[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