Dirt 2 Review
I love off road racing games. I loved Motorstorm and all its iterations and the original Dirt was a great if flawed game. Dirt 2, however, supplants the competition by a healthy margin. Its mix of style and driving physics are unparalleled and the variety between its race modes and tracks is significant.
It’s a little disappointing that the leveling system wasn’t as well executed as it could have been, or that the tracks become somewhat repetitive by the end of the game, but those are minor quibbles. Dirt 2 is a worthy successor to the impressive original and I have to dig fairly deep to find even the smallest criticism.
What Went Right?
The Cars: Driving games are, at the end of the day, all about the cars. Dirt 2’s offering is both deep and varied with over 25 vehicles, none of which are throwaways. This is by no means a simulation game. You only need the accelerator, brake, wheel and hand brake (on automatic) to drive and even the most casual player can execute powerslides with ease. It’s not overly forgiving, though, and aggressive drivers will soon find themselves sliding off the course if they aren’t careful with the faster and looser vehicles. Damage modeling is forgiving even on ‘full’ settings so while handling isn’t noticeably impaired by crashes, at the end of each race your car is satisfyingly roughed up.
Presentation: Codemasters has definitely departed from the European sensibilities of the original. The entire game has an X-Games feel to it and the menus all take place in your trailer at a racing festival. Loading times are never dull as the game is constantly showing you statistics about your racing. In addition, the personalization of the game is impressive as it constantly uses your name in sound clips (if your name is fairly common). I guess if you have an uncommon name you’re out of luck. Maybe in an expansion Ken Block (the announcer) will take personal requests.
This is actually part of the menu system. EXTREME!
Flashbacks: The flashback system from Grid makes an appearance in Dirt 2. You’re allowed to reverse the last 8 or so seconds of the race to retry a corner or undo a crash. You are limited in the number of times you can do this by the difficulty setting, and although it sounds like it might, it doesn’t make things too easy. Sure, you can rewind four times on the casual difficulty setting, but if you move the slider up to the hardest setting not only do you get no flashbacks but you win more money and experience as a reward for completing the greater challenge. The tradeoff seems fair as more advanced players will have faster access to vehicles and events, and casual players aren’t forced to endlessly replay races that they screw up towards the end.
Track types vary from expansive to intense stadium affairs
What Were They Thinking?
Leveling: Gaining experience from winning races and having progression unlock cars, events and cash bonuses is a great idea. The execution is unfortunately flawed. Long before you complete the game even on the lowest difficulty setting (lower experience per win) you will have leveled past 30 where the benefits stop accruing. It then feels like you’re accomplishing very little for the back half of the game and simply tuning the experience per race would make the second half as exciting as the opening.
Events: The course variety by location is great, with 9 different locations on the world map and several courses at every location. By the end of the game, however, the events constitute three different races and you have to repeat the same courses over and over again. It would have been nice to either have more variety or to change up the events with additional modes. Some of the modes like gatecrasher, where you try to drive through foam gates along the course, or last man standing, where the last place person is eliminated every 20 seconds, didn’t show up nearly frequently enough compared to the traditional point to point racing and course events.
Non-Rally Cars: Having racing trucks and buggies in the game seems like a good idea. Who doesn’t like variety, right? Unfortunately, you’re forced to participate in the non-rally car events to unlock parts of the game, and the trucks and buggies just aren’t very fun. Instead of the whippy, powerful feel of the rally cars, the buggies are boring and sluggish. These events could potentially have been improved with a Motorstorm-esque system where all types of cars race on the same track and each have their own advantages and disadvantages.
These things are about as fun as inserting a swizzle stick into your urethra. Maybe less.
Verdict
Dirt 2 is the best racing game I have played in years. It is both casual friendly and extremely deep, and the game keeps its appeal in the single player mode through level 30. Unfortunately, the remainder of the campaign feels like mopping up after you’ve unlocked almost everything, and by that point you’re experienced enough to move to the online races or go for the best times in time trial. Still, the admission price is more than justified by the first 30 levels of the game, and some of the later cars are extremely fun due to their insane speed and challenging (terrible) handling.
If you’ve ever thought ‘hey, off-road racing sounds fun,’ you owe it to yourself to buy this game.
