TomokoKuroki
2001
[a shaky foundation.]
burnout is a racing game. it kinda sucks. there is very little else to say about it beyond that and yet here i am about to say many things about it. because this game was saved from the annals of obscure 6th gen mediocrity and miraculously spawned a series of games that are all far superior to it, off the back of one little feature. and because of that it is Historically Significant and thus i felt the need to play it for the first time in the year of our lord 2022.
maybe i'm a bit off the mark calling it a "little feature" because the crashes in this game are basically the only thing that sets it apart from being the most generic racing game of all time, and also there was a pretty decent emphasis put on them. but compared to the later games with their crash modes and far more detailed damage physics, the crashes in this game feel like a paltry little addition to the racing formula. and yet, as tame as they feel now, they were the main selling point back in 2001.
honestly they're kind of a gimmick that breaks the flow of gameplay, further exacerbated by the frequency with which they happen because the crash "detection" is super oversensitive and will often wreck you from a light tap. later burnout games improved this by adding features like aftertouch and crashbreakers, but here they're just kind of annoying as all you can do is watch your crash get replayed from different angles while your opponents fly past after you slightly scraped a car. it all feels very purposeless, something that was bound to age poorly because its only draw was "look how cool the crashes look with our 2001 technology."
aside from the crashes, burnout plays much like an arcade racing game - as in a literal arcade game - translated to consoles. actually my friends were surprised it was not literally an arcade port. you've got a few tracks, a small selection of cars graded by their "difficulty" to drive - just like sf rush! - and there's even a constant countdown timer in races which is extended by checkpoints. tacked onto this is a means of progression in the championship mode, which consists of four 3-race "grand prix" events and 2 "marathon" events. completing each grand prix unlocks a one-on-one "face off" event which earns you an unlockable car.
and that's pretty much it! the game is very barebones in terms of content. you have 5 generic cars unlocked at the start, and there are 4 unlockable cars - two of which are competitive, whereas the other two are large, heavy, impractical vehicles that are basically just for "fun" only they aren't even good for that since they crash almost as easily as any other car. ultimately the unlocking of cars is kind of irrelevant unless you want more variety, since the muscle car is unlocked from the start and it's arguably tied for the best car in the game.
aside from that, there's a fair amount of tracks, but only 5 unique locations. the game pads itself out using variations that are reversed or at a different time of day, although they also have slightly different layouts so they feel reasonably "different" to drive. the designs of the tracks are honestly pretty solid, although brought down by extremely questionable scripted traffic decisions. the traffic patterns in this game are pre-set, meaning that there will always be traffic in the same place on each track depending on what lap you're on. of course criterion apparently thought it would be funny to frequently do things like putting two cars crossing an intersection at the same time or a passing bus blocking it completely, which are nearly impossible to avoid. realizing that the traffic is scripted and that these things were done intentionally as opposed to just being bad luck made them more infuriating.
of course i also have to talk about the "marathon" tracks, which combine all the courses in a given region (3 american tracks, 2 european tracks) to form one massive track. they're a neat idea! i think it's cool to have all these interconnected courses as a sort of endurance race, taking 12 minutes to complete the euro marathon and 18 minutes for the usa marathon. the problem comes when one crash near the end can force you to do those 12-18 minutes all over again, even if you drove completely perfectly the whole way until then. because at that point the marathon races stop being "a neat idea" and instead become a thoroughly miserable experience.
yes it's time to talk about the rubberbanding. it is extremely blatant. later games would at least offer you the illusion of making a gap, since they constantly remind you how many seconds you are ahead (or behind). this game does no such thing. no matter how fast you are, the opponents will be right behind you. if you crash, you WILL get passed unless you're lucky enough that the ai crashes into your wreckage. but maybe even more egregious is that once they get far enough ahead of you, the rubberband snaps. see, the ai is actually kinda neat in that they also make mistakes and crash into traffic which helps equalize the races. the problem is the traffic only spawns around the player, because why waste processing power calculating the paths of cars that the player can't even see? what this means is that once the ai is too far away for traffic to spawn, they can just speed off without worrying about crashing and get farther and farther away with no hope of catching up.
rubberbanding aside, the actual racing mechanics of this game are occasionally fun but mostly pretty mediocre. the driving physics aren't the worst i've played in a racing game, but they tend to be slippery and imprecise, especially when you're trying to drift, and very numb otherwise. there's not really much else to it. you can't take opponents out like you would in burnout 3, but you can perform a pseudo-takedown by shoving them into traffic, which is about as exciting as this game gets aside from when you're boosting. boosting is probably the only thing that sets this game apart aside from the crashes, and naturally became another one of the series' signature mechanics. and here we find another problem with this game.
your boost meter, filled by driving in oncoming, drifting, and near-missing traffic, fills WAY too slow, and is very easily taken away by a single crash. also, you can only start to use boost once the meter is full. so you barely get to use boost - i tended to get boost once per lap if i was lucky, and occasionally i'd go a whole race without getting to use it at all because whenever the boost bar was full or nearly full i'd get screwed by traffic and lose it all. which sucks because it's when this game's driving really gets fun. evidently, the later burnout games realized this, and allowed & encouraged far more frequent usage of boost, resulting in altogether more fun gameplay. good job criterion!
there is another mechanic at play with the boost here, however. if you burn through the whole meter without letting off the boost button, you do a "burnout" which by default restores the boost bar to about half. if you do so and also stay in oncoming traffic the ENTIRE time, it will actually fully restore your boost, meaning you can keep going and chaining burnouts together. which is neat in concept but also goads the player into making dumb decisions while trying to chase that high, since the fact of the matter is there's very few situations in the game where you can actually use a full boost bar nonstop without crashing, and even fewer while staying in oncoming. but even knowing that doesn't stop you from trying because boost = fun = happy and it ends up leading to heartbreak when you crash and now have no boost at all.
from a technical perspective, the game is nothing to write home about. its best aspect is its solid 60 fps framerate, which helps elevate its sense of speed and fluidity, no doubt aiding its novel perception in the eyes of the gaming press circa 2001. this comes in exchange for graphics that are exceedingly average in a post-gran turismo 3 world, alongside a very generic aesthetic style and ui that certainly doesn't shake off the feeling that this is an acclaim-published budget title. to its credit, the environments and different time of day variations look fairly nice.
it's a miracle that boost does feel as fun as it does considering there is almost no visual or audio feedback - you've got the plainest looking meter youve ever seen, no flames from the exhaust, no burning sound effect or really any change besides more motion blur and the music fading to a thumping heartbeat. the engine sounds are very flat-sounding to the point where i don't remember a single time i even noticed them.
speaking of the music, it doesn't really help fill the void left by the sound design as it's some of the most utterly inoffensive and bland "racing game music" i have heard in a game. it wasn't bad or annoying at any point but it also made basically zero impression. there was also a pretty wack attempt at "dynamic" music mixing. i noticed multiple times when the music went silent for a moment before returning in an attempt to loop. additionally each location has a "normal" and a "dramatic" music track, and it abruptly switches to the latter usually after crashing on the second or third lap. the way it switches is really jarring and pulled me out of it when i was actually kinda vibing to the normal music.
i'm grateful to the original burnout for setting the foundation for the series that would eventually produce imo the greatest racing game ever made. but i'm gonna be 100% real: there is just no reason to play this nowadays. maybe if you just want to experience the tracks... but aside from that there's basically nothing here that isn't massively improved upon by the sequels. not even really a weird quaint early-series charm to it. it's basically a nothing-game. you can complete it in 4 hours and there's very little reason to come back to it afterwards. god bless acclaim for being desperate enough to let this happen and also get a sequel.
4.7/10
burnout is a racing game. it kinda sucks. there is very little else to say about it beyond that and yet here i am about to say many things about it. because this game was saved from the annals of obscure 6th gen mediocrity and miraculously spawned a series of games that are all far superior to it, off the back of one little feature. and because of that it is Historically Significant and thus i felt the need to play it for the first time in the year of our lord 2022.
maybe i'm a bit off the mark calling it a "little feature" because the crashes in this game are basically the only thing that sets it apart from being the most generic racing game of all time, and also there was a pretty decent emphasis put on them. but compared to the later games with their crash modes and far more detailed damage physics, the crashes in this game feel like a paltry little addition to the racing formula. and yet, as tame as they feel now, they were the main selling point back in 2001.
honestly they're kind of a gimmick that breaks the flow of gameplay, further exacerbated by the frequency with which they happen because the crash "detection" is super oversensitive and will often wreck you from a light tap. later burnout games improved this by adding features like aftertouch and crashbreakers, but here they're just kind of annoying as all you can do is watch your crash get replayed from different angles while your opponents fly past after you slightly scraped a car. it all feels very purposeless, something that was bound to age poorly because its only draw was "look how cool the crashes look with our 2001 technology."
aside from the crashes, burnout plays much like an arcade racing game - as in a literal arcade game - translated to consoles. actually my friends were surprised it was not literally an arcade port. you've got a few tracks, a small selection of cars graded by their "difficulty" to drive - just like sf rush! - and there's even a constant countdown timer in races which is extended by checkpoints. tacked onto this is a means of progression in the championship mode, which consists of four 3-race "grand prix" events and 2 "marathon" events. completing each grand prix unlocks a one-on-one "face off" event which earns you an unlockable car.
and that's pretty much it! the game is very barebones in terms of content. you have 5 generic cars unlocked at the start, and there are 4 unlockable cars - two of which are competitive, whereas the other two are large, heavy, impractical vehicles that are basically just for "fun" only they aren't even good for that since they crash almost as easily as any other car. ultimately the unlocking of cars is kind of irrelevant unless you want more variety, since the muscle car is unlocked from the start and it's arguably tied for the best car in the game.
aside from that, there's a fair amount of tracks, but only 5 unique locations. the game pads itself out using variations that are reversed or at a different time of day, although they also have slightly different layouts so they feel reasonably "different" to drive. the designs of the tracks are honestly pretty solid, although brought down by extremely questionable scripted traffic decisions. the traffic patterns in this game are pre-set, meaning that there will always be traffic in the same place on each track depending on what lap you're on. of course criterion apparently thought it would be funny to frequently do things like putting two cars crossing an intersection at the same time or a passing bus blocking it completely, which are nearly impossible to avoid. realizing that the traffic is scripted and that these things were done intentionally as opposed to just being bad luck made them more infuriating.
of course i also have to talk about the "marathon" tracks, which combine all the courses in a given region (3 american tracks, 2 european tracks) to form one massive track. they're a neat idea! i think it's cool to have all these interconnected courses as a sort of endurance race, taking 12 minutes to complete the euro marathon and 18 minutes for the usa marathon. the problem comes when one crash near the end can force you to do those 12-18 minutes all over again, even if you drove completely perfectly the whole way until then. because at that point the marathon races stop being "a neat idea" and instead become a thoroughly miserable experience.
yes it's time to talk about the rubberbanding. it is extremely blatant. later games would at least offer you the illusion of making a gap, since they constantly remind you how many seconds you are ahead (or behind). this game does no such thing. no matter how fast you are, the opponents will be right behind you. if you crash, you WILL get passed unless you're lucky enough that the ai crashes into your wreckage. but maybe even more egregious is that once they get far enough ahead of you, the rubberband snaps. see, the ai is actually kinda neat in that they also make mistakes and crash into traffic which helps equalize the races. the problem is the traffic only spawns around the player, because why waste processing power calculating the paths of cars that the player can't even see? what this means is that once the ai is too far away for traffic to spawn, they can just speed off without worrying about crashing and get farther and farther away with no hope of catching up.
rubberbanding aside, the actual racing mechanics of this game are occasionally fun but mostly pretty mediocre. the driving physics aren't the worst i've played in a racing game, but they tend to be slippery and imprecise, especially when you're trying to drift, and very numb otherwise. there's not really much else to it. you can't take opponents out like you would in burnout 3, but you can perform a pseudo-takedown by shoving them into traffic, which is about as exciting as this game gets aside from when you're boosting. boosting is probably the only thing that sets this game apart aside from the crashes, and naturally became another one of the series' signature mechanics. and here we find another problem with this game.
your boost meter, filled by driving in oncoming, drifting, and near-missing traffic, fills WAY too slow, and is very easily taken away by a single crash. also, you can only start to use boost once the meter is full. so you barely get to use boost - i tended to get boost once per lap if i was lucky, and occasionally i'd go a whole race without getting to use it at all because whenever the boost bar was full or nearly full i'd get screwed by traffic and lose it all. which sucks because it's when this game's driving really gets fun. evidently, the later burnout games realized this, and allowed & encouraged far more frequent usage of boost, resulting in altogether more fun gameplay. good job criterion!
there is another mechanic at play with the boost here, however. if you burn through the whole meter without letting off the boost button, you do a "burnout" which by default restores the boost bar to about half. if you do so and also stay in oncoming traffic the ENTIRE time, it will actually fully restore your boost, meaning you can keep going and chaining burnouts together. which is neat in concept but also goads the player into making dumb decisions while trying to chase that high, since the fact of the matter is there's very few situations in the game where you can actually use a full boost bar nonstop without crashing, and even fewer while staying in oncoming. but even knowing that doesn't stop you from trying because boost = fun = happy and it ends up leading to heartbreak when you crash and now have no boost at all.
from a technical perspective, the game is nothing to write home about. its best aspect is its solid 60 fps framerate, which helps elevate its sense of speed and fluidity, no doubt aiding its novel perception in the eyes of the gaming press circa 2001. this comes in exchange for graphics that are exceedingly average in a post-gran turismo 3 world, alongside a very generic aesthetic style and ui that certainly doesn't shake off the feeling that this is an acclaim-published budget title. to its credit, the environments and different time of day variations look fairly nice.
it's a miracle that boost does feel as fun as it does considering there is almost no visual or audio feedback - you've got the plainest looking meter youve ever seen, no flames from the exhaust, no burning sound effect or really any change besides more motion blur and the music fading to a thumping heartbeat. the engine sounds are very flat-sounding to the point where i don't remember a single time i even noticed them.
speaking of the music, it doesn't really help fill the void left by the sound design as it's some of the most utterly inoffensive and bland "racing game music" i have heard in a game. it wasn't bad or annoying at any point but it also made basically zero impression. there was also a pretty wack attempt at "dynamic" music mixing. i noticed multiple times when the music went silent for a moment before returning in an attempt to loop. additionally each location has a "normal" and a "dramatic" music track, and it abruptly switches to the latter usually after crashing on the second or third lap. the way it switches is really jarring and pulled me out of it when i was actually kinda vibing to the normal music.
i'm grateful to the original burnout for setting the foundation for the series that would eventually produce imo the greatest racing game ever made. but i'm gonna be 100% real: there is just no reason to play this nowadays. maybe if you just want to experience the tracks... but aside from that there's basically nothing here that isn't massively improved upon by the sequels. not even really a weird quaint early-series charm to it. it's basically a nothing-game. you can complete it in 4 hours and there's very little reason to come back to it afterwards. god bless acclaim for being desperate enough to let this happen and also get a sequel.
4.7/10
2011
[ambition and lost potential dragged down by a joyless core.]
let me get this out of the way. i'll readily admit that this game is... not good, to say the least. yet it has an odd effect on me where i can't help the fact that i'm just strangely drawn to it and can't stop myself from going back and trying it out every once in a while. even if i invariably stopped playing it the last time because it just pissed me off, leading to my eventual motivation for writing a review
apb is an open world quasi-mmo shooter in which players take the side of criminals or enforcers in the game's fictional city setting and partake in team-based missions, in which a group of players from one faction attempts to complete some objective and a group of players from the opposite faction are dispatched to oppose them. these missions are somewhat repetitive, and the objectives amount to little more than driving/walking to something, pressing the use key, and waiting, but the competition makes it entertaining enough as long as you're not being curbstomped. completing these missions awards you standing with contacts (which unlocks weapons, vehicles, upgrades, clothing, etc.) as well as money (which can be exchanged for goods and services), thus forming the game's progression. there's other window dressing - like open-world crimes such as mugging that criminals can commit to earn extra money, while enforcers can witness them and hunt them down - as well as the notoriety system which occasionally results in a player having a bounty for about a minute until they get unceremoniously murdered. but really the missions are the only thing that matters.
obviously one of this game's biggest draws that everyone talks about is the customization - and with good reason, as even today, very few games have matched the level of personalization that this game allows. in your character's appearance, their clothing, and even their vehicle, there's a vast array of options you can choose from, and you can decorate everything with custom designs (though this ability is somewhat limited without a premium subscription). there's even an auction house where players can sell the things they've created for in-game cash. but seriously, if there was a standalone version of the game that was JUST the various editors with all the options unlocked, i could spend a ton of hours on just that. and the music editor is one of the most novel ideas ever and i LOVE playing with it and making little midi-like ditty versions of songs that people will hear upon every infrequent occurrence of me killing someone. i hope the few people who die at my hand enjoy coheed and cambria, because they're getting to hear a recreation of a few seconds of the outro of "three evils."
now besides the incredible customization, the game doesn't particularly excel at anything, and anyone whos played it is likely aware of its various flaws. one of the biggest issues i personally take with this game is how agonizingly slow the progression is. the game entices you with so many items you can customize with, as well as numerous weapons and vehicles that make you more effective in battle, but in order to unlock anything you have to level up through chains of contacts spread throughout the game's two "action" districts (financial and waterfront) by completing missions for them. this can take quite a long time until you reach the things you want to unlock - especially when you have no opposition and thus reduced rewards, which is more common than you'd think. there's not a HUGE amount of people playing this game, and they tend to congregate in one district instance - usually financial, which means if the next contact you need to go through is in waterfront, you're often SOL.
speaking of players, the vast majority of the people playing this game now are very skilled players who have been playing for countless hours over years. now this game doesn't really have many issues with hackers, but you'll feel like you might as well be dealing with cheaters with how hopeless you are against more experienced and better-equipped players. sure, some part of the gap is based on skill, and you can eventually "git gud" enough to perform decently even with very basic gear, but it requires a lot more perseverance than most people have when you spend most of the time beating your head against the brick wall that is the playerbase. sure, the active playerbase being good at the game isn't inherently a flaw of the game itself, even if, from a pragmatic perspective, it does make it less fun to play. but hell, even if there were more new, less-experienced players, the matchmaking certainly doesn't try very hard to put them together. so there already aren't a lot of newcomers and those that do show up are quickly driven off by this, thus perpetuating the issue.
the starter weapons aren't awful (the STAR 556 is actually quite good), but the progression feels very linear in that the more you play and the more money you have, the better your weapons and upgrades. they're not so much different or playstyle-changing as much as they are just... better. and when you have to go up against all these people who have better things, you start to feel a little hopeless and the game starts to feel a little not-fun. and of course, when you look at the massive "armas shop" that sells all sorts of high-powered weaponry for real cash (as well as the "premium" subscription that lets you progress faster, among other benefits), the issue starts to be somewhat compounded. yes, being a free-to-play game following its revival (pried from the corpse of realtime worlds), it's no surprise that it has a bit of a pay-to-win problem. but to be fair, it's not the WORST. hell, the directly-cash-bought guns aren't even that OP anymore. the bigger issue is really the upgrades you unlock later in the game which take forever to get to, but slightly less forever if you got that premium ;). but it's still kind of a problem as it can easily turn off new players (which ties into what i said earlier).
mechanically, the combat is serviceable but unremarkable. there's no headshots or anything like that - as long as a bullet touches any part of someone's body, it does the same amount of damage - and the weapons feel fairly impactless as well. grenades get pretty annoying considering how much damage they do and how high-level players can throw them like a fucking quarterback whereas your sorry tosses go about 10 feet in front of you. driving feels loose and floaty, the vehicles have weird acceleration curves, handle collisions strangely (there are phone booths that inexplicably explode your vehicle instantly if you hit them) and since the physics are serverside, if your connection is less than fantastic you get some mad input lag, making all of this even worse. the maps aren't necessarily poorly designed gameplay-wise, with most objective areas having a number of routes to reach them, as well as various opportunities for cover or flanking, seemingly to reduce camping and force players into fast-paced close-quarters combat. still, there are unfortunately some exploitable areas that kind of kill that effort. the more obvious problem with the maps is that they feel so lifeless, empty, unmemorable, and boring, in stark contrast to the characters that inhabit them. there's really nothing worth doing outside of missions, it's just roads and grey or brick walls.
the weird silver lining to all this (aside from the customization) is that stylistically, the game is pretty rad - people don't talk about the killer visual aesthetic of the clothes, characters, and the loading screens, or that sweet, sweet theme music that now only plays during character creation. neither of all the lore content buried in the game, from the character bios to the mail messages contacts send you periodically as you work for them - both of which are read by probably nobody. hell, even the ui is pretty clean-looking (even if occasionally obtuse). but ultimately this exemplifies how such tiny details like this do little to soothe the pain in the game's core, and why i don't blame anyone for not paying much notice to them. it just leads to an experience where i really want to like the game, and i'll try to get into it time and time again, but the gameplay is just too much of a drag for me to play for more than a short while. i'm sure this isn't unfamiliar for many others who have tried it as well, and it's truly a shame knowing what this game was trying to be and what it could've possibly been.
3.9/10
let me get this out of the way. i'll readily admit that this game is... not good, to say the least. yet it has an odd effect on me where i can't help the fact that i'm just strangely drawn to it and can't stop myself from going back and trying it out every once in a while. even if i invariably stopped playing it the last time because it just pissed me off, leading to my eventual motivation for writing a review
apb is an open world quasi-mmo shooter in which players take the side of criminals or enforcers in the game's fictional city setting and partake in team-based missions, in which a group of players from one faction attempts to complete some objective and a group of players from the opposite faction are dispatched to oppose them. these missions are somewhat repetitive, and the objectives amount to little more than driving/walking to something, pressing the use key, and waiting, but the competition makes it entertaining enough as long as you're not being curbstomped. completing these missions awards you standing with contacts (which unlocks weapons, vehicles, upgrades, clothing, etc.) as well as money (which can be exchanged for goods and services), thus forming the game's progression. there's other window dressing - like open-world crimes such as mugging that criminals can commit to earn extra money, while enforcers can witness them and hunt them down - as well as the notoriety system which occasionally results in a player having a bounty for about a minute until they get unceremoniously murdered. but really the missions are the only thing that matters.
obviously one of this game's biggest draws that everyone talks about is the customization - and with good reason, as even today, very few games have matched the level of personalization that this game allows. in your character's appearance, their clothing, and even their vehicle, there's a vast array of options you can choose from, and you can decorate everything with custom designs (though this ability is somewhat limited without a premium subscription). there's even an auction house where players can sell the things they've created for in-game cash. but seriously, if there was a standalone version of the game that was JUST the various editors with all the options unlocked, i could spend a ton of hours on just that. and the music editor is one of the most novel ideas ever and i LOVE playing with it and making little midi-like ditty versions of songs that people will hear upon every infrequent occurrence of me killing someone. i hope the few people who die at my hand enjoy coheed and cambria, because they're getting to hear a recreation of a few seconds of the outro of "three evils."
now besides the incredible customization, the game doesn't particularly excel at anything, and anyone whos played it is likely aware of its various flaws. one of the biggest issues i personally take with this game is how agonizingly slow the progression is. the game entices you with so many items you can customize with, as well as numerous weapons and vehicles that make you more effective in battle, but in order to unlock anything you have to level up through chains of contacts spread throughout the game's two "action" districts (financial and waterfront) by completing missions for them. this can take quite a long time until you reach the things you want to unlock - especially when you have no opposition and thus reduced rewards, which is more common than you'd think. there's not a HUGE amount of people playing this game, and they tend to congregate in one district instance - usually financial, which means if the next contact you need to go through is in waterfront, you're often SOL.
speaking of players, the vast majority of the people playing this game now are very skilled players who have been playing for countless hours over years. now this game doesn't really have many issues with hackers, but you'll feel like you might as well be dealing with cheaters with how hopeless you are against more experienced and better-equipped players. sure, some part of the gap is based on skill, and you can eventually "git gud" enough to perform decently even with very basic gear, but it requires a lot more perseverance than most people have when you spend most of the time beating your head against the brick wall that is the playerbase. sure, the active playerbase being good at the game isn't inherently a flaw of the game itself, even if, from a pragmatic perspective, it does make it less fun to play. but hell, even if there were more new, less-experienced players, the matchmaking certainly doesn't try very hard to put them together. so there already aren't a lot of newcomers and those that do show up are quickly driven off by this, thus perpetuating the issue.
the starter weapons aren't awful (the STAR 556 is actually quite good), but the progression feels very linear in that the more you play and the more money you have, the better your weapons and upgrades. they're not so much different or playstyle-changing as much as they are just... better. and when you have to go up against all these people who have better things, you start to feel a little hopeless and the game starts to feel a little not-fun. and of course, when you look at the massive "armas shop" that sells all sorts of high-powered weaponry for real cash (as well as the "premium" subscription that lets you progress faster, among other benefits), the issue starts to be somewhat compounded. yes, being a free-to-play game following its revival (pried from the corpse of realtime worlds), it's no surprise that it has a bit of a pay-to-win problem. but to be fair, it's not the WORST. hell, the directly-cash-bought guns aren't even that OP anymore. the bigger issue is really the upgrades you unlock later in the game which take forever to get to, but slightly less forever if you got that premium ;). but it's still kind of a problem as it can easily turn off new players (which ties into what i said earlier).
mechanically, the combat is serviceable but unremarkable. there's no headshots or anything like that - as long as a bullet touches any part of someone's body, it does the same amount of damage - and the weapons feel fairly impactless as well. grenades get pretty annoying considering how much damage they do and how high-level players can throw them like a fucking quarterback whereas your sorry tosses go about 10 feet in front of you. driving feels loose and floaty, the vehicles have weird acceleration curves, handle collisions strangely (there are phone booths that inexplicably explode your vehicle instantly if you hit them) and since the physics are serverside, if your connection is less than fantastic you get some mad input lag, making all of this even worse. the maps aren't necessarily poorly designed gameplay-wise, with most objective areas having a number of routes to reach them, as well as various opportunities for cover or flanking, seemingly to reduce camping and force players into fast-paced close-quarters combat. still, there are unfortunately some exploitable areas that kind of kill that effort. the more obvious problem with the maps is that they feel so lifeless, empty, unmemorable, and boring, in stark contrast to the characters that inhabit them. there's really nothing worth doing outside of missions, it's just roads and grey or brick walls.
the weird silver lining to all this (aside from the customization) is that stylistically, the game is pretty rad - people don't talk about the killer visual aesthetic of the clothes, characters, and the loading screens, or that sweet, sweet theme music that now only plays during character creation. neither of all the lore content buried in the game, from the character bios to the mail messages contacts send you periodically as you work for them - both of which are read by probably nobody. hell, even the ui is pretty clean-looking (even if occasionally obtuse). but ultimately this exemplifies how such tiny details like this do little to soothe the pain in the game's core, and why i don't blame anyone for not paying much notice to them. it just leads to an experience where i really want to like the game, and i'll try to get into it time and time again, but the gameplay is just too much of a drag for me to play for more than a short while. i'm sure this isn't unfamiliar for many others who have tried it as well, and it's truly a shame knowing what this game was trying to be and what it could've possibly been.
3.9/10
2011
[the taming of the dudebro.]
in many ways, dirt 3 is a refinement of the formula introduced with dirt 2. having heard fan complaints about the direction taken in the previous game, codemasters here have brought dirt 3 into a sort of middle-ground between dirt 1 and 2, going back to a more subdued, euro-esque rally experience as opposed to the sensationalized festival vibes and general offroad mish-mash of two years prior, while still maintaining a certain level of x-games grandeur.
in line with its shift back towards a rally-centric approach, the presentation of dirt 3 is noticeably toned down compared to its predecessor. while codemasters' distinctive "3d menu" style of the era is still very much present, the menus are much slicker and cleaner compared to the flashiness of dirt 2. many welcomed this withdrawal from the very americanized skater-bro vibes of dirt 2, in exchange for uhh... pyramids. and some regular triangles but mostly pyramids. personally though, i miss the personality of that game. the immersion and atmosphere of that game were hardly matched in the racing genre, and though i understand why some would find it obnoxious and just want to drive, i found myself a bit less invested and more disconnected from the action.
on a technical level, this game isn't quite the leap dirt 2 was over 1, but it's still noticeably improved. the graphics here are quite pretty - all the rally locations look gorgeous and have some really nice lighting effects, with michigan being my personal fave. on top of that, variable time of day and weather are back, and their presence is greatly welcomed! it does slightly lack the vibrance of 2, as there seems to be a muted blue tone over everything, but i still appreciate this aesthetic choice and it still looks very nice. however some locations look a little "dead" in comparison to their preceding counterparts, most notably los angeles, but it's not a huge deal.
there's not really much to say in the physics department, because they play very similarly to how they did in dirt 2. jumping from that game to this, you'll feel perfectly at home - but they are a bit more fine-tuned and polished, making for some of the most enjoyable arcade rally physics i've experienced. i also like the ability to toggle assists for the first time in a dirt game, so i can finally have all of them off!
likewise, the sound design is basically on par with the last game. the soundtrack isn't quite as banger-after-banger as dirt 2 but there's a lot of good stuff from artists like danny byrd, everything everything, atmosphere, leftfield, manchester orchestra, 65daysofstatic, and more, bringing an eclectic mix of electronica, alt rock and metal, and hip hop. still wish there was an in-race music option though, at least for rallycross, landrush, and gymkhana. there's also a few "characters" in the form of voiceovers that guide you along and congratulate you for wins, which some people find annoying, but i don't mind. they're a bit generic but kind of wholesome when you get past the "DUDE YOU SHOULD TOTALLY UPLOAD THAT TO YOUTUBE AMIGO!!" and their speech after the final event was actually kind of heartwarming in a weird way.
while i do miss the atmosphere lost in the aforementioned stylistic turnaround towards more traditional rally, i do appreciate what this meant in terms of gameplay structure. the dirt tour in this game, rather than being organized by location, is split into four seasons each with four series that contain a number of events spread across the different disciplines. supplementing this is a series of "world tour" events that take you across each location in each discipline of the game - these include traditional rally, rallycross, and trailblazer returning en force, landrush (in a somewhat diminished capacity compared to 2), head2head (crossover races, returning from the original dirt) and the all new gymkhana mode.
let's talk about gymkhana. many HATED when this mode was introduced, as it "sours" what would've been a more rally-heavy package with the least rally thing the series has seen yet. but those people are lame because it's actually fun as hell. it's essentially a stunt-driving mode that has you stringing together drifts, spins, donuts, jumps, and smashes to rack up points within an arena, and it's shockingly addictive. in addition to standard gymkhana events, there are also numerous "challenges" peppered throughout the career that require you to do things such as earning enough points by drifting, completing certain tricks under a time limit, smashing objects in an area while avoiding penalties, and so on. they're a fun diversion and i appreciate their presence.
still, rally events take slight precedence for most of the dirt tour. there are four locations in the game for both rally and trailblazer - finland, kenya, michigan, and norway (with dlc adding monte carlo for rally only). all of them are highly visually distinct and beautiful to look at, with the stages themselves being quite fun to drive. and snow stages! how i missed thee in the past two dirt games. however, they are all still disappointingly short, with the longest stages taking around 3 minutes at the most. also, damage continues to play a minimal role despite the game attempting to hearken back to the "old days," - there's no need to repair, and i never even took enough damage to light up the damage indicators. also why the FUCK does it reset your setup to default after EVERY RACE??
although the number of locations is similar in number to dirt 2, there are many more stages in each one. the 8 stages per area do tend to re-use sections and just have different start- and endpoints, but any amount of variation here feels like a big step up from before. indeed, even in other modes like rallycross or landrush, the tracks tend to share a common area but with slight alterations to the layout to keep things from being stagnant. a lot of these variations are relatively minor, but it actually works wonders for decreasing the feeling of repetition - i was shocked to find out i spent nearly as much time completing this game as i did dirt 2, as this game feels like it flew by a lot quicker since the races were just that much less monotonous. as a final note, i do somewhat miss the raid discipline, although raid vehicles are still present and there are a couple events that have you using them on normal rally tracks.
speaking of vehicles, the car variety here is also noticeably better, especially with all the dlc included in the complete edition. the rally car class is huge and includes a good swath of iconic cars from different eras dating all the way back to the 70s. the trailblazer class also includes both classic and modern hillclimb cars, and the rallycross and gymkhana selections have a good amount of choice as well. however, even though i'm not the biggest fan of landrush, i do lament the lack of unique vehicles available in this game. there is simply a single unlicensed "stadium truck" and likewise a "stadium buggy" which are actually just re-used models of the toyota truck from dirt 2 and the scott schwalbe buggy from dirt 1.
with this very welcomed variety, it's unfortunate that the way the career mode is designed restricts you from being able to fully enjoy it. progression in this game drops cash and is done entirely via earning rep (experience) from events and ranking up. this is fine, but the problem is the amount of rep you earn is heavily dependent on bonus objectives which award variable rep depending on which team you drive for. instead of being able to simply own cars and pick the livery you like, each car and livery has a certain rep award attached to it depending on what level it was unlocked at. essentially, you are punished for wanting to use a certain car based on personal preference or even pick the color you like because you earn less xp if it's one you unlocked earlier. which sucks. also, a lot of the most iconic liveries are not usable in career because they're the "default" and not tied to one of the common teams that you unlock access to during the career!
the objectives themselves are usually alright but sometimes dumb. you might get "be in the lead at the halfway point" on a crossover race and then start on the side of the track that's definitively longer, or get "finish without taking damage" on a rallycross or landrush race, which are basically impossible to win without bumping at least a tiny bit. fortunately (i guess?), rep caps out at level 30, at which point you can feel free to ignore objectives and pick whatever you like.
i also want to mention the difficulty curve is still a bit off here. non time-based events are generally fine even on the highest difficulty, requiring a good amount of skill to take the win while not being unreasonable, and usually with only a little bit of cheese necessary. but for rally and trailblazer, things are all over the place. its sort of like dirt 2 where the hardest difficulty is too hard and one lower is too easy. i set it to the second highest because it's the safest, least-frustrating bet, but there are still some events where i put in a perfect run and just barely make first, and others where i barely have to try and finish over 10 seconds ahead.
dirt 3 feels like kind of a weird case for me, because on many levels it directly improves upon dirt 2, and yet... something just feels missing. i still like dirt 2 more. for most people i would probably recommend dirt 3 as the highlight of the original dirt trilogy for its superiority in technical aspects such as physics as well as in most parts of the gameplay design. but for me, personally, and for other weirdos maybe, there's just something about the charm and character of the second game that keeps it on top. still, if you're a casual racing fan who wants a good arcade rally game, you can hardly go wrong here.
7.7/10
in many ways, dirt 3 is a refinement of the formula introduced with dirt 2. having heard fan complaints about the direction taken in the previous game, codemasters here have brought dirt 3 into a sort of middle-ground between dirt 1 and 2, going back to a more subdued, euro-esque rally experience as opposed to the sensationalized festival vibes and general offroad mish-mash of two years prior, while still maintaining a certain level of x-games grandeur.
in line with its shift back towards a rally-centric approach, the presentation of dirt 3 is noticeably toned down compared to its predecessor. while codemasters' distinctive "3d menu" style of the era is still very much present, the menus are much slicker and cleaner compared to the flashiness of dirt 2. many welcomed this withdrawal from the very americanized skater-bro vibes of dirt 2, in exchange for uhh... pyramids. and some regular triangles but mostly pyramids. personally though, i miss the personality of that game. the immersion and atmosphere of that game were hardly matched in the racing genre, and though i understand why some would find it obnoxious and just want to drive, i found myself a bit less invested and more disconnected from the action.
on a technical level, this game isn't quite the leap dirt 2 was over 1, but it's still noticeably improved. the graphics here are quite pretty - all the rally locations look gorgeous and have some really nice lighting effects, with michigan being my personal fave. on top of that, variable time of day and weather are back, and their presence is greatly welcomed! it does slightly lack the vibrance of 2, as there seems to be a muted blue tone over everything, but i still appreciate this aesthetic choice and it still looks very nice. however some locations look a little "dead" in comparison to their preceding counterparts, most notably los angeles, but it's not a huge deal.
there's not really much to say in the physics department, because they play very similarly to how they did in dirt 2. jumping from that game to this, you'll feel perfectly at home - but they are a bit more fine-tuned and polished, making for some of the most enjoyable arcade rally physics i've experienced. i also like the ability to toggle assists for the first time in a dirt game, so i can finally have all of them off!
likewise, the sound design is basically on par with the last game. the soundtrack isn't quite as banger-after-banger as dirt 2 but there's a lot of good stuff from artists like danny byrd, everything everything, atmosphere, leftfield, manchester orchestra, 65daysofstatic, and more, bringing an eclectic mix of electronica, alt rock and metal, and hip hop. still wish there was an in-race music option though, at least for rallycross, landrush, and gymkhana. there's also a few "characters" in the form of voiceovers that guide you along and congratulate you for wins, which some people find annoying, but i don't mind. they're a bit generic but kind of wholesome when you get past the "DUDE YOU SHOULD TOTALLY UPLOAD THAT TO YOUTUBE AMIGO!!" and their speech after the final event was actually kind of heartwarming in a weird way.
while i do miss the atmosphere lost in the aforementioned stylistic turnaround towards more traditional rally, i do appreciate what this meant in terms of gameplay structure. the dirt tour in this game, rather than being organized by location, is split into four seasons each with four series that contain a number of events spread across the different disciplines. supplementing this is a series of "world tour" events that take you across each location in each discipline of the game - these include traditional rally, rallycross, and trailblazer returning en force, landrush (in a somewhat diminished capacity compared to 2), head2head (crossover races, returning from the original dirt) and the all new gymkhana mode.
let's talk about gymkhana. many HATED when this mode was introduced, as it "sours" what would've been a more rally-heavy package with the least rally thing the series has seen yet. but those people are lame because it's actually fun as hell. it's essentially a stunt-driving mode that has you stringing together drifts, spins, donuts, jumps, and smashes to rack up points within an arena, and it's shockingly addictive. in addition to standard gymkhana events, there are also numerous "challenges" peppered throughout the career that require you to do things such as earning enough points by drifting, completing certain tricks under a time limit, smashing objects in an area while avoiding penalties, and so on. they're a fun diversion and i appreciate their presence.
still, rally events take slight precedence for most of the dirt tour. there are four locations in the game for both rally and trailblazer - finland, kenya, michigan, and norway (with dlc adding monte carlo for rally only). all of them are highly visually distinct and beautiful to look at, with the stages themselves being quite fun to drive. and snow stages! how i missed thee in the past two dirt games. however, they are all still disappointingly short, with the longest stages taking around 3 minutes at the most. also, damage continues to play a minimal role despite the game attempting to hearken back to the "old days," - there's no need to repair, and i never even took enough damage to light up the damage indicators. also why the FUCK does it reset your setup to default after EVERY RACE??
although the number of locations is similar in number to dirt 2, there are many more stages in each one. the 8 stages per area do tend to re-use sections and just have different start- and endpoints, but any amount of variation here feels like a big step up from before. indeed, even in other modes like rallycross or landrush, the tracks tend to share a common area but with slight alterations to the layout to keep things from being stagnant. a lot of these variations are relatively minor, but it actually works wonders for decreasing the feeling of repetition - i was shocked to find out i spent nearly as much time completing this game as i did dirt 2, as this game feels like it flew by a lot quicker since the races were just that much less monotonous. as a final note, i do somewhat miss the raid discipline, although raid vehicles are still present and there are a couple events that have you using them on normal rally tracks.
speaking of vehicles, the car variety here is also noticeably better, especially with all the dlc included in the complete edition. the rally car class is huge and includes a good swath of iconic cars from different eras dating all the way back to the 70s. the trailblazer class also includes both classic and modern hillclimb cars, and the rallycross and gymkhana selections have a good amount of choice as well. however, even though i'm not the biggest fan of landrush, i do lament the lack of unique vehicles available in this game. there is simply a single unlicensed "stadium truck" and likewise a "stadium buggy" which are actually just re-used models of the toyota truck from dirt 2 and the scott schwalbe buggy from dirt 1.
with this very welcomed variety, it's unfortunate that the way the career mode is designed restricts you from being able to fully enjoy it. progression in this game drops cash and is done entirely via earning rep (experience) from events and ranking up. this is fine, but the problem is the amount of rep you earn is heavily dependent on bonus objectives which award variable rep depending on which team you drive for. instead of being able to simply own cars and pick the livery you like, each car and livery has a certain rep award attached to it depending on what level it was unlocked at. essentially, you are punished for wanting to use a certain car based on personal preference or even pick the color you like because you earn less xp if it's one you unlocked earlier. which sucks. also, a lot of the most iconic liveries are not usable in career because they're the "default" and not tied to one of the common teams that you unlock access to during the career!
the objectives themselves are usually alright but sometimes dumb. you might get "be in the lead at the halfway point" on a crossover race and then start on the side of the track that's definitively longer, or get "finish without taking damage" on a rallycross or landrush race, which are basically impossible to win without bumping at least a tiny bit. fortunately (i guess?), rep caps out at level 30, at which point you can feel free to ignore objectives and pick whatever you like.
i also want to mention the difficulty curve is still a bit off here. non time-based events are generally fine even on the highest difficulty, requiring a good amount of skill to take the win while not being unreasonable, and usually with only a little bit of cheese necessary. but for rally and trailblazer, things are all over the place. its sort of like dirt 2 where the hardest difficulty is too hard and one lower is too easy. i set it to the second highest because it's the safest, least-frustrating bet, but there are still some events where i put in a perfect run and just barely make first, and others where i barely have to try and finish over 10 seconds ahead.
dirt 3 feels like kind of a weird case for me, because on many levels it directly improves upon dirt 2, and yet... something just feels missing. i still like dirt 2 more. for most people i would probably recommend dirt 3 as the highlight of the original dirt trilogy for its superiority in technical aspects such as physics as well as in most parts of the gameplay design. but for me, personally, and for other weirdos maybe, there's just something about the charm and character of the second game that keeps it on top. still, if you're a casual racing fan who wants a good arcade rally game, you can hardly go wrong here.
7.7/10
2009
[jumping the dudebro shark but sticking the extreme x games landing (but like with a car. a rally car specifically) (sponsored by monster energy)]
in dirt 2, codemasters drop all pretense of this being close to a traditional colin mcrae game, or even really a rally game period. yes, there is rallying, but really this is more of a compilation of all things offroad. of course, lots of fans were Very Not Okay with this, and yearned for the days of true rally instead of DUDE KEN BLOCK MONSTER ENERGY XGAMES BRO. and while i, too, certainly enjoy a good rally, this game actually turned out better for realizing its true identity rather than trying to act like something it's not, and manages to achieve a sort of focus via unfocus.
literally straight of the gate, the game just smacks you in the face with its loud, skaterbro aesthetic. and unlike many a generic and forgettable racing game aesthetic, it still stands out and looks pretty unique and stylish now, with the punky neon green festival style bringing to mind future games such as forza horizon 1, and past titles like nfs prostreet and even ssx on tour. also immediately apparent is the significant improvement in graphical detail - where dirt 1 has started to show its age in many regards, this game still looks quite good today.
the ui design is fucking stellar, and still one of my favorite menus in any game ever, and definitely among the most creative and immersive i've seen in the genre. this game places you in a physical space inside a festival site with a first-person perspective. and that's the menu. you can look around, and various items inside and outside your motorhome correspond to different menus, and all of the submenus actually have a physical manifestation that you can see even when you're not in them. every location in the game actually has a unique version of the festival area depending on where you did your last event, with different surrounding scenery in each one. various decorations, souvenirs, and scattered objects appear in your motorhome as you progress through the game, and random clutter objects and food items sitting around randomly show up and leave. even the events are all actually represented by unique lanyards. it all adds up to this thick atmosphere that you just rarely see on this level in racing games. it's like warped but with cars, so naturally i am all about this shit. imagining myself there, with the soundtrack playing off in the distance while the announcer guy talks about how the last song gave him a boner, it's pure bliss
speaking of the soundtrack, it is absolutely FULL of bangers, with killer tracks primarily from era-appropriate indie bands, including bloc party, silversun pickups, the cribs, yeah yeah yeahs, the stone roses, friendly fires, qotsa, and more. there's some surprise hits in there too - massive shoutout to "jeremy kyle is a marked man" by blakfish because holy HELL that song fucking goes. although it's disappointing that they don't play while driving. it's understandable for rally/trailblazer but why not in the other modes? at least have an option. as for other sound design, the engine sounds in this game are quite good, as well as the sounds of tires against different road surfaces, adding an appropriate amount of grit to the game. however, i feel a noticeable lack of ambient environmental sounds. for instance, you think maybe you'd hear some like, animal sounds or leaves rustling or some shit in the rainforests of malaysia. it would have added a nice bit of additional atmosphere to each location.
now despite the presentation's turn for the arcadey and exaggerated, the physics are actually a marked improvement in realism over the previous game. the brakes are no longer superpowered so you actually have to slow well in advance, and more realistic sliding on loose surfaces is very much present as opposed to the high grip of dirt 1. different surfaces actually feel noticeably distinct again, with major differences in feel between dirt and tarmac, so dirt actually feels loose and... like dirt. everything just feels so much more weighty and grounded compared to the predecessor. its easily the best driving the series has seen yet and that's including the classic games.
going back to what i said about "focus via unfocus," it may seem like an odd statement, but it really makes perfect sense - even though it's more sprawling and diverse than its predecessor, it still feels like it knows what it wants to be. dirt 1 felt like it was primarily meant to be a traditional rally game, but they decided to throw in some trucks and buggies at the last minute and make a couple tracks for each of the other modes. this game knows it's setting out to be a more even blend of various offroad disciplines, fully embracing the "americanized" style rather than treading on the edge. although there aren't a ton of tracks, the variety in locations and event types and the regular distribution of different race styles makes the repetition not quite as noticeable.
in comparison to the often homogenous, 2007-bloom-afflicted and slightly dull locales of dirt 1, all of the different areas in dirt 2 are vivid, colorful, and immediately distinguishable from one another. every single location has a vibrant color palette and lovely scenery both roadside and in the far distance. however, there is somewhat of a quality over quantity approach, as each location only has a couple tracks per discipline, and none of them feature every discipline. morocco has the most with 4, but utah and all of the rallycross locations only have one. the rally deemphasis is unfortunately also noticeable in the track design. while they are pretty, they are also scant in number, often very short even by videogame rally standards (typically around 2 minutes), and not as technically challenging as those in the previous games. the loss of some depth from previous games in aspects such as the damage and repair system is lamented, but in a way the game is designed around these omissions, so looking past it isn't too hard.
the car variety on display here is still good, but honestly a bit disappointing compared to the last game. many iconic or regularly-appearing rally cars are missing, and the main 3 rally divisions share many of the same cars, just with different kits. a good amount of those cars are not the kinds you would typically want to drive in a rally game, and some of the more "fun" disciplines like the hillclimb trucks from dirt 1 are gone. the car balance is totally out of whack, as in many disciplines there are cars that are clearly outstanding, and others that are noticeably weaker and practically unusable in the harder difficulties, forcing you to use the "meta" picks if you want to compete on that level. however, the minor customization in the form of dashboard bobbleheads and toys hanging from the mirror is a neat and appreciated little attention to detail, as well as the stickers you get on your dashboard depending on which events you have completed.
another aspect worth mentioning is the ai, which may not be perfect, but it's a noticeable improvement over the first game. they feel a lot more like human drivers (not just because of their voice reactions when you bump or pass them) and deal much better with large groups in tight areas. it's a nice touch that they race at the same time with staggered starts on timed events - much like a real rally event - but from a gameplay perspective it's slightly frustrating when you don't really get to see how well you placed until the end unless you're lucky enough to start last. it's also neat that they are capable of making mistakes and wrecking out of their own accord. however, the ai is still too inconsistent for the team races in this game to be fun when you have to rely on the ai teammate to do well. it typically just turns into a combat racer, where you have to take out the other opponents to allow your teammate to place well, and often restart because they crashed or just somehow inexplicably ended up in last after you looked away for 3 seconds.
overall, dirt 2 is bound to be polarizing in many regards and doesn't manage to perfect every aspect, but the amount of technical improvements in both visuals and playability compared to the original dirt, plus the unique charm and atmosphere that this game brings to the table, make it my favorite game in the dirt series and one of my favorite arcade rally games.
8.1/10
in dirt 2, codemasters drop all pretense of this being close to a traditional colin mcrae game, or even really a rally game period. yes, there is rallying, but really this is more of a compilation of all things offroad. of course, lots of fans were Very Not Okay with this, and yearned for the days of true rally instead of DUDE KEN BLOCK MONSTER ENERGY XGAMES BRO. and while i, too, certainly enjoy a good rally, this game actually turned out better for realizing its true identity rather than trying to act like something it's not, and manages to achieve a sort of focus via unfocus.
literally straight of the gate, the game just smacks you in the face with its loud, skaterbro aesthetic. and unlike many a generic and forgettable racing game aesthetic, it still stands out and looks pretty unique and stylish now, with the punky neon green festival style bringing to mind future games such as forza horizon 1, and past titles like nfs prostreet and even ssx on tour. also immediately apparent is the significant improvement in graphical detail - where dirt 1 has started to show its age in many regards, this game still looks quite good today.
the ui design is fucking stellar, and still one of my favorite menus in any game ever, and definitely among the most creative and immersive i've seen in the genre. this game places you in a physical space inside a festival site with a first-person perspective. and that's the menu. you can look around, and various items inside and outside your motorhome correspond to different menus, and all of the submenus actually have a physical manifestation that you can see even when you're not in them. every location in the game actually has a unique version of the festival area depending on where you did your last event, with different surrounding scenery in each one. various decorations, souvenirs, and scattered objects appear in your motorhome as you progress through the game, and random clutter objects and food items sitting around randomly show up and leave. even the events are all actually represented by unique lanyards. it all adds up to this thick atmosphere that you just rarely see on this level in racing games. it's like warped but with cars, so naturally i am all about this shit. imagining myself there, with the soundtrack playing off in the distance while the announcer guy talks about how the last song gave him a boner, it's pure bliss
speaking of the soundtrack, it is absolutely FULL of bangers, with killer tracks primarily from era-appropriate indie bands, including bloc party, silversun pickups, the cribs, yeah yeah yeahs, the stone roses, friendly fires, qotsa, and more. there's some surprise hits in there too - massive shoutout to "jeremy kyle is a marked man" by blakfish because holy HELL that song fucking goes. although it's disappointing that they don't play while driving. it's understandable for rally/trailblazer but why not in the other modes? at least have an option. as for other sound design, the engine sounds in this game are quite good, as well as the sounds of tires against different road surfaces, adding an appropriate amount of grit to the game. however, i feel a noticeable lack of ambient environmental sounds. for instance, you think maybe you'd hear some like, animal sounds or leaves rustling or some shit in the rainforests of malaysia. it would have added a nice bit of additional atmosphere to each location.
now despite the presentation's turn for the arcadey and exaggerated, the physics are actually a marked improvement in realism over the previous game. the brakes are no longer superpowered so you actually have to slow well in advance, and more realistic sliding on loose surfaces is very much present as opposed to the high grip of dirt 1. different surfaces actually feel noticeably distinct again, with major differences in feel between dirt and tarmac, so dirt actually feels loose and... like dirt. everything just feels so much more weighty and grounded compared to the predecessor. its easily the best driving the series has seen yet and that's including the classic games.
going back to what i said about "focus via unfocus," it may seem like an odd statement, but it really makes perfect sense - even though it's more sprawling and diverse than its predecessor, it still feels like it knows what it wants to be. dirt 1 felt like it was primarily meant to be a traditional rally game, but they decided to throw in some trucks and buggies at the last minute and make a couple tracks for each of the other modes. this game knows it's setting out to be a more even blend of various offroad disciplines, fully embracing the "americanized" style rather than treading on the edge. although there aren't a ton of tracks, the variety in locations and event types and the regular distribution of different race styles makes the repetition not quite as noticeable.
in comparison to the often homogenous, 2007-bloom-afflicted and slightly dull locales of dirt 1, all of the different areas in dirt 2 are vivid, colorful, and immediately distinguishable from one another. every single location has a vibrant color palette and lovely scenery both roadside and in the far distance. however, there is somewhat of a quality over quantity approach, as each location only has a couple tracks per discipline, and none of them feature every discipline. morocco has the most with 4, but utah and all of the rallycross locations only have one. the rally deemphasis is unfortunately also noticeable in the track design. while they are pretty, they are also scant in number, often very short even by videogame rally standards (typically around 2 minutes), and not as technically challenging as those in the previous games. the loss of some depth from previous games in aspects such as the damage and repair system is lamented, but in a way the game is designed around these omissions, so looking past it isn't too hard.
the car variety on display here is still good, but honestly a bit disappointing compared to the last game. many iconic or regularly-appearing rally cars are missing, and the main 3 rally divisions share many of the same cars, just with different kits. a good amount of those cars are not the kinds you would typically want to drive in a rally game, and some of the more "fun" disciplines like the hillclimb trucks from dirt 1 are gone. the car balance is totally out of whack, as in many disciplines there are cars that are clearly outstanding, and others that are noticeably weaker and practically unusable in the harder difficulties, forcing you to use the "meta" picks if you want to compete on that level. however, the minor customization in the form of dashboard bobbleheads and toys hanging from the mirror is a neat and appreciated little attention to detail, as well as the stickers you get on your dashboard depending on which events you have completed.
another aspect worth mentioning is the ai, which may not be perfect, but it's a noticeable improvement over the first game. they feel a lot more like human drivers (not just because of their voice reactions when you bump or pass them) and deal much better with large groups in tight areas. it's a nice touch that they race at the same time with staggered starts on timed events - much like a real rally event - but from a gameplay perspective it's slightly frustrating when you don't really get to see how well you placed until the end unless you're lucky enough to start last. it's also neat that they are capable of making mistakes and wrecking out of their own accord. however, the ai is still too inconsistent for the team races in this game to be fun when you have to rely on the ai teammate to do well. it typically just turns into a combat racer, where you have to take out the other opponents to allow your teammate to place well, and often restart because they crashed or just somehow inexplicably ended up in last after you looked away for 3 seconds.
overall, dirt 2 is bound to be polarizing in many regards and doesn't manage to perfect every aspect, but the amount of technical improvements in both visuals and playability compared to the original dirt, plus the unique charm and atmosphere that this game brings to the table, make it my favorite game in the dirt series and one of my favorite arcade rally games.
8.1/10
2007
[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
[the awkward middle-ground between two vastly superior games.]
gran turismo 3 was the first gran turismo game to be released for the nearly-brand-new-at-the-time ps2, and was considered sort of a paradigm shift for the series and for the racing genre as a whole. when it came out, it was widely praised for its ambition and depth, as it was truly groundbreaking at the time - enough that the numerous faults of the game could be ignored. now, the elements that were groundbreaking at the time have long been matched or surpassed by other games, and while it is still a well-made game, the flaws now stand out more than ever. a lot of people tend to still rate this game very highly, maybe even considering it the greatest racing game of all time, but imo this is heavily nostalgia-blinded. sadly, this game really isn't all that fun to play now.
but first, let's talk about the good parts. visually, the graphics turned many heads back in its day, and having the amount of cars that this game does, modeled with this much attention to detail, was practically unheard of. sure, there's under 200 cars in this game - a steep decline from gt2's 600+ - but it's understandable considering the graphical leap forced them to basically start from scratch. the tracks, although few, look pretty gorgeous as well, with a good amount of roadside detail. though admittedly a lot of them are set in green fields. there's no denying it still looks like a game of its time, but it's aged fairly well and isn't bad at all to look at even now.
although better pure simulators existed at the time, the physics in this game struck a good balance between detailed and accessible that still plays quite well today. there is a certain lack of excitement and sense of speed in the driving, making for a very "gamey" feeling, but it controls perfectly fine. i did experience some issues with steering/throttle sensitivity but that was likely due to the quirks of mapping a ps2 controller to an xbox pad via emulation, with the analog throttle/brake calibrated for pressure-sensitive buttons rather than triggers. the amount of tuning is also pretty great, between the various purchasable upgrades and the fine-tuning that can be done before a race. thus on a baseline level, the game still feels good and fun to play, and for a casual play session you'll probably get a good deal of enjoyment.
another large area of praise went to the amount of content and depth in the game's career mode, and indeed the amount of events all suited for different car types could occupy the player for many hours - but herein lies the problem. once you play this game for a while you soon realize how limited the variety in the career mode actually is, and then you realize you're still only like 15% done with the game. from that point on it basically becomes a slog, as this game is padded out to absolute hell.
as nice-looking as the tracks are, there are only 14 of them in the career (excluding rally), two of which are ovals, and nearly all of them are updated versions of gt1/2 tracks. the only thing that really changes between events is the car you're using, but even that is limited because when you're playing the game "properly" you'll be reusing cars as much as possible to save credits. it gets more and more tiring the longer you play, up to the point where the last few professional league events are practically the same 10 tracks with more and more laps. they're not really more difficult, they're just... more time-consuming. like, look polyphony - endurance races are cool, but was it really necessary to make EVERY race in the professional league 10 laps at a minimum? it's not very fun.
to further illustrate this point, let's compare this game to its predecessor in terms of miles driven (seriously i did the math) - the 2nd least used circuit in this game is driven for more miles in the career mode than the most used track from gt2. if you exclude gt2's endurance races, you drive more miles on test course, r246, grand valley, and rome EACH INDIVIDUALLY in this game than you do in the ENTIRETY of gran turismo 2. gt2 is by no means a short game. this game is almost 5x longer in terms of miles driven across every event. and yet even if it were the same length, the content would be stretched thinner in gt3 since there are less tracks and cars. this game took me roughly 145 hours to 100%, and there's not nearly enough content to make that time feel truly worthwhile.
there's also a lack of shorter, twistier tracks or even short layouts of tracks like in gt2, which makes the races in more underpowered cars more tedious than they need to be. the epitome of this issue is the 10 lap test course race in the toyota vitz event, which is just half an hour of holding right trigger and driving in a circle at 130mph. i don't know who thought this was a good idea. like seriously, why. why? this has to have been done intentionally as a troll, because if so they sure got me! why the fuck would anyone in their right mind play this and think this is fun?
the rally races are at first a nice change of pace, but then you realize that each "event" of 3 races is just the same track with more laps each time, half of the events are just reverse versions of the others, and one of the "rally" tracks is just a normal track. the rally physics are a liiittle weird too - the dirt physics feel fun but oddly feel more responsive than tarmac, and make the transition between the two jarring in tracks with mixed surfaces.
there are also a lot of balancing issues with the career mode. for starters, there are no horsepower restrictions for any race, and nowhere is it displayed how much power the ai drivers in any race have. this makes the chances of having an even, exciting race pretty slim - either you use what you have and end up underpowered, or you just tune as much as possible and hope for the best and then usually end up being super overpowered and with no challenge. since you don't know how much power to aim for, it would be a lot of trial and error to "balance" yourself with the ai. and even still its not even consistent how fast the ai are in the same car!
another common criticism throughout all the gran turismo games is the ai, which in this game is still practically braindead. they are programmed to do one thing - strictly follow a racing line. occasionally they will manage to pull off a scripted overtake, but most of the time they drive like you or the other ai cars aren't there and will just crash into anything that gets in their line. i once witnessed an ai on test course gradually approach a slower car we were lapping and slam directly into its rear without even ATTEMPTING to avoid it.
they are also programmed to make pit stops in longer races - obviously, since it would be very unfair otherwise. but it's still unfair because they dont actually seem to experience tire wear - they simply drive like normal until their "pit timer" runs out. that means they will be able to go much longer without pitting and still drive like their tires are fresh. they also don't THINK about their pit stops at all, and will pull moves like pitting right before the last lap and handing off the victory. to the games credit, there's no strong rubberbanding. they do "catch up" with the pack if they fall very far behind (often after a pit stop), but you can still easily put multiple laps on them.
as another aside, license tests are still Not Fun. i do not give a shit if people call me a noob or whatever bc of this, i'm still standing by it. i can put in what feels like the most perfect run i can possibly manage and still get a bronze and it's just not enjoyable because i don't know how far i can push the limits of the game's physics. at first i tried to get golds, but i simply don't have the patience to run every test over and over, shaving milliseconds each time until i can just squeeze out a gold, especially when it's not needed for 100% in this game and there are no unique rewards, so i just ended up banging out first-run bronzes for every test after the b license. it'd be significantly more bearable if the medal times had a ghost run so you could more easily see where you could be improving and what you're aiming for, but i guess they didn't think to do this.
there's a few other smaller bad design quirks as well. for one, the oil change system is neat, but you can't change your oil during championships, many of which last many more miles than it takes for your oil light to come on, and so you end up with nerfed hp by the halfway point while the ai doesn't have to deal with this. also, the whole "certain cars are only available from winning certain events and there's a random % chance of getting what you want and in order to get all the prize cars you have to do the entire event multiple times and you might still get a duplicate or something worthless" thing still blows. why are there only two cameras? why are the volume settings only on/off? questions that will remain a mystery for all time.
a few more small things to mention here: gran turismo has been known for its unique and stylish but also often obtuse ui design, but this game's ui maintains that style while also being one of the most streamlined and functional in the series, so props for that. the sound design is fine i guess, nothing stands out greatly but the engine tones aren't that vacuum-cleanerish and are satisfying enough. licensed soundtrack is adequate but with some odd choices, but there's simply not enough songs for the time you will likely spend in this game, so i muted it pretty early. the snoop dogg track is fucking incredible though. also the originally composed music is great as always.
finally, there's a big thing i need to talk about. something that affects every gran turismo game to some extent, but is by far the most egregious here. it may be a bit of a controversial statement.
gran turismo 3 has an inherently flawed progression system. a lot of people romanticize the idea of starting off with a shitty beater and gradually building and tuning it up and then buying better cars and facing more challenging opponents as you spend more time in the game. and its true! this system often feels very compelling and rewarding and a lot of "classic" fan-favorite racing games, including other gran turismo games, are built on it.
however in order for it to work, it needs to be PACED well so that this advancement will naturally come along as the player progresses through the game's content. this is where gt3 falters. you get your first car, maybe fix it up a bit, win the first event, and then what do you do? the first event again. and again. and again and again and again and again, winning a paltry amount of money each time until you can upgrade a bit more and compete in the next event and grind the hell out of that one. but then many of the other events require you use a specific car or type, and chances are your car will not be eligible for all of them, so you need to grind even more so you can buy another car. sure, you can game the prize cars you earn to minimize the amount of buying you have to do, but it feels kind of lame to be hamstrung along with the cars you're given for free instead of picking out the cars you like the most within the eligibility requirements of each event.
it gets a bit better later on, since events award more money and also award prize cars that you can sell repeatedly for even more cash, but the core problem still stands - it's a grind. grind is bad. there's no new or unique content to be experienced in doing this. there's no challenge or difficulty in it. there's no fun, and games like this should be fun. there is absolutely nothing worthwhile to be gained from doing it, besides earning virtual money that allows me to enjoy the rest of the game.
for comparison, gran turismo 2 has a more forgiving economy and more frequent prizes, and also gives you the option of manufacturer races that give a random track each time. gran turismo 4 gives you much more variety across the board in the things you can do when you're just starting out. but gt3 on the other hand just gets the worst of every world. steady progression is good but not when that amounts to "steadily" watching the money number creep up as you do Super Speedway - Mid-Field Raceway - Trial Mountain over and over until oh wow now i have a fast enough car to do Rome - SSR5 - Deep Forest repeatedly instead!
so what did i do? simple - i cheated for cash! purists will whine that i'm "not playing the game right" but i simply Do Not Care because the reality is that i'm having more fun this way, i'm getting to experience more of the games content (as in, getting to drive more of the games cars), and i'm not really bypassing anything besides hours of my time wasted. because frankly, it's the same end result as grinding the european championship for countless hours and selling the gillet vertigo over and over, except minus the time spent doing menial bullshit and not having fun playing the game.
i believe gran turismo 3 is a game best left in good memories or played in small doses. that's how it feels like it was designed - to play bit by bit over the course of a long period of time, maybe doing a few races each day, slowly working away at the game's many offerings so you always have something "new" to do. when played as i did, from the perspective of wanting to experience all the game's content, complete it and then move on to something else, it tends to become massively fatiguing and a chore to finish. yet even then, i still cant help but admire the ways the game still succeeds, the way it blew minds back in 2001, and the way it still maintains some of its charm. so in the end, ill still call it a "Good Game," but one that's seriously marred by tedious progression and repetition and strange, un-fun design decisions.
6.9/10
gran turismo 3 was the first gran turismo game to be released for the nearly-brand-new-at-the-time ps2, and was considered sort of a paradigm shift for the series and for the racing genre as a whole. when it came out, it was widely praised for its ambition and depth, as it was truly groundbreaking at the time - enough that the numerous faults of the game could be ignored. now, the elements that were groundbreaking at the time have long been matched or surpassed by other games, and while it is still a well-made game, the flaws now stand out more than ever. a lot of people tend to still rate this game very highly, maybe even considering it the greatest racing game of all time, but imo this is heavily nostalgia-blinded. sadly, this game really isn't all that fun to play now.
but first, let's talk about the good parts. visually, the graphics turned many heads back in its day, and having the amount of cars that this game does, modeled with this much attention to detail, was practically unheard of. sure, there's under 200 cars in this game - a steep decline from gt2's 600+ - but it's understandable considering the graphical leap forced them to basically start from scratch. the tracks, although few, look pretty gorgeous as well, with a good amount of roadside detail. though admittedly a lot of them are set in green fields. there's no denying it still looks like a game of its time, but it's aged fairly well and isn't bad at all to look at even now.
although better pure simulators existed at the time, the physics in this game struck a good balance between detailed and accessible that still plays quite well today. there is a certain lack of excitement and sense of speed in the driving, making for a very "gamey" feeling, but it controls perfectly fine. i did experience some issues with steering/throttle sensitivity but that was likely due to the quirks of mapping a ps2 controller to an xbox pad via emulation, with the analog throttle/brake calibrated for pressure-sensitive buttons rather than triggers. the amount of tuning is also pretty great, between the various purchasable upgrades and the fine-tuning that can be done before a race. thus on a baseline level, the game still feels good and fun to play, and for a casual play session you'll probably get a good deal of enjoyment.
another large area of praise went to the amount of content and depth in the game's career mode, and indeed the amount of events all suited for different car types could occupy the player for many hours - but herein lies the problem. once you play this game for a while you soon realize how limited the variety in the career mode actually is, and then you realize you're still only like 15% done with the game. from that point on it basically becomes a slog, as this game is padded out to absolute hell.
as nice-looking as the tracks are, there are only 14 of them in the career (excluding rally), two of which are ovals, and nearly all of them are updated versions of gt1/2 tracks. the only thing that really changes between events is the car you're using, but even that is limited because when you're playing the game "properly" you'll be reusing cars as much as possible to save credits. it gets more and more tiring the longer you play, up to the point where the last few professional league events are practically the same 10 tracks with more and more laps. they're not really more difficult, they're just... more time-consuming. like, look polyphony - endurance races are cool, but was it really necessary to make EVERY race in the professional league 10 laps at a minimum? it's not very fun.
to further illustrate this point, let's compare this game to its predecessor in terms of miles driven (seriously i did the math) - the 2nd least used circuit in this game is driven for more miles in the career mode than the most used track from gt2. if you exclude gt2's endurance races, you drive more miles on test course, r246, grand valley, and rome EACH INDIVIDUALLY in this game than you do in the ENTIRETY of gran turismo 2. gt2 is by no means a short game. this game is almost 5x longer in terms of miles driven across every event. and yet even if it were the same length, the content would be stretched thinner in gt3 since there are less tracks and cars. this game took me roughly 145 hours to 100%, and there's not nearly enough content to make that time feel truly worthwhile.
there's also a lack of shorter, twistier tracks or even short layouts of tracks like in gt2, which makes the races in more underpowered cars more tedious than they need to be. the epitome of this issue is the 10 lap test course race in the toyota vitz event, which is just half an hour of holding right trigger and driving in a circle at 130mph. i don't know who thought this was a good idea. like seriously, why. why? this has to have been done intentionally as a troll, because if so they sure got me! why the fuck would anyone in their right mind play this and think this is fun?
the rally races are at first a nice change of pace, but then you realize that each "event" of 3 races is just the same track with more laps each time, half of the events are just reverse versions of the others, and one of the "rally" tracks is just a normal track. the rally physics are a liiittle weird too - the dirt physics feel fun but oddly feel more responsive than tarmac, and make the transition between the two jarring in tracks with mixed surfaces.
there are also a lot of balancing issues with the career mode. for starters, there are no horsepower restrictions for any race, and nowhere is it displayed how much power the ai drivers in any race have. this makes the chances of having an even, exciting race pretty slim - either you use what you have and end up underpowered, or you just tune as much as possible and hope for the best and then usually end up being super overpowered and with no challenge. since you don't know how much power to aim for, it would be a lot of trial and error to "balance" yourself with the ai. and even still its not even consistent how fast the ai are in the same car!
another common criticism throughout all the gran turismo games is the ai, which in this game is still practically braindead. they are programmed to do one thing - strictly follow a racing line. occasionally they will manage to pull off a scripted overtake, but most of the time they drive like you or the other ai cars aren't there and will just crash into anything that gets in their line. i once witnessed an ai on test course gradually approach a slower car we were lapping and slam directly into its rear without even ATTEMPTING to avoid it.
they are also programmed to make pit stops in longer races - obviously, since it would be very unfair otherwise. but it's still unfair because they dont actually seem to experience tire wear - they simply drive like normal until their "pit timer" runs out. that means they will be able to go much longer without pitting and still drive like their tires are fresh. they also don't THINK about their pit stops at all, and will pull moves like pitting right before the last lap and handing off the victory. to the games credit, there's no strong rubberbanding. they do "catch up" with the pack if they fall very far behind (often after a pit stop), but you can still easily put multiple laps on them.
as another aside, license tests are still Not Fun. i do not give a shit if people call me a noob or whatever bc of this, i'm still standing by it. i can put in what feels like the most perfect run i can possibly manage and still get a bronze and it's just not enjoyable because i don't know how far i can push the limits of the game's physics. at first i tried to get golds, but i simply don't have the patience to run every test over and over, shaving milliseconds each time until i can just squeeze out a gold, especially when it's not needed for 100% in this game and there are no unique rewards, so i just ended up banging out first-run bronzes for every test after the b license. it'd be significantly more bearable if the medal times had a ghost run so you could more easily see where you could be improving and what you're aiming for, but i guess they didn't think to do this.
there's a few other smaller bad design quirks as well. for one, the oil change system is neat, but you can't change your oil during championships, many of which last many more miles than it takes for your oil light to come on, and so you end up with nerfed hp by the halfway point while the ai doesn't have to deal with this. also, the whole "certain cars are only available from winning certain events and there's a random % chance of getting what you want and in order to get all the prize cars you have to do the entire event multiple times and you might still get a duplicate or something worthless" thing still blows. why are there only two cameras? why are the volume settings only on/off? questions that will remain a mystery for all time.
a few more small things to mention here: gran turismo has been known for its unique and stylish but also often obtuse ui design, but this game's ui maintains that style while also being one of the most streamlined and functional in the series, so props for that. the sound design is fine i guess, nothing stands out greatly but the engine tones aren't that vacuum-cleanerish and are satisfying enough. licensed soundtrack is adequate but with some odd choices, but there's simply not enough songs for the time you will likely spend in this game, so i muted it pretty early. the snoop dogg track is fucking incredible though. also the originally composed music is great as always.
finally, there's a big thing i need to talk about. something that affects every gran turismo game to some extent, but is by far the most egregious here. it may be a bit of a controversial statement.
gran turismo 3 has an inherently flawed progression system. a lot of people romanticize the idea of starting off with a shitty beater and gradually building and tuning it up and then buying better cars and facing more challenging opponents as you spend more time in the game. and its true! this system often feels very compelling and rewarding and a lot of "classic" fan-favorite racing games, including other gran turismo games, are built on it.
however in order for it to work, it needs to be PACED well so that this advancement will naturally come along as the player progresses through the game's content. this is where gt3 falters. you get your first car, maybe fix it up a bit, win the first event, and then what do you do? the first event again. and again. and again and again and again and again, winning a paltry amount of money each time until you can upgrade a bit more and compete in the next event and grind the hell out of that one. but then many of the other events require you use a specific car or type, and chances are your car will not be eligible for all of them, so you need to grind even more so you can buy another car. sure, you can game the prize cars you earn to minimize the amount of buying you have to do, but it feels kind of lame to be hamstrung along with the cars you're given for free instead of picking out the cars you like the most within the eligibility requirements of each event.
it gets a bit better later on, since events award more money and also award prize cars that you can sell repeatedly for even more cash, but the core problem still stands - it's a grind. grind is bad. there's no new or unique content to be experienced in doing this. there's no challenge or difficulty in it. there's no fun, and games like this should be fun. there is absolutely nothing worthwhile to be gained from doing it, besides earning virtual money that allows me to enjoy the rest of the game.
for comparison, gran turismo 2 has a more forgiving economy and more frequent prizes, and also gives you the option of manufacturer races that give a random track each time. gran turismo 4 gives you much more variety across the board in the things you can do when you're just starting out. but gt3 on the other hand just gets the worst of every world. steady progression is good but not when that amounts to "steadily" watching the money number creep up as you do Super Speedway - Mid-Field Raceway - Trial Mountain over and over until oh wow now i have a fast enough car to do Rome - SSR5 - Deep Forest repeatedly instead!
so what did i do? simple - i cheated for cash! purists will whine that i'm "not playing the game right" but i simply Do Not Care because the reality is that i'm having more fun this way, i'm getting to experience more of the games content (as in, getting to drive more of the games cars), and i'm not really bypassing anything besides hours of my time wasted. because frankly, it's the same end result as grinding the european championship for countless hours and selling the gillet vertigo over and over, except minus the time spent doing menial bullshit and not having fun playing the game.
i believe gran turismo 3 is a game best left in good memories or played in small doses. that's how it feels like it was designed - to play bit by bit over the course of a long period of time, maybe doing a few races each day, slowly working away at the game's many offerings so you always have something "new" to do. when played as i did, from the perspective of wanting to experience all the game's content, complete it and then move on to something else, it tends to become massively fatiguing and a chore to finish. yet even then, i still cant help but admire the ways the game still succeeds, the way it blew minds back in 2001, and the way it still maintains some of its charm. so in the end, ill still call it a "Good Game," but one that's seriously marred by tedious progression and repetition and strange, un-fun design decisions.
6.9/10
[a step forward for variety, a step back for physics.]
colin mcrae rally 2005 is yet another iterative installment of the series (being more similar to 04 than 04 was to 3), and it had the potential to be the pinnacle of the pre-dirt cmr series. given that it's working off the framework of 04 but with more content (more cars, stages, a new location for the first time, and an all-new career mode), as well as more time to polish, surely it'd be the best series has to offer at this point, right? not quite. why? answer's simple:
they fucked up the physics.
well, actually the answer's kinda both simple and complicated. the physics are host to numerous faults that were not present in the previous game, which i can and will shortly proceed to describe in detail - and yet, once you've played the game for a few hours, you kinda just get used to it, and it feels very manageable. seriously, when i first started the game i felt like my rating could've been a full star (or more) lower, but by the end i quite enjoyed it.
anyway, about those physics - essentially, it seems like they tried to casualize the physics from 04 and find a middle ground between cmr4 and 3. they are more realistic than 3, but the cars feel significantly more floaty and weightless than 4 while also being less grippy. the reactions of the car are once again wily and random, much like in cmr3, and basically you're now spending more time reacting than acting. cars behave WEIRDLY on uneven surfaces - greece is a good example, where all the ridges in the gravel trails feel strangely rigid, with the bumps occasionally pushing the car around like wall collisions. damage reactions are still inconsistent, maybe even more so - crashes sometimes do major damage and other times the car just harmlessly bounces away. the pace notes don't even feel accurate, like they were made with cmr4's physics in mind but they got changed at the last minute and now you kinda just have to learn to ignore them and make your own interpretations of the turn markers. but like i said earlier, after some time with the game you just get accustomed to all this and the many problems actually start to fade into the background.
presentation-wise, the ui is very similar to cmr4 but with a few stylistic changes, and the graphics are not much different either, which doesn't really bother me but it does start to look a bit behind for 2005. there are some nice touches though, like better environmental detail and some really nice lighting effects. it's the first time playing one of these games that i thought "hey, thats actually pretty" on more than one occasion. for some reason the car sounds are a bit more dull this time. they're not all BAD per se, but it feels like they used to have more bite and growl and RAWR to them but here they kinda just sound like brrrrr vrrrrrr. i do like the environmental sounds though - things like rain and thunder sound quite nice.
as for the stages, the recycling of routes from the previous games has become increasingly prevalent, which is hardly surprising. its not all bad though - there's still some new material, and they've brought back elements from cmr3 that weren't used in 4, so it's not totally repetitive. also, each rally now has 8 stages as opposed to 6, and the time of day and weather are no longer tied to the stage and will vary each time you play a stage, so despite the reuse, there's actually significantly more variety in this game than its predecessors. on top of that, there's also the brand-new addition of germany, and while it isn't a stand-out rally, it's certainly fun and on par with the rest.
the biggest changeup in this game's formula, however, is the addition of the career mode, in which you progress through a tree of themed events requiring you use certain a car class, which will reward you with "driver rating" to unlock more events as well as the opportunity to earn upgrades for cars using the same testing minigame system that was introduced in the previous game (this time with unlimited attempts, despite the game claiming you only have two??). and it is a VERY welcome change of pace from the growing monotony of the championship format from previous games that makes cmr5 feel significantly more worthwhile. (there's also a championship mode where you play as colin mcrae and it's structured exactly like any championship from cmr4. it's kinda pointless. the career mode is really the only thing that matters.)
while the core of the career mode isn't all that different - in essence, just being a number of (generally) smaller championships using different cars - it just feels a lot nicer to have a sort of progression system, working your way up through faster classes and more difficult events and unlocking new vehicles as you go along. the different events requiring you use different cars adds a very nice element of variety, and ensures that the car lineup feels significantly less wasted. there are events for your standard 4wd cars, 2wd cars, 4x4s, 90s cars, group b cars, and even classics, and the gameplay feels a lot less stagnant for it. the difficulty still leaves something to be desired, though, being no harder than the previous games, and most events are still pieces of cake as long as you can drive.
colin mcrae rally 2005 feels like a very complete package, and the amount of additional content and features added over its predecessors are very much appreciated. however, taking into account all aspects of the game, the issues with the physics can't go ignored, making it sadly a sort of tradeoff with cmr04 and preventing it from becoming the clear essential of the early 2000s cmr era.
7.4/10
colin mcrae rally 2005 is yet another iterative installment of the series (being more similar to 04 than 04 was to 3), and it had the potential to be the pinnacle of the pre-dirt cmr series. given that it's working off the framework of 04 but with more content (more cars, stages, a new location for the first time, and an all-new career mode), as well as more time to polish, surely it'd be the best series has to offer at this point, right? not quite. why? answer's simple:
they fucked up the physics.
well, actually the answer's kinda both simple and complicated. the physics are host to numerous faults that were not present in the previous game, which i can and will shortly proceed to describe in detail - and yet, once you've played the game for a few hours, you kinda just get used to it, and it feels very manageable. seriously, when i first started the game i felt like my rating could've been a full star (or more) lower, but by the end i quite enjoyed it.
anyway, about those physics - essentially, it seems like they tried to casualize the physics from 04 and find a middle ground between cmr4 and 3. they are more realistic than 3, but the cars feel significantly more floaty and weightless than 4 while also being less grippy. the reactions of the car are once again wily and random, much like in cmr3, and basically you're now spending more time reacting than acting. cars behave WEIRDLY on uneven surfaces - greece is a good example, where all the ridges in the gravel trails feel strangely rigid, with the bumps occasionally pushing the car around like wall collisions. damage reactions are still inconsistent, maybe even more so - crashes sometimes do major damage and other times the car just harmlessly bounces away. the pace notes don't even feel accurate, like they were made with cmr4's physics in mind but they got changed at the last minute and now you kinda just have to learn to ignore them and make your own interpretations of the turn markers. but like i said earlier, after some time with the game you just get accustomed to all this and the many problems actually start to fade into the background.
presentation-wise, the ui is very similar to cmr4 but with a few stylistic changes, and the graphics are not much different either, which doesn't really bother me but it does start to look a bit behind for 2005. there are some nice touches though, like better environmental detail and some really nice lighting effects. it's the first time playing one of these games that i thought "hey, thats actually pretty" on more than one occasion. for some reason the car sounds are a bit more dull this time. they're not all BAD per se, but it feels like they used to have more bite and growl and RAWR to them but here they kinda just sound like brrrrr vrrrrrr. i do like the environmental sounds though - things like rain and thunder sound quite nice.
as for the stages, the recycling of routes from the previous games has become increasingly prevalent, which is hardly surprising. its not all bad though - there's still some new material, and they've brought back elements from cmr3 that weren't used in 4, so it's not totally repetitive. also, each rally now has 8 stages as opposed to 6, and the time of day and weather are no longer tied to the stage and will vary each time you play a stage, so despite the reuse, there's actually significantly more variety in this game than its predecessors. on top of that, there's also the brand-new addition of germany, and while it isn't a stand-out rally, it's certainly fun and on par with the rest.
the biggest changeup in this game's formula, however, is the addition of the career mode, in which you progress through a tree of themed events requiring you use certain a car class, which will reward you with "driver rating" to unlock more events as well as the opportunity to earn upgrades for cars using the same testing minigame system that was introduced in the previous game (this time with unlimited attempts, despite the game claiming you only have two??). and it is a VERY welcome change of pace from the growing monotony of the championship format from previous games that makes cmr5 feel significantly more worthwhile. (there's also a championship mode where you play as colin mcrae and it's structured exactly like any championship from cmr4. it's kinda pointless. the career mode is really the only thing that matters.)
while the core of the career mode isn't all that different - in essence, just being a number of (generally) smaller championships using different cars - it just feels a lot nicer to have a sort of progression system, working your way up through faster classes and more difficult events and unlocking new vehicles as you go along. the different events requiring you use different cars adds a very nice element of variety, and ensures that the car lineup feels significantly less wasted. there are events for your standard 4wd cars, 2wd cars, 4x4s, 90s cars, group b cars, and even classics, and the gameplay feels a lot less stagnant for it. the difficulty still leaves something to be desired, though, being no harder than the previous games, and most events are still pieces of cake as long as you can drive.
colin mcrae rally 2005 feels like a very complete package, and the amount of additional content and features added over its predecessors are very much appreciated. however, taking into account all aspects of the game, the issues with the physics can't go ignored, making it sadly a sort of tradeoff with cmr04 and preventing it from becoming the clear essential of the early 2000s cmr era.
7.4/10
2003
[regaining the feeling; a substantial step-up.]
colin mcrae rally 04 is in many ways an upgraded version of colin mcrae rally 3, and came out just a year after the predecessor. it's unsurprisingly quite similar both in its featureset and how the gameplay itself feels, but it is a solid improvement and fixes many of the things that cmr3 did wrong.
one of the most immediately noticeable differences from cmr3 when you start your first race is how much different and BETTER the physics feel. the cars are significantly more grounded and less twitchy, allowing much more steady and consistent control. the grip loss on dirt is much more realistic and predictable - where the previous game has you weaving all over the trail and oh whoops the car just flung itself into the grass, this one makes the cars feel a lot more weighty and controllable in their slides. the tarmac also no longer practically glues the car to the road, so it actually takes some thought to keep the car on the road. there was clearly some effort put into reworking the physics for this game, and really the only issues are some bad hitboxes/collisions with roadside objects, and inconsistent damage in crashes (sometimes a crash will inexplicably do no damage while other times it'll do way more damage than it seems like it should).
also speaking of damage, the damage model in this game is actually pretty awesome. when it works right, the way the different parts of your car are affected by crashes and jumps is quite detailed. damaging the cooling will cause the engine to gradually overheat and start cutting out, requiring you restart it. tires can pop under too much pressure, and wheels can even fly off and go rolling away. the attention to detail in this game is in general pretty great, especially for a game of its time, with little things like dirt slowly obscuring the windshield with the wipers periodically turning on to wipe it away.
what's also awesome is the return of the time-based damage repair system in service areas, as well as a bit more detail in the tuning system, with a wide array of different tire options, as well as having five settings for each tunable part instead of just three. the ui in general, while not quite as pretty, is more functional, with no more drawn-out animations to see the stage surfaces or the damage on your car - plus you can see where your time stacks up at the END of each stage rather than the start of the next. although you still can't restart normally, and exiting and reloading to the last service area makes you redo any repairs or tuning changes, which is kind of annoying. in addition to normal tuning, you can also unlock upgrades via "testing" challenges involving sliding, braking, or jumping to test tires, brakes, and suspension, or holding within a certain rev range on a dyno to test the engine and gearbox. i appreciate the attempt at variety here, but the challenges are kinda gimmicky and not all that fun.
another major improvement in this game is in the structuring of the championship mode. you're not longer forced to "be" colin mcrae, and thus you can choose between any of the cars you've unlocked in the applicable category for each championship, instead of being forced to use the ford focus. plus, there are separate championships for the FWD, 4WD, and group b classes, adding to the variety. however, for the former two categories, there's both a "normal" and "advanced" difficulty mode - and in a strange design decision, you have to play BOTH of them to attain full completion and unlock everything, despite the normal difficulty just being easier and having less stages with no unique content. it's a pretty dull experience especially considering "advanced" difficulty is already too easy - even on the vaunted "expert championship" i was still typically finishing each rally a solid minute (if not more) ahead of second place, even if i slid off the road or crashed a couple times.
as for the stages themselves, they certainly look prettier than their cmr3 counterparts. all of the locations from the previous game return, although there are no new ones. some of the stages are all-new, while others recycle layouts from the previous game (often reversed as well). to be completely honest, however, on average the stages are not quite as fun as in cmr3 - they're still good, but most of the time they aren't as tight, technical, or varied. in fairness, this may have been to adapt to the looser, less responsive handling in cmr04. i do appreciate that there's more detail in the different surface types found in this game, requiring more careful tire choice. also finland still sucks.
although cmr04 is not a perfect game by any means, it's certainly more than just a mere rehash of cmr3 with superficial graphics upgrades - there was clearly real effort put into revitalizing what was started in the last game and improving upon its faults. if you're looking for a solid ps2-era rally racing game, it's hard to go wrong here.
7.6/10
colin mcrae rally 04 is in many ways an upgraded version of colin mcrae rally 3, and came out just a year after the predecessor. it's unsurprisingly quite similar both in its featureset and how the gameplay itself feels, but it is a solid improvement and fixes many of the things that cmr3 did wrong.
one of the most immediately noticeable differences from cmr3 when you start your first race is how much different and BETTER the physics feel. the cars are significantly more grounded and less twitchy, allowing much more steady and consistent control. the grip loss on dirt is much more realistic and predictable - where the previous game has you weaving all over the trail and oh whoops the car just flung itself into the grass, this one makes the cars feel a lot more weighty and controllable in their slides. the tarmac also no longer practically glues the car to the road, so it actually takes some thought to keep the car on the road. there was clearly some effort put into reworking the physics for this game, and really the only issues are some bad hitboxes/collisions with roadside objects, and inconsistent damage in crashes (sometimes a crash will inexplicably do no damage while other times it'll do way more damage than it seems like it should).
also speaking of damage, the damage model in this game is actually pretty awesome. when it works right, the way the different parts of your car are affected by crashes and jumps is quite detailed. damaging the cooling will cause the engine to gradually overheat and start cutting out, requiring you restart it. tires can pop under too much pressure, and wheels can even fly off and go rolling away. the attention to detail in this game is in general pretty great, especially for a game of its time, with little things like dirt slowly obscuring the windshield with the wipers periodically turning on to wipe it away.
what's also awesome is the return of the time-based damage repair system in service areas, as well as a bit more detail in the tuning system, with a wide array of different tire options, as well as having five settings for each tunable part instead of just three. the ui in general, while not quite as pretty, is more functional, with no more drawn-out animations to see the stage surfaces or the damage on your car - plus you can see where your time stacks up at the END of each stage rather than the start of the next. although you still can't restart normally, and exiting and reloading to the last service area makes you redo any repairs or tuning changes, which is kind of annoying. in addition to normal tuning, you can also unlock upgrades via "testing" challenges involving sliding, braking, or jumping to test tires, brakes, and suspension, or holding within a certain rev range on a dyno to test the engine and gearbox. i appreciate the attempt at variety here, but the challenges are kinda gimmicky and not all that fun.
another major improvement in this game is in the structuring of the championship mode. you're not longer forced to "be" colin mcrae, and thus you can choose between any of the cars you've unlocked in the applicable category for each championship, instead of being forced to use the ford focus. plus, there are separate championships for the FWD, 4WD, and group b classes, adding to the variety. however, for the former two categories, there's both a "normal" and "advanced" difficulty mode - and in a strange design decision, you have to play BOTH of them to attain full completion and unlock everything, despite the normal difficulty just being easier and having less stages with no unique content. it's a pretty dull experience especially considering "advanced" difficulty is already too easy - even on the vaunted "expert championship" i was still typically finishing each rally a solid minute (if not more) ahead of second place, even if i slid off the road or crashed a couple times.
as for the stages themselves, they certainly look prettier than their cmr3 counterparts. all of the locations from the previous game return, although there are no new ones. some of the stages are all-new, while others recycle layouts from the previous game (often reversed as well). to be completely honest, however, on average the stages are not quite as fun as in cmr3 - they're still good, but most of the time they aren't as tight, technical, or varied. in fairness, this may have been to adapt to the looser, less responsive handling in cmr04. i do appreciate that there's more detail in the different surface types found in this game, requiring more careful tire choice. also finland still sucks.
although cmr04 is not a perfect game by any means, it's certainly more than just a mere rehash of cmr3 with superficial graphics upgrades - there was clearly real effort put into revitalizing what was started in the last game and improving upon its faults. if you're looking for a solid ps2-era rally racing game, it's hard to go wrong here.
7.6/10
2002
[shiny on the surface, hollow beneath.]
as soon as you start up CMR3, you'll immediately notice that codemasters' typical slick presentation is as present as always, which quickly sparks optimism for the experience you're about to have with the game. the graphics are great for the era, with nicely-rendered environments and fairly detailed car models, plus a good damage model to boot that's even reflected in the sound (which is itself quite adequate as well). even the bootleg-"star guitar" menu music gets you pumped up (although being one of about two different songs in the game, and played at nearly every opportunity, it loses its luster pretty quickly). beneath the gloss, however, the game itself feels somewhat anemic and not quite as tightly tuned as its antecedent, which will soon become apparent once the gameplay begins and you start to get a feel for the driving itself.
the physics aren't BAD per se, but they're not great either. i was somewhat put off at first, but after playing for a while i got used to it and found them decently passable and playable - but not without several caveats. for one, the car tends to glide around like a soap bar on the dirt, and while it's not always an issue, it can be frustratingly unresponsive and random at times. in contrast, the car suddenly becomes unrealistically grippy on tarmac, TOO responsive even. but really i take bigger issue with the collision physics - it practically feels like RNG upon bumping into a wall/tree/etc whether your car will harmlessly bounce off of it (perhaps even aiding you) or cause severe damage or spin you out. bushes can either be benign or a race-ender. snow banks have what i call the "vortex effect" whereupon making slight contact with the snowbank will somewhat often abruptly suck your car in and spin it 180 degrees. this can happen in real life, sure, but it feels very exaggerated here. all in all, the physics feel a lot less natural than CMR2.0 and are basically a downgrade from the predecessor.
the different locations and stages are, for the most part, quite nice, all featuring unique visuals and a distinct driving feel to each one. the uk and japan rallies are particular highlights, featuring very fun and technical routes and a good variety in layout between all six stages. the snow in sweden makes a nice change of pace (although marred by the aforementioned snowbank issue), and the inclusion of pikes peak in the usa rally is neat. unfortunately i must give a dishonorable mention to finland, which manages to be both boring and frustrating. the stage layouts are all quite long, samey, and devoid of particularly unique features, and yet manage to all include at least one annoying section. the terrain is nearly all basic gravel throughout all the stages, and the visuals are uninspiring, being essentially just green forests and brown dirt with the occasional lake. it's a cool rally in real life but underwhelms massively here.
the championship mode has a neat presentation, with all the little pre- and post-race cutscenes, but also suffers from a number of strange decisions. most prominently, the fact that the only car you can use is the ford focus. i get that they were trying to make it like immersive like WHOA you are ACTUALLY colin mcrae!!!, but it makes all the other (fairly numerous) cars in the game feel pointless. you start out with a good number unlocked and periodically unlock more as you progress, but the only place you can drive non-focus cars is in the arcade mode. if you're like me and focus (heh) solely on progressing the "career" and have better things to do than fuss around replaying stages in the arcade mode of a merely decent 2002 rally game, the other cars just seem like a waste.
another slightly odd thing is the way the different locations are handled in the championships. each one consists of 6 locations - normal mode runs through australia, spain, finland, usa, japan, and sweden, hard replaces australia with the uk, and very hard also replaces the usa with greece. this means that fine rallies like australia and greece are only played once, while others are repeated three times over. (also on the subject of difficulty levels, even on very hard i was finishing 30+ seconds ahead of 2nd place in each rally, so go figure.)
there's a number of strange ui quirks as well. the detailed time-based tuning/repair system of CMR2 is gone - you have unlimited time for tuning, and the damage is automatically taken care of for you. the only time you can even see your car's damage level is in a sluggish, drawn-out animation before each race. likewise, the only way to see how well you're doing in the rally is at the start of each stage. checking the surface details of each stage in the pre-race menu also requires sitting through an animation. also, there's no quick restart option - which was maybe intentional, but the game seems perfectly content to let you just exit to the menu and then load your save and wait for it to load the stage over again.
CMR3 is certainly not a bad racing game, and it still plays quite decently today, but underneath its sheen you'll quickly start to realize its numerous falterings after a fair amount of playtime, and there's really nothing it does uniquely that's not done better by its direct predecessor and successor.
6.6/10
as soon as you start up CMR3, you'll immediately notice that codemasters' typical slick presentation is as present as always, which quickly sparks optimism for the experience you're about to have with the game. the graphics are great for the era, with nicely-rendered environments and fairly detailed car models, plus a good damage model to boot that's even reflected in the sound (which is itself quite adequate as well). even the bootleg-"star guitar" menu music gets you pumped up (although being one of about two different songs in the game, and played at nearly every opportunity, it loses its luster pretty quickly). beneath the gloss, however, the game itself feels somewhat anemic and not quite as tightly tuned as its antecedent, which will soon become apparent once the gameplay begins and you start to get a feel for the driving itself.
the physics aren't BAD per se, but they're not great either. i was somewhat put off at first, but after playing for a while i got used to it and found them decently passable and playable - but not without several caveats. for one, the car tends to glide around like a soap bar on the dirt, and while it's not always an issue, it can be frustratingly unresponsive and random at times. in contrast, the car suddenly becomes unrealistically grippy on tarmac, TOO responsive even. but really i take bigger issue with the collision physics - it practically feels like RNG upon bumping into a wall/tree/etc whether your car will harmlessly bounce off of it (perhaps even aiding you) or cause severe damage or spin you out. bushes can either be benign or a race-ender. snow banks have what i call the "vortex effect" whereupon making slight contact with the snowbank will somewhat often abruptly suck your car in and spin it 180 degrees. this can happen in real life, sure, but it feels very exaggerated here. all in all, the physics feel a lot less natural than CMR2.0 and are basically a downgrade from the predecessor.
the different locations and stages are, for the most part, quite nice, all featuring unique visuals and a distinct driving feel to each one. the uk and japan rallies are particular highlights, featuring very fun and technical routes and a good variety in layout between all six stages. the snow in sweden makes a nice change of pace (although marred by the aforementioned snowbank issue), and the inclusion of pikes peak in the usa rally is neat. unfortunately i must give a dishonorable mention to finland, which manages to be both boring and frustrating. the stage layouts are all quite long, samey, and devoid of particularly unique features, and yet manage to all include at least one annoying section. the terrain is nearly all basic gravel throughout all the stages, and the visuals are uninspiring, being essentially just green forests and brown dirt with the occasional lake. it's a cool rally in real life but underwhelms massively here.
the championship mode has a neat presentation, with all the little pre- and post-race cutscenes, but also suffers from a number of strange decisions. most prominently, the fact that the only car you can use is the ford focus. i get that they were trying to make it like immersive like WHOA you are ACTUALLY colin mcrae!!!, but it makes all the other (fairly numerous) cars in the game feel pointless. you start out with a good number unlocked and periodically unlock more as you progress, but the only place you can drive non-focus cars is in the arcade mode. if you're like me and focus (heh) solely on progressing the "career" and have better things to do than fuss around replaying stages in the arcade mode of a merely decent 2002 rally game, the other cars just seem like a waste.
another slightly odd thing is the way the different locations are handled in the championships. each one consists of 6 locations - normal mode runs through australia, spain, finland, usa, japan, and sweden, hard replaces australia with the uk, and very hard also replaces the usa with greece. this means that fine rallies like australia and greece are only played once, while others are repeated three times over. (also on the subject of difficulty levels, even on very hard i was finishing 30+ seconds ahead of 2nd place in each rally, so go figure.)
there's a number of strange ui quirks as well. the detailed time-based tuning/repair system of CMR2 is gone - you have unlimited time for tuning, and the damage is automatically taken care of for you. the only time you can even see your car's damage level is in a sluggish, drawn-out animation before each race. likewise, the only way to see how well you're doing in the rally is at the start of each stage. checking the surface details of each stage in the pre-race menu also requires sitting through an animation. also, there's no quick restart option - which was maybe intentional, but the game seems perfectly content to let you just exit to the menu and then load your save and wait for it to load the stage over again.
CMR3 is certainly not a bad racing game, and it still plays quite decently today, but underneath its sheen you'll quickly start to realize its numerous falterings after a fair amount of playtime, and there's really nothing it does uniquely that's not done better by its direct predecessor and successor.
6.6/10