Customer Reviews

Dirt 2

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

+ Idiosyncratic driving mechanics based on the car
+ Beautiful scenery and geometry
+ Overall great racing game
+ Very stable (never crashed once)

- No snow tracks. The last rally game I bought was exclusively because it had snow tracks. Snow is beautiful and an integral part of rally. How could they miss this?
- Need to sign up for a Windows Live Account to play online
- Annoying unnecessary & unskippable animations (I don't want to have to go from each gig scenery to my trailer every time I finish a race) in the menu AND at the beginning of each race (I don't care about who the AI thinks is the favorite to win the race).
- Game controller vibration feedback not supported, can't call the pause menu with controller buttons and I can't navigate in the main menu with it. (I use the most popular game controller.)

First of all, I am guilty of being biased towards simulation racers -- Richard Burns Rally, NR2003, Live for Speed for example. Naturally I am bored with racing games that water down the difficulty by making the cars easier to handle, have the ability to rewind time, or don't have in-depth setup tweaks and fuel/tire management. I dislike these games and label them with 'arcade', which in my mind has a negative connotation to it. Dirt 2 is one of these games, but unlike the others that have left me bored in the past, it is actually rather enjoyable. So much so that even though it's still far from being a true simulation, I don't think it's fair to give it the same title of 'arcade'. Rather, it's simply a 'racer'.

If you want this to be a simulation of dirt racing, you will be a little bit disappointed without a doubt. And if you wanted nothing but loads of point-to-point rally racing, you will also have to keep waiting for such a game to be released. But if you're going to avoid the game because of those reasons alone, it's your loss really, as you're missing out on some pretty fun action. I know it has legendary Colin McRae's name on the title (at least in the European editions), but suffice it to say the 'realness' aspects of the game make it seem like it should be Dave Mirra's name instead. That's not a potshot, it's just what the game is intended to be: intense action sports in a X-Games sense, in this case in the form of off-road driving.

There are a little over half a dozen classes of cars to race off road with, and no shortage of liveries. From Robby Gordon's Hummer H3 complete with the Monster Energy logos to Colin McRae's No Fear ride -- you will have plenty to choose from as you finish the game's main campaign called the 'Dirt Tour'. In this mode you race several events in various exotic locale such as Morocco, Baja, Malaysia, Croatia and more. You'll do various events in the various car types including a few events that were made up by Codemasters such as 'gate crasher' where you get points for hitting flimsy walls by hitting your line. The track layouts are exceptionally well done for tight racing, and not to mention they are visually stunning on a powerful enough computer even on DirectX 9. Best of all the game has a buttery smooth framerate. Obviously this game has the added bonus of supporting DirectX 11, which would add to the eye candy even more if you have a supported video card. All of these tracks are playable online with friends as well.

The driving physics are spot on for a low learning curve and make for a highly accessible experience. The force feedback is actually fairly solid, so the feel you get in the car is very 'attached' -- opposed to another racing game like NFS Shift, where the force feedback practically doesn't exist and your car just slides on top of the track and is somewhat lagging in response to the wheel input.

The game has very well-scaled difficulty settings for the most part. If you're like me, a seasoned simulation veteran, then the point-to-point rally races will be a walk in the park. Right away I was winning those events by quite a few seconds on the hardest settings. They are still fun nonetheless. The real challenge comes with races directly against the AI, where the harder settings are highly difficult. The tougher settings are also very rewarding for two reasons: they heighten the sense of intensity very well, and you earn more cash to buy new cars or upgrade your current ones with. In these races you face off against 7 or so AI on tight tracks (think X-Games with 8 cars on the same small circuit). Races like this result in a fairly high amount of exchanging paint and clanking bumpers -- in real life tracks of this size are designed for single car runs. The AI makes mistakes, and is fairly unpredictable. Don't be surprised when you pass by trucks rolling over in a tumbling motion, or even flying over your head crashing in the race. This type of thing happens quite often in Dirt 2, and it will make you go 'oh #$%&!' and then laugh a little at the absolute insanity some of the tracks produce. Needless to say the more forgiving physics works really well in these types of races which are fairly predominant in the main campaign.

Lastly the sounds and presentation. I don't think you can ask for much more in the driving sounds. There is a strange absence of tire squeal when you skid on pavement. Outside of that everything is there with co-driver audio in rally and the sound of pebbles hitting the underside of your car as you slide through hairpins with a Scandinavian flick. As you watch replays and sift through the menus the soundtrack is not exactly my taste, but that is a very minor complaint, if not one at all. There's always the option to turn the music off. While I understand the idea behind the interactive style of the menus as trying to be new, exciting and different, it can also get old watching your character walk through his trailer in a first person view as a way of 'navigating' the menu. My patience for that type of stuff is pretty low and I can see that annoying other people as well. Those are minor issues and more a matter of preference, so I won't give them a knock in terms of rating.

Overall, this is one of the best racers out there for 2009. It certainly gives NFS Shift a run for its money, and in my opinion the poor steering feel in Shift was a deal breaker, so I'd give Dirt 2 the nod in that department as far as best game in this category of 2009. If I did have one complaint it would be the length of the main campaign, which is somewhat short at around ten hours long. Still, with the low price of this game -- being over ten dollars cheaper than most other new PC games upon release - the amount of content for your money is unbelievable and well worth every penny.

UPDATE: Turns out I was wrong, and I noticed there are indeed tire squeal sounds in the game. But for some reason they are at a very low volume when using the cockpit view, making it difficult if not impossible to hear which is why I never noticed the noise. Another point worth mentioning, even though the game's cover makes it clear, is that it uses Games For Windows Live (GFWL) to save your progress. Do note however that you can setup an offline account with no need for the internet for GFWL.

This review is for the PC version. I am running Windows 7 Pro (32 bit), with an Intel Core Duo E8500 at 3.16GHz, 4G RAM, Radeon 4850 video card, and 24" Dell monitor at 1920 x 1200.
The graphics on this game are amazing! The cars look fantastic and the dust kicked up by cars in front of you are so realistic looking. I find myself losing concentration at times and just enjoying the graphics.
I think the PC version on a decent PC looks better than the PS3 version.
As far as game play I haven't tried the online mode so cannot comment on that but playing against the computer opponents is pretty fun. The realism seems to be just right (you can set the level - I have it set to Serious). I am not a hard core simulation person but I immensely dislike arcade style driving games. This game is way above an arcade style game. The force feedback effects are great. You can really tell when you are losing grip on the front end because of loose gravel.
Anyway, a very well done game. Keep up the good work Codemasters!

There is very little flow to the style of racing. It seems that you can qualify for random types of races, even though you are trying to concentrate on one style. I was really looking for a 'Rally' game to follow on from 'Colin McRae Rally 2005' as that game doesn't work with Windows 7 (64 bit), but I found this game to be cluttered with a lot of stuff that I didn't care about. Why does everything have to be 'Extreme!' to make it sound more exciting? If anyone knows of a game that focuses on Rally, as Colin McRae Rally 2005 did, please let me know.

The original DIRT was just ok, this follow-up is gorgeous. Fun game on and off line. The tracks range from Mexico to Croatia. Lots of tracks and different events. The cars are awesome, the graphics are breathtakingly detailed. I LIKE IT!!

Dirt 2 is a great PC game. Plenty of tracks, cars and levels. I'm not a fan of required media insertion while playing the game, but the trade-off is an easy one to make.

I haven't tried a dirt racing game since the old Dirt series several years ago and they were terrible. This one is pretty good. The graphics aren't as good as some of the other newer racing games, but overall they work. It's not buggy (with the patch) and game play is straight forward. Just what youy would expect in a dirt racing series. There's several types of racing from BAHA to Arena and everything in between. The AI is a too hard for my taste, even in casual mode, once you get a few races under your belt, the AI is just about unbeatable unless you crash them into rocks, trees and walls. To me, that's not racing, but I can see that the majority of buyers probably just want a crash derby in any racing game they buy (as evidenced in the online tournaments of any racing game). So if it's a crash derby, bull your way to the top, run 'em down kind of race, than Dirt 2 is the one for you. Plenty of tracks in many countries and really they did a lot of work on the tracks. They are hard to get through and the cars are loose (even with the very limited car settings). I think they could have done better at giving us more adjustment room for setting up (dialing in) cars, but something has always got to be missing or you wouldn't look forward to the next in the series. Overall it's fun to run the tracks if you don't mind the AI beating you most of the time.
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Additional - I have to say that with most every game I have come across there are issues. Many times the issues are ones that we "gamers" have brought upon ourselves. Anyone with some money and enough knowhow to slap components together thinks they are computer gurus and many times they/we shoot ourselves in the foot. Gaming machines are buggy and unstable many times, due to the overclocking of components and due to the nature of "cutting edge" components as they usually have more issues than the components designed for slower speeds and better stability. When you see all the complaints about not being able to run a game, it's usually more of the lack of expertise of the "gamer" (including me), than of the game itself, but every game usually runs way better after a "patch", since they are seemingly always put out with problems. This game ran super smooth on my machine, but it runs much smoother at medium settings than ultra settings. That's normal with a game and truthfully I cannot see the visual difference, but the stability is so much better. Most games run much smoother with medium settings for the graphics. 2xAA is just as good as 4xAA, and you don't really need trees, grass & water set on ultra settings, you are driving too fast thru the scenery to see it anyhow!

just started playing this on the PC last night...Wow...graphics and game play pretty phenomenal!! I have not been a big fan of racing games and usually suck hard on them (playing this on easy level now and am getting better and it's actually fun to screw up), but this was well worth the $10 I got the game for. It's rally car and off-road truck (Baja) type racing and I swear it looks so freakin real you almost think you're there...pretty good vibration feedback on a rumble controller too.

I love this game! I'm a total adrenaline junkie when it comes to racing games, or games in general, and this game delivers. I'll be the first to admit that I get bored very fast with games that make you sit through movies or work you way through a story before you get to the action. Not with this game. It gets right into the racing fun and action. I've only had Dirt 2 for a week and I've already put hours of play into it. I'd probably play it all day if I could.

The visuals, simulation and sound are top notch in my opinion. Each vehicle has it's own unique handling characteristics, and the engine sounds are pretty authentic. There are dozens of vehicles to choose from with several configurations for each vehicle. And with lots of races all over the world to participate in, I should be busy with this game for quite a while!

Installation was no problem and the game runs very smooth on my PC. I'm currently running Windows 7 64 bit, and my hardware consists of an AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE @ 3.2 GHz, 16 GB of G Skill Ripjaws @ 1333, a Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 and an Xbox 360 controller. I've had no problems at all running the game or with Windows Live.

For ten bucks the price is definitely worth it. And if Dirt 2 is any indication of what Dirt 3 is like, I'll be getting that too! I highly recommend this game to anyone looking for a great racing game at a great price. Time to get Dirty!

My 10-year-old son loves this game and thinks it's the best ever, because it has good game-play, good graphics, and realistic damage. But if you make a mistake in a game, you can rewind back to the time from which you want to resume. Although he recommends it, he points out that Dirt 3 is coming out in the second quarter of 2011, and you might want to wait for that instead.