Colin McRae: Dirt

Rally games are a world of their own within the racing game sphere. I've experienced a handful of good ones myself, including acclaimed hits like Rallysport Challenge and Richard Burns. Though, of all the rally games I've played, Dirt has to be my favorite one. It all comes down to the design and the addicting structure of the career mode.

Dirt's career mode fittingly follows the structure of a pyramid, as the list of events are fighting to keep a balance of novelty from the bottom to the top. The beginning of the game hits the player with a wide variety of events, including traditional rally and CORR circuit racing. Throughout the rest of the career, the player will shift around with different classes of cars and varying levels of performance. You start the game with reasonable offroaders, and you end the game driving hill-climb monsters. Other notable events include rallycross, crossover, and rally raid.

As is the Codemasters standard, the physics are very squirrelly, but responsive. Because of this, getting through winding courses without spinning is no problem, giving the player more incentive to test their bravery with their speed. Though, not every course is a breeze! The player will still need to be cautious of skinny roads, and surprising sharp turns and jumps that can launch them straight into the end of their career. The pace notes are helpful, but they don't cover every detail for every hazardous section. Players can end up being punished for trying to cut corners, too. Bushes and signs actually matter here. Hitting a sign can permanently screw up your car, meaning that you're better off staying on the track if you see any obstacles that need to be avoided.

Ultimately, the difficulty of the game depends on the type of event. Most of this game is easy by my standards, even on the hardest difficulty. I can blast through rallies no problem, and as long as I don't crash, I can typically win with a large time cushion behind me. However, events involving other AI cars (crossover and rally raid) can be surprisingly challenging.

The AI is one of the game's strong points. The opponents generally act like real drivers, including realistic spinouts and other mistakes. Once the AI gets into a groove, however, that's when they become hard to catch up with. The very first event in the game is a good example of this. With only 2 laps on a small circuit to work with, getting in front of the leading truck is not easy.

The player might notice through their playthrough that Colin McRae stays true to its 'Dirt' title. None of the events feature any snow or water physics. The rally events are varied enough that this doesn't strike me as a problem, though the short circuits and rally raid tracks become far less enjoyable by the end of the game. All three of the rally raid tracks are very similar visually and structurally, for example. It doesn't help that Dirt has a late 00s 'brown' filter over it, though at least it's consistent with the theme of the game!

Considering Dirt has less than 50 cars and around 10 circuits, the feeling of variety is respectable. The rally stages are the real highlight of the track design and attention to detail. Not to forget the bragging point of the entire Pikes Peak run being featured here! Dirt delivers enough content to satisfy, though by the end of it, I still want MORE. Even as it is, Dirt is one of the best entry points for the rally game genre. All it needs is snow stages and some more circuits.

colin mcrae: dirt is the first game in the series to bear the "DiRT" moniker, which would later branch into its own series that well surpassed the popularity of the original colin mcrae rally games, and as such marks a transition in many ways. from one console generation to the next, from a pure rally-focused title to one that incorporates a number of offroad disciplines, and from a euro-centric approach to one that's more casualized and made to appeal to american gamers as well.

presentation-wise, it feels like codemasters set out to impress right from the jump. as soon as you start the game, you're immediately greeted with some of the slickest menus i've seen in any game, and they're also very functional rather than being all flash and no convenience, demonstrating codies' recognizable prowess with ui design. (except for the fact that you can't navigate the menus with a controller if you use custom button mapping. wtf????) you're also greeted by a voiceover of travis pastrana explaining the menus to you, which is slightly annoying at times but generally pretty bearable and i'm sure travis is a pretty nice dude.

dirt is certainly the most detailed colin mcrae game to the date of its release in terms of graphics (to absolutely no surprise, considering the generational leap) and it still looks decent today. the car models are well-made and the damage modeling is quite excellent as well. the stages are dense with road-side scenery on obstacles, and the destruction on these objects is quite nice - branches and bushes snap and crumble, seemingly solid barriers can actually be broken through and crushed up, and check out the way the ribbon fences flutter in the wind after being broken. however, the visuals suffer from the brown-and-bloom trend that was prevalent at the time, so it very much shows its age, and it makes a lot of the different locations look samey and dull even though they are quite pretty at times.

the sound design here is fine - the cars sound like they're meant to and all have unique engine tones - there's definitely not anything that makes you think "damn those are some sexy sounds" but they're far from vacuum cleaners. the one menu song with the weird porn moans and the various stock rock tracks (shoutout to the dollar-store ripoffs of hysteria and clocks) in the post-race menu and replays get old, but music is by no means an emphasis of this game so it's kind of just whatever. i've already mentioned the pastrana vo, which is fine, but the co-driver's pre- and post-race comments on the other hand.. "smooth and steady, i'm mr. smooth, you're mr. steady B)" shut uuup shgut UP SHUT UP SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP

anyway, once you get past the presentation, there are unfortunately some issues with the handling. the cars feel oddly stiff and rigid, and it feels like an attempt was made at giving the cars a weightier feel than in past games, but it comes out superficial and there's still a very distinct floatiness. there's a lack of differentiation between different surfaces - sure, tarmac is grippier than dirt, but they just don't FEEL much different to drive on. gravel surfaces feel just as solid as roads, just with less grip. rarely does there seem to be a natural sliding feel on the dirt - everything is too grippy, the brakes are too powerful, and the only way to get sideways is by the handbrake which is often too strong to be useful. it's not bad per se - i'd much rather a game that's a bit too easy to control than broken hard, since then it can border on unplayable - but i expected better.

also, this could just be an issue with me not touching the tuning in this game (since here it's not really necessary for success, tire choice isn't even a thing), but 1st gear feels entirely superfluous in a lot of cars and i'm often faster if i shift to 2nd before i even start moving and forget 1st exists. also vehicles have a tendency to rev up and down wildly when coming out of corners, which makes it hard to tell when to upshift and often results in a sluggish, "stalling" effect while attempting to accelerate.

onto the "metagame" of the career mode, dirt picks up similar to where cmr2005 left off with an event-tree like setup, only this time the events are arranged in a pyramid, with each tier requiring you earn a certain number of points from your performance in the previous tier to unlock. by winning events, you earn money (with higher difficulties awarding more) which can be used to purchase new vehicles and liveries for them. speaking of vehicles, the variety is excellent in this game, including standard rally, rallycross, and hillclimb cars both modern and classic, offroad trucks and buggies, and some really unexpected inclusions like dakar trucks, hillclimb big rigs, and sports cars that typically wouldn't be found doing rally.

throughout the career you encounter many types of events - standard point-to-point rally, high-speed hillclimbs, closed circuit rallycross and corr (trucks/buggies) racing, head-to-head crossover tracks, and rugged raid circuits. this variety is cool on a surface level, but all the new event types lack depth and sacrifice the existing depth of the traditional rally mode from past games. like yes, it's neat that you can have your buggies and raid trucks and etc, but there's only like 3 tracks for many of the non-rally modes, and the ai is far from perfect in these bumper-to-bumper races. their driving feels rather robotic, and they have a tendency to "clump" together and slow down massively in tight sections, as well as making brainless mistakes and crashing into things.

the rally stages are well designed as always, and perhaps some of the most technical and interesting the series has seen up to this point, as well as being the most visually detailed in terms of background scenery. unfortunately, there are only 6 rally locations with 3-4 unique stages each (reverse versions giving each a total of 6 stages), and as i said earlier, the other modes have very few tracks that are all quite visually indistinct. the increase in fidelity plus the need to start from scratch instead of updating locations from previous games means that this is somewhat inevitable, but it still feels like a step down. even though the career tries to spread these out and keep things varied, it still gets repetitious. although the detailed mechanical damage and repair system makes its return for rally races, it rarely ends up actually mattering, and it's not until late in the career that you get long enough events for it to even be an issue.

additionally, the game is still fairly easy even on pro difficulty, and i rarely if ever had difficulties winning by a decent margin. corr/rallycross races tend to be decided only by how well you can manage the traffic clusterfuck in the first 15 seconds, because if 1st place gets a decent distance away you'll never catch up without plowing into him in a corner (which actually works a charm usually), but if you do get up to the front early you'll have an easy race. money basically becomes superfluous very early on - its balanced so that over the course of the game on pro difficulty, you earn just enough to be able to buy everything at the end, but along the way you'll get well more than enough to buy the things you need, so it seems like a largely pointless system.

colin mcrae: dirt does a solid job at translating the series to a new generation and new audience, as well as serving as a transition point between the pure rally of CMR and the more generalized off-road hodgepodge of the later DiRT games (while still maintaining a primary focus on rally). it's unfortunate that there are some issues and areas that aren't as well-developed as others, but it's still a very polished product and one of the better games in the series.

When I played this in 2013, I thought it was hard to believe that Dirt was about 6 years old, because the graphics have stood the test of time. Even before you start racing, you notice how technically brilliant it is with the fancy, glossy menu and excellent presentations. Even the loading screen is great, which toggles though statistics such as wins, cars, total races, air time, damage taken etc. The menus are voiced by Travis Pastrana which is surprising given that it is 'Colin McRae's Dirt'. Sadly, this presentation comes at the cost of long loading times, but if you are patient, there's a great game at the end of it.

The main Career mode has a hierarchy of races and a certain number of points need to be achieved before the next tier unlocks. Although there is less races in each tier, the races are longer and harder. There's plenty of types of races and tracks and enough cars and decals to purchase. Sometimes you play the usual rally, racing against opponent's times on a track, but there are circuit based races too where many opponents are racing on the same course. The courses are either mainly road, pure off-road, or a mixture, and have all sorts of elevation. Obviously, the usual rally cars make the core game, but there are races involving buggies and even delivery van like rigs. The variety of cars, race types and tracks helps keep things fresh and keeps the game interesting and fun.

In terms of the actual race, the difficulty can be tweaked, similar to the Forza series where the opponents become harder, and your car is affected by damage more easily; but you are rewarded with more cash. Some races are single races, but other events are comprised of multiple races where the damage to your car carries over. Usually this format is three races, where you have to race twice before being able to repair your car for the final race.

Although the physics seem generally fine, it does feel very arcade-like and bouncy once you get in the air and land/roll. The main focus on the race is to make sure you keep your car on the ground and to minimise damage, since that can dramatically affect your car's performance. The course design tends to stick object at the side of the road that can easily wreak havoc on your car. These objects are often deceptive, such as a rock that you think your car would glide over, but instead will send you flying and rolling.

In some race types, your co-driver gives you assistance, stating what severity the next turns are, and at what distance they are, so it's important to listen. On events where you don't have the co-driver, you need to keep glancing at the mini-map and judge the corner yourself. Annoyingly, your co-driver insists on an annoying quip at the start/end of the race like "Smooth and steady. I'm Mr. Smooth, and you're Mr. Steady", and you will hear the same 3 comments over and over again.

If you do crash, or go off the road, you can easily reset your car via the menu, and sometimes the game does it automatically; but is very inconsistent. Sometimes, one tyre goes off the road and it automatically resets you, but then other races, you will go flying off the track and the option to reset may even be disabled.

Dirt is a brilliant game and it's hard to find much wrong with it. Obviously the reset feature is a bit inconsistent, but it's nice that the feature is there rather than making one mistake and ruining the race. To be honest, it's probably too beneficial because sometimes you will only lose 1 second if you react quick (and if the game allows it).