The game that introduced me to the world of Rally/xtreme sports
Rip Colin mcrae
Colin mcrae dirt being my first rally game I played its goid but after a while it gets boring unless you like doing basically the same thing over abd over again in the career mode
Colin mcrae dirt being my first rally game I played its goid but after a while it gets boring unless you like doing basically the same thing over abd over again in the career mode
A good starting point for one of my favorite series, but MAN this game is biege.
he was truly the tony hawk of the rallying world. this games holds so much nostalgia for me, from the car line up to the art style, preserving the pure arcade racing gameplay in a rather modern presentation
After experiencing DiRT 3, we wanted to go back and play them all. It was fun to see the series origin, but it was a little more monotonous than its successor (1,000 miles...). Also, screw Rally Raid.
I love the dirt series and having played this game recently it made me nostalgic for the old colin mcrae series on the ps2, its not necessarily a bad thing i think. its pretty arcady but if you like that youll love the game.
First dirt title, even thought my first Dirt is Dirt 3, I prefer this one
This is a straight up arcade game! Not at all what I expected, but I'm not disappointed either.
Because my entry point to the series was DIRT 2, I went into this game expecting a less polished version of that, but no, this game would fit perfectly on an arcade machine, both in terms of the gameplay and the progression. Races are all super short and you earn points no matter how you place, so because of that, you work your way up the career mode ladder very quickly, especially if you aren't going for full completion, since you can unlock the next tier with only a few first place wins in the previous tier. There are no characters at all in this game, no fiction, no story, nothing like that, Travis Pastrana just talks to you in the menus, and you have a co-driver sometimes. The career itself is presented as a pyramid of events that you work your way through, aiming to reach the top. Even though the presentation is so incredibly barebones, that pyramid is still a more compelling game than all of DIRT 5 was, and I had a good time working to the top.
Money is also handed out so quickly that there's no point in having it in the game at all, so I imagine that in an arcade machine, how much you earn per race would be tied to how many credits you put into the machine. Seriously, I've complained about DIRT 5 giving you over a million before you finish the game on the shortest route, but in this game, only three or four first place wins will earn you a million. Granted, cars cost upwards of $400,000 each... but there aren't a lot, and you don't need a lot, so... I don't get it.
The driving is so ridiculous that it honestly feels more like I'm playing Initial D than a rallying game. The sense of speed is absolutely unreal. The cars have such silly amounts of grip, even while sliding, you can just throw them into almost any corner and make it through at full throttle. It took some adjusting, but after getting used to that, 60 miles per hour has never felt so fast. The camera angle, field of view, narrow roads, and plentiful obstacles make even low speeds feel dangerously fast, as they should, and the controls add even more to that feeling. Another small contributor to that feeling is that I could play this game in my native 21:9 aspect ratio and high frame rate without any mods or tweaks, which is really cool to see in a game from 2007, and only makes it that much stupider that so many games releasing these days still don't support that.
I wish I had more positive things to say about this game, but that's where it ends. Unfortunately, even after getting used to the crazy physics, the cars are so twitchy and inconsistent that I never felt like I was truly in full control at any point, even on asphalt at low speeds. By "inconsistent" I mean they can go from hyper responsive and grippy to unresponsive and loose in an instant, then back again the next instant. The cars also feel almost completely weightless, which doesn't help the feeling, because I get absolutely zero useful feedback from the car, be it visual, tactile through controller rumble, or audio. I also don't understand why the engines are so flighty. I do understand that racing on dirt causes engine RPM to fluctuate a lot, but that's usually in a +/- 100 RPM range, and it happens super fast. In this game, however, your engine regularly sweeps its entire RPM range, and it happens almost completely at random, sometimes even on flat asphalt straights, where the controller still rumbles violently all the time.
On top of all that, there is mechanical damage in this game, which would be cool if it made any sense. You get a lot of damage just for... driving the car. In one race I damaged my engine and cooling system so much that the car started smoking by the end of the stage, then I had to do the entire next stage starting in that condition, but uh, I was just driving. I have no idea how to prevent taking damage like that without granny shifting so hard I never see a shift light.
And the sound... I'll give credit where it's due, at least the sound isn't horrendously distorted and constantly clipping, but that's where the credit ends. The mix is so insanely loud... even after turning down the ingame audio sliders to less than 50%, the game is still very loud, constantly touching the 0 dB limit. It's not just loud either, it's bad too! Super crusty, a lot of sounds that should be there that simply aren't, no useful audio feedback for anything, and worst of all, turbochargers have a very high pitched whine that's always ridiculously loud and cause me physical pain to listen to, and they are constant, in any gear, at all speeds. That whining is the straw the broke the camel's back and prevents me from wanting to ever play this game again.
Oh, and there are graphics I guess. I don't have much to say about those, it's got the yellow and brown filter that all the games from this generation have, it's got horrifying amounts of bloom to the point that the road ahead sometimes becomes pure white and the car blends into it, though the cars themselves look pretty decent... yep, these are certainly graphics.
This game definitely aged like dirt. Good dirt, but still dirt.
(from my web zone: https://kerosyn.link/i-played-every-codemasters-racing-game-to-prove-a-point/#dirt-1)
Because my entry point to the series was DIRT 2, I went into this game expecting a less polished version of that, but no, this game would fit perfectly on an arcade machine, both in terms of the gameplay and the progression. Races are all super short and you earn points no matter how you place, so because of that, you work your way up the career mode ladder very quickly, especially if you aren't going for full completion, since you can unlock the next tier with only a few first place wins in the previous tier. There are no characters at all in this game, no fiction, no story, nothing like that, Travis Pastrana just talks to you in the menus, and you have a co-driver sometimes. The career itself is presented as a pyramid of events that you work your way through, aiming to reach the top. Even though the presentation is so incredibly barebones, that pyramid is still a more compelling game than all of DIRT 5 was, and I had a good time working to the top.
Money is also handed out so quickly that there's no point in having it in the game at all, so I imagine that in an arcade machine, how much you earn per race would be tied to how many credits you put into the machine. Seriously, I've complained about DIRT 5 giving you over a million before you finish the game on the shortest route, but in this game, only three or four first place wins will earn you a million. Granted, cars cost upwards of $400,000 each... but there aren't a lot, and you don't need a lot, so... I don't get it.
The driving is so ridiculous that it honestly feels more like I'm playing Initial D than a rallying game. The sense of speed is absolutely unreal. The cars have such silly amounts of grip, even while sliding, you can just throw them into almost any corner and make it through at full throttle. It took some adjusting, but after getting used to that, 60 miles per hour has never felt so fast. The camera angle, field of view, narrow roads, and plentiful obstacles make even low speeds feel dangerously fast, as they should, and the controls add even more to that feeling. Another small contributor to that feeling is that I could play this game in my native 21:9 aspect ratio and high frame rate without any mods or tweaks, which is really cool to see in a game from 2007, and only makes it that much stupider that so many games releasing these days still don't support that.
I wish I had more positive things to say about this game, but that's where it ends. Unfortunately, even after getting used to the crazy physics, the cars are so twitchy and inconsistent that I never felt like I was truly in full control at any point, even on asphalt at low speeds. By "inconsistent" I mean they can go from hyper responsive and grippy to unresponsive and loose in an instant, then back again the next instant. The cars also feel almost completely weightless, which doesn't help the feeling, because I get absolutely zero useful feedback from the car, be it visual, tactile through controller rumble, or audio. I also don't understand why the engines are so flighty. I do understand that racing on dirt causes engine RPM to fluctuate a lot, but that's usually in a +/- 100 RPM range, and it happens super fast. In this game, however, your engine regularly sweeps its entire RPM range, and it happens almost completely at random, sometimes even on flat asphalt straights, where the controller still rumbles violently all the time.
On top of all that, there is mechanical damage in this game, which would be cool if it made any sense. You get a lot of damage just for... driving the car. In one race I damaged my engine and cooling system so much that the car started smoking by the end of the stage, then I had to do the entire next stage starting in that condition, but uh, I was just driving. I have no idea how to prevent taking damage like that without granny shifting so hard I never see a shift light.
And the sound... I'll give credit where it's due, at least the sound isn't horrendously distorted and constantly clipping, but that's where the credit ends. The mix is so insanely loud... even after turning down the ingame audio sliders to less than 50%, the game is still very loud, constantly touching the 0 dB limit. It's not just loud either, it's bad too! Super crusty, a lot of sounds that should be there that simply aren't, no useful audio feedback for anything, and worst of all, turbochargers have a very high pitched whine that's always ridiculously loud and cause me physical pain to listen to, and they are constant, in any gear, at all speeds. That whining is the straw the broke the camel's back and prevents me from wanting to ever play this game again.
Oh, and there are graphics I guess. I don't have much to say about those, it's got the yellow and brown filter that all the games from this generation have, it's got horrifying amounts of bloom to the point that the road ahead sometimes becomes pure white and the car blends into it, though the cars themselves look pretty decent... yep, these are certainly graphics.
This game definitely aged like dirt. Good dirt, but still dirt.
(from my web zone: https://kerosyn.link/i-played-every-codemasters-racing-game-to-prove-a-point/#dirt-1)
How in the flying fuck you think is a good idea to have rubber banding with 5 different levels of difficulty.
On high difficulties, when you rallycross or other race events with AI you just have to divebomb the first turn and praise you get first, and then hold position until the end, because if not, the AI will match your sector's times and you will never be able to catch them except if you have really good pace, and not having flashback is awful in boring races like trucks or SUVs, imagine being 7 minutes into the race, bored to death because you are going so slow you almost don't need to brake for any corner, holding the AI, and then crashing in the second to last corner because you almost felt to sleep and you have to start the race all over again.
On rally stages or other timed events there is no rubberbanding, so is just too easy, the opponent's times are very very bad, i'm always able to win consistently with 10-20 spare seconds in the highest difficulty and i'm not a driving god, in other racing games i don't do that good.
And worst of all, in crossover events you are just fucked unless you do a extremely good lap or wait for the the AI to crash, for example I was consistently loosing by ~1 second, the AI was doing ~1:51 laps, then on the next few attempts i stopped for 8 seconds on the starting line, and guess what, I lost by ~1s, the AI was doing ~1:59 laps.
The rest of the game is nice, the handling requieres you to think how you are gonna approach every turn and at the same time is more arcadey compared to DiRT Rally and even DiRT 2, it's very intuitive, the car will react how you expect it to, also, stages while visually dull are really fun to drive through.
But the difficulty is so fucked up that the best way to enjoy this game is to play on a lower difficulty, with some music on the background and enjoying the driving.
Maybe i'll start posting more interesting reviews in the future, I don't know.
On high difficulties, when you rallycross or other race events with AI you just have to divebomb the first turn and praise you get first, and then hold position until the end, because if not, the AI will match your sector's times and you will never be able to catch them except if you have really good pace, and not having flashback is awful in boring races like trucks or SUVs, imagine being 7 minutes into the race, bored to death because you are going so slow you almost don't need to brake for any corner, holding the AI, and then crashing in the second to last corner because you almost felt to sleep and you have to start the race all over again.
On rally stages or other timed events there is no rubberbanding, so is just too easy, the opponent's times are very very bad, i'm always able to win consistently with 10-20 spare seconds in the highest difficulty and i'm not a driving god, in other racing games i don't do that good.
And worst of all, in crossover events you are just fucked unless you do a extremely good lap or wait for the the AI to crash, for example I was consistently loosing by ~1 second, the AI was doing ~1:51 laps, then on the next few attempts i stopped for 8 seconds on the starting line, and guess what, I lost by ~1s, the AI was doing ~1:59 laps.
The rest of the game is nice, the handling requieres you to think how you are gonna approach every turn and at the same time is more arcadey compared to DiRT Rally and even DiRT 2, it's very intuitive, the car will react how you expect it to, also, stages while visually dull are really fun to drive through.
But the difficulty is so fucked up that the best way to enjoy this game is to play on a lower difficulty, with some music on the background and enjoying the driving.
Maybe i'll start posting more interesting reviews in the future, I don't know.
Ta wapo
Gameplay - 8
Trilha Sonora - 7
Gráficos - 9
História/Campanha - 7
Nota - 7.75
Trilha Sonora - 7
Gráficos - 9
História/Campanha - 7
Nota - 7.75
The sense of speed on the rally courses is crazzyyy.
The rally aspect is really where the game shines, altough that's to be exected from a 'rally' game. The other types of races like buggy's dakar trucks etc just feel wonky and grindy. Although the trophy truck races have made some funny memories of flying 300m in the middle of a race xD
The rally aspect is really where the game shines, altough that's to be exected from a 'rally' game. The other types of races like buggy's dakar trucks etc just feel wonky and grindy. Although the trophy truck races have made some funny memories of flying 300m in the middle of a race xD
about what i expected from the awkward teenage years between the colin mcrae/toca series and dirt/grid. wildly inconsistent difficulty combines with some of the most unstable driving i've ever experienced (those t1 rally raid cars are sent from hell) to make the low points of this game an awful slog. when it all comes together though, the game handles beautifully and shows a perfect glimpse of what's to come for codies' racing games. Would be half a star higher if they removed rally raids and CORR but just play the second game honestly
Solid fun racing game but did not age very well
Dirt has humble beginnings and a solid foundation for the games later in the series. This doesn't stop it from being an enjoyable arcade racing game with minor sim elements. The number of tracks is limited, but there are some interesting vehicles, and the campaign has a straightforward structure. Fun game!
I expected the game to lean more into simulation territory, but it turned out to just be a simple arcade racer. The handling feels effortless and vehicles are insanely grippy which that ruins the whole illusion of off-road racing. The game features a decent variety of vehicles, however the selection of tracks is underwhelming and they end up repeating throughout. Despite that the game manages to be fun enough. Pikes Peak events in particular are the highlight of DiRT, these are extremely fast compared to the rest of the game and actually require you to get a good grasp on the controls. It's just too bad the rest of the game falls short of what it could've been.
I love how straight to the point this is, and constantly maintains its fun. Progression is really fresh, aged really well for me, super fun
[a new era in arcade rally.]
colin mcrae: dirt is the first game in the series to bear the "DiRT" moniker, which would later branch into its own series that well surpassed the popularity of the original colin mcrae rally games, and as such marks a transition in many ways. from one console generation to the next, from a pure rally-focused title to one that incorporates a number of offroad disciplines, and from a euro-centric approach to one that's more casualized and made to appeal to american gamers as well.
presentation-wise, it feels like codemasters set out to impress right from the jump. as soon as you start the game, you're immediately greeted with some of the slickest menus i've seen in any game, and they're also very functional rather than being all flash and no convenience, demonstrating codies' recognizable prowess with ui design. (except for the fact that you can't navigate the menus with a controller if you use custom button mapping. wtf????) you're also greeted by a voiceover of travis pastrana explaining the menus to you, which is slightly annoying at times but generally pretty bearable and i'm sure travis is a pretty nice dude.
dirt is certainly the most detailed colin mcrae game to the date of its release in terms of graphics (to absolutely no surprise, considering the generational leap) and it still looks decent today. the car models are well-made and the damage modeling is quite excellent as well. the stages are dense with road-side scenery on obstacles, and the destruction on these objects is quite nice - branches and bushes snap and crumble, seemingly solid barriers can actually be broken through and crushed up, and check out the way the ribbon fences flutter in the wind after being broken. however, the visuals suffer from the brown-and-bloom trend that was prevalent at the time, so it very much shows its age, and it makes a lot of the different locations look samey and dull even though they are quite pretty at times.
the sound design here is fine - the cars sound like they're meant to and all have unique engine tones - there's definitely not anything that makes you think "damn those are some sexy sounds" but they're far from vacuum cleaners. the one menu song with the weird porn moans and the various stock rock tracks (shoutout to the dollar-store ripoffs of hysteria and clocks) in the post-race menu and replays get old, but music is by no means an emphasis of this game so it's kind of just whatever. i've already mentioned the pastrana vo, which is fine, but the co-driver's pre- and post-race comments on the other hand.. "smooth and steady, i'm mr. smooth, you're mr. steady B)" shut uuup shgut UP SHUT UP SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP
anyway, once you get past the presentation, there are unfortunately some issues with the handling. the cars feel oddly stiff and rigid, and it feels like an attempt was made at giving the cars a weightier feel than in past games, but it comes out superficial and there's still a very distinct floatiness. there's a lack of differentiation between different surfaces - sure, tarmac is grippier than dirt, but they just don't FEEL much different to drive on. gravel surfaces feel just as solid as roads, just with less grip. rarely does there seem to be a natural sliding feel on the dirt - everything is too grippy, the brakes are too powerful, and the only way to get sideways is by the handbrake which is often too strong to be useful. it's not bad per se - i'd much rather a game that's a bit too easy to control than broken hard, since then it can border on unplayable - but i expected better.
also, this could just be an issue with me not touching the tuning in this game (since here it's not really necessary for success, tire choice isn't even a thing), but 1st gear feels entirely superfluous in a lot of cars and i'm often faster if i shift to 2nd before i even start moving and forget 1st exists. also vehicles have a tendency to rev up and down wildly when coming out of corners, which makes it hard to tell when to upshift and often results in a sluggish, "stalling" effect while attempting to accelerate.
onto the "metagame" of the career mode, dirt picks up similar to where cmr2005 left off with an event-tree like setup, only this time the events are arranged in a pyramid, with each tier requiring you earn a certain number of points from your performance in the previous tier to unlock. by winning events, you earn money (with higher difficulties awarding more) which can be used to purchase new vehicles and liveries for them. speaking of vehicles, the variety is excellent in this game, including standard rally, rallycross, and hillclimb cars both modern and classic, offroad trucks and buggies, and some really unexpected inclusions like dakar trucks, hillclimb big rigs, and sports cars that typically wouldn't be found doing rally.
throughout the career you encounter many types of events - standard point-to-point rally, high-speed hillclimbs, closed circuit rallycross and corr (trucks/buggies) racing, head-to-head crossover tracks, and rugged raid circuits. this variety is cool on a surface level, but all the new event types lack depth and sacrifice the existing depth of the traditional rally mode from past games. like yes, it's neat that you can have your buggies and raid trucks and etc, but there's only like 3 tracks for many of the non-rally modes, and the ai is far from perfect in these bumper-to-bumper races. their driving feels rather robotic, and they have a tendency to "clump" together and slow down massively in tight sections, as well as making brainless mistakes and crashing into things.
the rally stages are well designed as always, and perhaps some of the most technical and interesting the series has seen up to this point, as well as being the most visually detailed in terms of background scenery. unfortunately, there are only 6 rally locations with 3-4 unique stages each (reverse versions giving each a total of 6 stages), and as i said earlier, the other modes have very few tracks that are all quite visually indistinct. the increase in fidelity plus the need to start from scratch instead of updating locations from previous games means that this is somewhat inevitable, but it still feels like a step down. even though the career tries to spread these out and keep things varied, it still gets repetitious. although the detailed mechanical damage and repair system makes its return for rally races, it rarely ends up actually mattering, and it's not until late in the career that you get long enough events for it to even be an issue.
additionally, the game is still fairly easy even on pro difficulty, and i rarely if ever had difficulties winning by a decent margin. corr/rallycross races tend to be decided only by how well you can manage the traffic clusterfuck in the first 15 seconds, because if 1st place gets a decent distance away you'll never catch up without plowing into him in a corner (which actually works a charm usually), but if you do get up to the front early you'll have an easy race. money basically becomes superfluous very early on - its balanced so that over the course of the game on pro difficulty, you earn just enough to be able to buy everything at the end, but along the way you'll get well more than enough to buy the things you need, so it seems like a largely pointless system.
colin mcrae: dirt does a solid job at translating the series to a new generation and new audience, as well as serving as a transition point between the pure rally of CMR and the more generalized off-road hodgepodge of the later DiRT games (while still maintaining a primary focus on rally). it's unfortunate that there are some issues and areas that aren't as well-developed as others, but it's still a very polished product and one of the better games in the series.
7.7/10
colin mcrae: dirt is the first game in the series to bear the "DiRT" moniker, which would later branch into its own series that well surpassed the popularity of the original colin mcrae rally games, and as such marks a transition in many ways. from one console generation to the next, from a pure rally-focused title to one that incorporates a number of offroad disciplines, and from a euro-centric approach to one that's more casualized and made to appeal to american gamers as well.
presentation-wise, it feels like codemasters set out to impress right from the jump. as soon as you start the game, you're immediately greeted with some of the slickest menus i've seen in any game, and they're also very functional rather than being all flash and no convenience, demonstrating codies' recognizable prowess with ui design. (except for the fact that you can't navigate the menus with a controller if you use custom button mapping. wtf????) you're also greeted by a voiceover of travis pastrana explaining the menus to you, which is slightly annoying at times but generally pretty bearable and i'm sure travis is a pretty nice dude.
dirt is certainly the most detailed colin mcrae game to the date of its release in terms of graphics (to absolutely no surprise, considering the generational leap) and it still looks decent today. the car models are well-made and the damage modeling is quite excellent as well. the stages are dense with road-side scenery on obstacles, and the destruction on these objects is quite nice - branches and bushes snap and crumble, seemingly solid barriers can actually be broken through and crushed up, and check out the way the ribbon fences flutter in the wind after being broken. however, the visuals suffer from the brown-and-bloom trend that was prevalent at the time, so it very much shows its age, and it makes a lot of the different locations look samey and dull even though they are quite pretty at times.
the sound design here is fine - the cars sound like they're meant to and all have unique engine tones - there's definitely not anything that makes you think "damn those are some sexy sounds" but they're far from vacuum cleaners. the one menu song with the weird porn moans and the various stock rock tracks (shoutout to the dollar-store ripoffs of hysteria and clocks) in the post-race menu and replays get old, but music is by no means an emphasis of this game so it's kind of just whatever. i've already mentioned the pastrana vo, which is fine, but the co-driver's pre- and post-race comments on the other hand.. "smooth and steady, i'm mr. smooth, you're mr. steady B)" shut uuup shgut UP SHUT UP SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP
anyway, once you get past the presentation, there are unfortunately some issues with the handling. the cars feel oddly stiff and rigid, and it feels like an attempt was made at giving the cars a weightier feel than in past games, but it comes out superficial and there's still a very distinct floatiness. there's a lack of differentiation between different surfaces - sure, tarmac is grippier than dirt, but they just don't FEEL much different to drive on. gravel surfaces feel just as solid as roads, just with less grip. rarely does there seem to be a natural sliding feel on the dirt - everything is too grippy, the brakes are too powerful, and the only way to get sideways is by the handbrake which is often too strong to be useful. it's not bad per se - i'd much rather a game that's a bit too easy to control than broken hard, since then it can border on unplayable - but i expected better.
also, this could just be an issue with me not touching the tuning in this game (since here it's not really necessary for success, tire choice isn't even a thing), but 1st gear feels entirely superfluous in a lot of cars and i'm often faster if i shift to 2nd before i even start moving and forget 1st exists. also vehicles have a tendency to rev up and down wildly when coming out of corners, which makes it hard to tell when to upshift and often results in a sluggish, "stalling" effect while attempting to accelerate.
onto the "metagame" of the career mode, dirt picks up similar to where cmr2005 left off with an event-tree like setup, only this time the events are arranged in a pyramid, with each tier requiring you earn a certain number of points from your performance in the previous tier to unlock. by winning events, you earn money (with higher difficulties awarding more) which can be used to purchase new vehicles and liveries for them. speaking of vehicles, the variety is excellent in this game, including standard rally, rallycross, and hillclimb cars both modern and classic, offroad trucks and buggies, and some really unexpected inclusions like dakar trucks, hillclimb big rigs, and sports cars that typically wouldn't be found doing rally.
throughout the career you encounter many types of events - standard point-to-point rally, high-speed hillclimbs, closed circuit rallycross and corr (trucks/buggies) racing, head-to-head crossover tracks, and rugged raid circuits. this variety is cool on a surface level, but all the new event types lack depth and sacrifice the existing depth of the traditional rally mode from past games. like yes, it's neat that you can have your buggies and raid trucks and etc, but there's only like 3 tracks for many of the non-rally modes, and the ai is far from perfect in these bumper-to-bumper races. their driving feels rather robotic, and they have a tendency to "clump" together and slow down massively in tight sections, as well as making brainless mistakes and crashing into things.
the rally stages are well designed as always, and perhaps some of the most technical and interesting the series has seen up to this point, as well as being the most visually detailed in terms of background scenery. unfortunately, there are only 6 rally locations with 3-4 unique stages each (reverse versions giving each a total of 6 stages), and as i said earlier, the other modes have very few tracks that are all quite visually indistinct. the increase in fidelity plus the need to start from scratch instead of updating locations from previous games means that this is somewhat inevitable, but it still feels like a step down. even though the career tries to spread these out and keep things varied, it still gets repetitious. although the detailed mechanical damage and repair system makes its return for rally races, it rarely ends up actually mattering, and it's not until late in the career that you get long enough events for it to even be an issue.
additionally, the game is still fairly easy even on pro difficulty, and i rarely if ever had difficulties winning by a decent margin. corr/rallycross races tend to be decided only by how well you can manage the traffic clusterfuck in the first 15 seconds, because if 1st place gets a decent distance away you'll never catch up without plowing into him in a corner (which actually works a charm usually), but if you do get up to the front early you'll have an easy race. money basically becomes superfluous very early on - its balanced so that over the course of the game on pro difficulty, you earn just enough to be able to buy everything at the end, but along the way you'll get well more than enough to buy the things you need, so it seems like a largely pointless system.
colin mcrae: dirt does a solid job at translating the series to a new generation and new audience, as well as serving as a transition point between the pure rally of CMR and the more generalized off-road hodgepodge of the later DiRT games (while still maintaining a primary focus on rally). it's unfortunate that there are some issues and areas that aren't as well-developed as others, but it's still a very polished product and one of the better games in the series.
7.7/10