Review: DiRT (X360)

DiRT delivers arcade kicks and slick presentation but is not without its problems.

For: Beautiful graphics; superb presentation; large variety of race types; original MP
Against: Limited MP; terrible car physics; framerate problems; tacked on features

Firstly, I am not a fan of Rally games;
secondly, I am not a fan of arcade racing games (I hate Ridge Racer);
thirdly, I was playing Motorstorm (PS3) and Forza Motorsport 2 solidly before DiRT was released;
...clearly, DiRT was going to have to be amazingly good to get a look in.

The sad fact is that I only bought DiRT because I was so impressed with the menu presentation on the demo - and also the early screen shots! In this respect I am not disappointed: DiRT has the best presentation and menu system of any game to date - it is a thing of beauty. The graphics are stunning; the music is excellent; even the voice-overs are okay. DiRT could be described as the Gears of War of the racing genre.

However, no matter how great it looks and sounds (even with a slightly dodgy frame rate sometimes) I have a major problem with the game: The physics engine sucks.

In fact, it both sucks and blows. For a game with this many varieties of race type, vehicles, and environments to have such an inconsistent, and sometimes laughable physics engine, is disgraceful. Many of the race modes are fine – the US-style rally events are huge fun – but the tarmac based events – particularly Rally Cross and Cross Over – are appalling. The cars handle like supermarket trolleys and the frame rate jumps up and down making it look like something from a speed-up silent movie. Worse still, the Rally events, which rely on power-slides and Scandinavian turns, are ruined by the weightless vehicles and brakes of pure “science-fiction”.

For me a racing game should be either an arcade racer (Ridge Racer, Burnout) or a simulator (Forza, PGR3- sort off) but DiRT treads a fine line between the two and kind of misses both. If we just had the US style off road racing (basically a MotorStorm clone), DiRT would be a brilliant and beautiful arcade racer, but the badly misjudged rally and tarmac events ruin the game IMHO.

Don’t get me wrong DiRT is still a lot of fun (it gets the thumbs up for the US Rally Races alone); it’s just that it falls some way short of being the classic it should have been.

7/10