wales. In addition the interior of each car is uniquely modelled with excellent attention to detail. I didn't spend much time looking at the exterior of the cars but they seemed good and there are a bunch of unique liveries for each car. You feel an excellent sense of speed compared to other racing games, especially in virtual reality. I can't specify why this is but I suspect it's because you can see the trees, bushes and other terrain details whizzing by you as you drive along which is not as evident in normal track driving.

The engine sounds are pretty good but not great, probably a little bit too dull. However the sounds of the chassis, suspension and track is excellent. You'll hear your car creaking if you're going very fast and you can tell what terrain you're driving on from sound alone. The impact and crash sounds are quite good as well. Overall quite good attention to auditory detail which adds magnitudes to the realness of the simulation.