Dirt

"Covered in Dirt, Rubber, Dents, and Champagne , But Still a Masterpiece."

Racing on dirt has had a long and illustrious history throughout video games. Rally racing has been attempted by many developers, and has had many successes and many failures. I must say, DiRT is going to be remembered as one of the successes. As a matter of fact, I believe that DiRT could be considered one of the best rally racing games ever made. Codemasters has hit the jackpot on this one. I can't say I've found one bad thing about this game. Every facet of this game is polished to a shine. Every detail covered. This game is as great of a homage to Rally as any other game I've seen. And a homage is what was just needed for a sport that lost its biggest star, Colin McRae.


Graphics: 10/10
To some, the Mona Lisa is a masterpiece. To others, a masterpiece is a Mitsubishi Evo IX drifting through a hairpin turn on gravel. Codemasters has found a way to give you the best of both worlds in DiRT. The graphics are absolutely stunning. This is my first Xbox 360 game, starting my jump from the PS2 to this generation of consoles. And what a way to start! You get welcomed by an introductory video of gameplay footage, and the scenery becomes mesmerizing. DiRT maintains this consistency of appearance throughout the game too. Everything looks accurate and beautiful. Cars look gorgeous with their small imperfections, like a big smudge of dirt on the windshield or a shredded front fender on a car that just smashed into a tree. The levels are beautiful. Driving through the forests of Australia, or on a crossover rally circuit in Japan, everything is fantastic. Trees and rocks look so real, you could think you were watching the Discovery Channel. Lighting effects are great, too. If you're driving into sunlight, you get a glare on the windshield that makes it hard to see. If you smash the windshield, you get the spider web effect making vision almost impossible. Damage in this game is great. When you finish a course, your car will look like it's finished a course. Dirt will be everywhere, there will be dents and scratches. If you drive like me, you'll notice that the front fender is almost falling off, or the passenger side door is gone. It's fantastic. If someone can improve on these graphics, I'd like to see it.


Sound: 9/10
Everything here sounds great. Menu music is limited, but it gets the job done and provides a great complement to the menus. Sound effects are great. All of the cars sound like themselves. 15 ton trucks sound like 15 ton trucks. 300hp Japanese cars sound like 300hp Japanese cars. The transmissions sound like real rally transmissions (as in, you think you broke the car when you shift gears). Hitting a tree sounds eerily real. Tire squeals sound great. It's just all very realistic and very nice. The only thing keeping this section from a perfect 10 are the voices. Travis Pastrana talks you through the menus and your career, along with giving you summaries of the cars, and he's bearable. Christian, your co-driver, on the other hand is not. Christian reminds me of a rich frat guy from California who happens to like cars. And he has to give so many stupid jokes. He's great at giving directions, but I want to punch him in the face after I cross the finish line. It's all bearable, though, as long as you get to hear the sweet sound of your car sliding into a boulder.


Gameplay: 10/10
Let me preface this section by saying that this game does seem more like an arcade game in feel, rather than a simulation. The brakes are too strong to be realistic, the cars handle too nicely through turns, and the handbrake turns out to be a lot less effective than I would expect. With that said, this doesn't cheapen the gameplay by any means. I think that the gameplay is what sells this game. It combines the excitement and feeling of driving at 100+ miles per hour with the realism of rally racing. This game stays true to rally in its purest form, which is racing against the clock instead of racing against another car. Each driver drives through the course as fast as they can, and the fastest after everyone has gone through is the winner. You get 2-3 time checkpoints throughout the course to show where you are, in terms of speed. This can really prove to be exciting. You can be behind the leader by 3 seconds and end up crossing the finish line two thousandths of a second faster than second place.

The game provides a host of other events to race, too. You can race in CORR, which is an off road truck racing series in America. These races tend to be the closest and contain the most car-on-car action. There's Rallycross, where you race on a circuit that's part asphalt, part dirt. There's crossover, where you and an opponent race head-to-head on two circuits, where at one point the two cars cross over each other to drive on the other driver's circuit. There are hill climbs, which are like rallys, but you don't have a truck driver. Rally raids are similar to CORR and Rallycross, in that you race directly with other cars. To me, the most excitement still remains on the rally course, racing against the track and the clock.

One thing I love about the gameplay is the focus that it requires. Once you start advancing in career mode and racing on more difficult rally tracks, you'll really have to focus on the track in front of you. These advanced tracks require spot on placement of the car, or else you'll be clipping a tree. These tracks get pretty challenging, too. One one course, you race down a mountain for a majority of the stage, and you're given the challenge of avoiding buildings in the town while keeping your speed through many sharp turns. The difficulty only steps up when you hit the dirt, where you start to lose some of that control. It really starts to get nerve racking when you have to make up time and you're driving through a section of track a few inches wider than the car itself and half to go through a hairpin turn with no barricade protecting you from falling off the mountain. It really capture the feeling of rally racing. One touch I wish they could have added though is the fans. If you watch any rally event, you'll notice how close the fans get. The fans are literally running out of the way of a speeding car in the middle of a forest. It's exhilarating, and adds to the challenge of not getting hit with a lawsuit for running over a fan. I can understand why they wouldn't do that, but that would be something I would suggest to Codemasters for DiRT 2.


Length/Replayability: 9/10
This game really shines in its length. The career mode can easily last you for 50+ hours. There's also the pursuit of purchasing all 40+ cars and buying the 100+ liveries for all of these cars. The fun continues in the other sections of the game, when you can play individual events. There's also online play, which keeps the game fresh for a while. And there's always the idea of playing through the career mode on a harder difficulty to see how well you match up to the best the A.I. can do. Overall, I'd say that you could play this game every day for a month (maybe even more) and you wouldn't get tired of it.


Final Thoughts
Overall, I'd say that this is the best rally game out for this generation, and one of the best racing games for this generation too. One thing that made me love this game is the fun factor. Too often in video games, you find yourself almost not having fun while playing. It starts to feel like a chore to keep on playing through the game, trying to beat it. To me, this makes games very unsavory. DiRT is the complete opposite of a "chore" game. This game begs you to keep playing. This game will make you smile from the moment you press the start button to the time you turn it off. When a game can present fun in as efficient of a way as DiRT has, you know you'll be in for enjoyment. And, after all, that what video games are for! Fun!

Pros
+Beautiful Graphics
+Great Sound
+Fun for experienced drivers and kids
+Driving feels great
+Long, but can still hold your attention after 50 hours

Cons
-The personalities in the game
-Not a hardcore simulation
-Americanized


Overall Score: 9/10
To me, this game's flaws are hardly noticeable and are quickly shadowed by the good things. DiRT is the most fun I've had playing a video game in a long time, and is an absolutely awesome title in all facets. But, for me, 10s are reserved for games that will be remembered by the gaming community forever. While this game is good, it is not a crown jewel to a collection. That does not take away from the thrills you will get if you purchase this game. If I were you, I'd drop everything, finish reading my review, rate it, and go buy this game. You'll thank yourself later.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/12/09

Game Release: Dirt (US, 06/19/07)