I played the demo of this that I downloaded of PSN pretty much relentlessly for two weeks then I was in hmv the other day and snapped and blew £40 on a game for the first time since MGS4 came out over a year ago.

The visuals are nothing short of incredible and the controls are very nicely tuned for a PS3 game, given that most Ps3 games normally have clunky controls and they have made the best of what would otherwise be a terrible analog setup. Examples of games that fuck up stick-control in games are like KZ2, LBP. You never quite get the right response and direction in those but in DiRT it is super.


You race in several different types of races. It includes your standard ralley races to keep the old timers who have been with the series since the PS1 (me) happy whilst including some new ones which enables you to race against a large number of other vehicles in one big brawl.

There are RPG elements involved in the respect that you earn EXP for each race and that counts toward unlockable cars, items and championships as you progress. I am currently at the Malaysia stage where there are some jungles rendered in such a way that they make Crysis look like a piss artist.

I did feel like I really didn't want to pay £40 for this game and that I should wait, but having played it I am glad I did. I have Assassin's Creed on the backburner for when it bores me but I haven't really taken the wrapping off that game yet.

Fans of driving games really have something to tide them over until their respective super-next-gen-racer comes out here. By that I mean GT5 for PS3 owners and Forza 3 for your 360 type. That said, they have been set a benchmark by DiRT 2 and I would not be surprised if I end up disappointed by GT5 when it hits around Christmas.

Codemasters have got it right. So right.

I was slightly underwhelmed by the first game. Codemasters is really leaving behind the style that the Colin McRae games used to carry and are definitely aiming for a more "mainstream" audience with them under the DIRT name.

The first DIRT wasn't a bad game by any stretch, but oh man.. The physics were pretty weird. Vehicles had next to no grip and almost felt as if they were levitating. Visually, the game was amazing, but it handled like a futuristic space racer.

Then came GRID, which expanded on the engine that DIRT used. GRID was fucking awful and boring, period. Worst Steam purchase ever.

When I played the demo for DIRT 2, I was a little upset to find that it had more in common with GRID than the original DIRT. I couldn't understand why they would do that. It felt like an arcade rally racer, which is what the CMR games never used to be.

The fact that no Codemasters games offers split screen racing is the nail in the coffin for me, though. Playing on your own in a racing game can get fairly old in little time, and I don't play racers online because it's just not enjoyable. I need live competition.

Motorstorm: Pacific Rift and GT5 Prologue will suffice for now. Long live split screen multiplayer!!

I didn't like the first game but this one looks interesting and play really good... I'm just not a big fan of race games I might rent it some time tho.

The first DIRT wasn't a bad game by any stretch, but oh man.. The physics were pretty weird. Vehicles had next to no grip and almost felt as if they were levitating. Visually, the game was amazing, but it handled like a futuristic space racer.

The physics are spot on! How do you expect cars going 100mph to handle on gravel? You track racer you.

No, not at all. I love older rally games. They're more gritty and unforgiving. DIRT has been criticized by many for having vehicles that feel as if they are hovering or gliding over the course, and I'm one of the people who get after the games because of it.

The older CMR games had fabulous handling and didn't feel like offroad versions of Wipeout.

Nice menu system video s4d

I absolutely love Codemaster racing games. I adored Grid (what's wrong with you, UPRC, dayum), even though I didn't end up playing it that much due to other reasons.


But yeah, I saw a few vids of this and I get the feeling it's amazing. I'd get the demo if I had some gbs to spare, but because my internet costs me extra monnies if I pass a download limit, I gotta wait til tuesday before downloading large files.

It is amazing. I am going through the trophies (read: achievements) unlocking them one by one I think what UPRC lacks is well to put it bluntly.... SKILL?

The older colin mcrae games were easy to drive because they were built for machines that did not have the memory to do physics calculations the way the next-gen systems do. So you could just drive really easily but now it requires a lot of skill and balance.

Uh, no. Not skill. I aced everything in DIRT. It was a fine game, the cars were just too.... Floaty.

Oh, you hit a sensible chord there.

Here's a question, is there a way to shut up the other drivers in the full game? In the demo, I remember being annoyed at them chattering during the race ("I stayed up too late last night, and now I'm paying the price!"), which was really distracting.

That was definitely a feature that DIRT 2 borrowed from GRID. I can do without the poorly scripted banter. I miss my Americanized co-driver from the first DIRT. Do they still have him for the rally stages?

It would be awesome if Codemasters would bring back Nicky Grist as the co-driver. The American guy that they had in the first DIRT was pretty good, but Grist's voice was unmatched. His voice really helped you feel immersed in the game.

There are events with and without banter, there are proper old-school style ones with the scottish co-driver and that's done pretty well. He tells you where in the road you want to be when going over crests and taking corners, whether you should cut them or not.

I am glad that they have "Ed" in this one and don't insist on calling me Edward cause that's not my name.

So it has the name system from GRID where you select your name and they say it ingame at various points? That was an interesting little gimmick.

I don't know, I'm still on the fence. There's a chance I may pick it up strictly for the rally stages (I don't enjoy the offroad-styled lap racing that these games have). No local multiplayer discourages me, but... Hell, I only buy rally games for rallying, not for beating a friend around ten laps Spa Francorchamps.

I see that the flashback system from GRID is in this game as well. Do they let you use it in all events? I'm really hoping that the answer is no and that it's just in the race events and such. If flashbacks are available in the rally stages, then that would really take away a lot of the risk involved in going flat out to beat the sector times. Crashing out and knowing that it's all over as soon as you do so was always one of the biggest draws for me. I'm worried that flashbacks might lessen the challenge and risk. Rather than practicing the stage until you have it nailed to perfection, you could just rewind back a few seconds before your horrendous crash and give your analog stick a little nudge to avoid making the same mistake.

I don't know if any of my questions come across as seeming negative towards the game or not, but I'd probably say that I'm more cautiously sitting on the fence and slightly worried that the overall package may have given more attention/focus to the first game's flaws rather than fixing them.

Maybe I need to give the demo another try though, since it was quite hard to judge. If I can shake the notion from my mind that DIRT 2 just wants to be an "Offroad GRID impersonator" or something along those lines, then I may come around.

DIRT really was a decent game and I did enjoy it. Like I said, the only real flaw was the way that the vehicles felt like they were floating almost.

I'm just worried that this game borrows too much from GRID rather than the first DIRT, and I really did not like GRID.

Crank the difficulty up, if it's like in GRID you get more rewards for not being able to do flashbacks, and even more for doing the whole race in cockpit view.

Also, you're probably the only racing guy annoyed at the lack of splitscreen I have ever seen; as far as I'm concerned, I don't know a single person in a million lightyears from here who'd play a racing game half seriously.

You sound like a lucky bastard who's got a bunch of other racing peeps around.

Crank the difficulty up, if it's like in GRID you get more rewards for not being able to do flashbacks, and even more for doing the whole race in cockpit view.

Also, you're probably the only racing guy annoyed at the lack of splitscreen I have ever seen; as far as I'm concerned, I don't know a single person in a million lightyears from here who'd play a racing game half seriously.

You sound like a lucky bastard who's got a bunch of other racing peeps around.

No, not really annoyed. Just disappointed, I suppose. One of my good friends just has almost identical tastes in games and we both love racing games and playing against each other. It's not about playing a racing game seriously, but more about just having fun with a friend who is in the same room. It's the reason that I probably won't pick up Need for Speed Shift as well. Local multiplayer is just a huge draw for me.

Well by seriously I mostly meant like

Playing a serious-ish racer (ie: not mario kart or f-zero) and enjoying it. """"""""""""""""""""""""SIM"""""""""""""""" racers and the like (loads of " because I know you know I know we know you know they know, DIRT/GRID aren't very sim compared to certain other racing games)

Ah, right. Yeah, I'm pretty fond of some racers that brand themselves as sims. There are some though, that are just too much for me. rFactor on the PC is one. GTR Evolution is another that I can't stand, because you need to do so much setup work just to, you know, get the car around the circuit without flying off the circuit uncontrollably.

The original DIRT was a perfectly fine rally game though. Throughout the regular rally stages, it was a pretty authentic experience as far as console gaming goes. That's what I liked about DIRT, the rallying. I didn't really like the lap racing aspect with all those other cars on track with me because it just didn't have the same experience. Yeah, it's still rallying, but I love point to point rallying, with each competitor trying to beat each other's times. That's what I'm hoping DIRT 2 has plenty of. I'm cautious though, because a review told me that there's a lot of "everything" in DIRT 2's career mode. I just want flat out rallying, but oh well.

I'm getting horribly off track from whatever I meant to discuss now, I think.


Anyway yeah, I might think about picking this up just because the first DIRT was enjoyable, despite its shortcomings. I'll wait for ed to pop back into the topic before I make any more decisions though.

If you turn the difficulty up to Savage this game just becomes sort of compulsive. There's a level of difficulty above that but I don't think I would be able to consistently beat all the stages in the whole game on that setting as some are pretty brutal.

I get a real buzz out of playing it anyway. I play sitting on a swivel chair like you get in comfy offices and my flatmates were laughing at me cause I sway when I turn the corners. I told them that it wouldn't be a good racing game if it didn't make me lean in real life :P