Do not buy this game. At the time I played this, the game was four months old and already 50% off, has regularly been 60% off since, and I don't think that's enough. I played the whole thing on a free weekend and I still want a refund. After my first hour, I was bored out of my mind and sightly mad. After five hours, I felt dead and empty inside. I don't have a single positive thing to say about it.

It's in the title, you race on dirt, so why do these cars have so much grip on ice that it feels like a slightly damp road in a road racing game? It's genuinely faster 90% of the time to drive as though you're on asphalt in this game. Even water does nothing, you can drive through a veritable lake on the track and not notice. Interestingly, RWD cars seem to have more grip than anything else, until they don't, because their traction works like a light switch. In every other situation though, these cars are so grippy that I often can't drift at all when I want to, on dirt. Also, the AI are brain dead immovable objects that can block you for whole laps on narrow tracks, and even on the hardest difficulty they drive so slow that - provided you get past them before they pile up and block you - it's nearly impossible to lose first place, let alone fall off the podium, unless you specifically choose the slowest cars available... which sometimes you have to specifically buy, because the starting car is sometimes pretty good. That doesn't matter either though, because even a dead last finish still gets you a stamp and still allows you to progress. What's the point? Listen, I appreciate that racing games have finally begun to move past the idea that you must take first place to progress, but LAST should be a LOSS.

Speaking of pointless things, money. I don't understand why that's even a mechanic, because you earn so much money from every race you're guaranteed to earn a million before you finish the game, even if you take the shortest route to the credits like I did. That route is five (5) hours long. Five hours to beat the game and it still feels like it was padded for time. Add to that the fact that everything to add value to a career mode is gone (sponsors are meaningless afterthoughts, no teams at all, no sense of progression whatsoever, no rhyme nor reason to anything,) and you have one of the most shallow big budget racing games ever to hit the market. Not just shallow, but lifeless in every way. There is no personality to this game, so they hired some YouTube "personalities" to carry the whole game on their shoulders... and whether or not that's a good thing depends on whether or not you enjoy Donut media. The cars are lifeless, they all feel the same, and the the extent of customization available to you is three presets, four sponsor decals that are just for looks, and one sticker. Woo. Even the graphics are lifeless, with this game looking so amazingly dull that if it wasn't for the sheer abundance of particle effects and bloomy lighting, it could be two console generations older than it is and probably look nearly the same. I'm not one to prioritize graphics either, but when your game has nothing else going for it...

Who is AJ? Who is Bruno? Why do I care? Why were they some of the easiest races in the game despite being the final ones? What's the point of secondary objectives when they're all stupidly easy and do nothing of value? Why does the camera look up and down with the right stick instead of look behind and either zoom in or raise the angle? Why does the weather and even the time of day change between two opposite extremes in five seconds or less? Why does the game take five entire minutes just to launch? What am I doing here? Why is pathfinder so mindbogglingly stupid? Why is any of this? What even are the throwdowns? Whatever they are, they're important enough to get their own dedicated tab on the career screen, not only did I never get an explanation from the game about what they are, they're all optional.

This whole game is optional, and the right choice is to choose any other option.

(from my web zone: https://kerosyn.link/i-played-every-codemasters-racing-game-to-prove-a-point/#dirt-5)

Śgigałka, która powinna być co najwyżej dorzucana za darmo do płatków, a była sprzedawana jak pełnoprawna odsłona serii. Wstyd.

Plusy i minusy:
+ momentami wygląda i działa ok
- prostackie, powtarzalne trasy
- niektóre wyścigi to wkurzająca ślizgawka traktorami
- żałośnie niski poziom trudności, nawet na najwyższym i z wyłączonymi asystami można wszystkich zdublować
- festyniarski klimat ze zbieraniem fanów jak to już było w 100 innych grach
- irytujący podcast z Troyem Bakerem i Nolanem Northem służący za fabułę
- dziwnie działająca muzyka, nie da się jej normalnie słuchać tylko leci z głośników na trasie
- bugi i popup
- do przejścia w 4 godziny
+ do przejścia w 4 godziny

I know the fact that this game wasn't that good when it first came out. But now, it's better optimised on PC, many bugs have been fixed and more content added. Handling model is awesome, graphics and scenery are truly stunning, cara selection is good and you can even listen the Donut Media Podcasts. Creating custom tracks is a very neat idea and executed pretty well. Career mode can sometimes be repetetive but if you enjoy the handling model and scenery as mush as i did, this negative won't bother you that much. Add some more customisation options and we're talking about one of the best arcade racers of the last decade.

the nearest thing to motorstorm: pacific rift on current platforms. it’s ok, there are a lot of weird little choices i don’t understand and don’t like, both in terms of actual game-play and presentation.
-the awful, self-consciously-ironic, annoying-on-purpose podcast interludes [???]
-the music can’t decide whether or not to play during races (not much of an issue thanks to spotify integration on ps5)

the weirdest thing is the local multiplayer. while i greatly appreciate its inclusion (a racing game without local multi is pointless), it’s kind of tacked-on and operates strangely. when player one finishes a race, player 2’s dualsense feedback stops? it seems like someone worked a lot of extended hours to get some kind of local multi in there, but it wasn’t fully integrated.

the dualsense response is phenomenal and i love the feel of the different track surfaces

The absolute worst. A game with a mediocre core and some genuinely bad aspects.

The mediocre:

- Limp, featureless handling

- Blurry yet obnoxious graphics

- A career which sort of pootles along and 'climaxes' with a jaunt around a damp Norwegian village in a Volkswagen Touareg at speeds of UP TO NINETY MILES AN HOUR!!!!!!!! and then another race after the credits?

The awful

- The worst implementation of vibration in any game I've played for a very long time, culminating in a 'big patch' where they made it even worse and forced me to turn it off entirely as it was making my hands literally numb. Hilariously that also pretty much deactivates the active triggers.

- Obnoxious audio, from the awful podcast 'banter' between races to the actual sound mix which seems to be set to "make the user think his receiver is broken" dynamic range setting, with your engine veeringly wildly from barely audible to max volume. I've got a menu up with music playing, in the 'home cinema' setting and the volume is fluctuating.

Glad to get the drive space back.