DiRT (Colin McRae)

Game review

Colin McRae: Dirt is another part of the series, which, unlike the previous parts, takes a different path and approaches closer to the arcade. On the other hand, the authors managed to carve out a very believable damage model, which gains its importance especially during long stages, when every scratch plays its role. In the game, you have several types of cars to choose from, such as WRC cars, trucks, buggies, front-wheel drive cars or offroads. The game also includes the Pike's Peak track (hill race). Dirt also includes simple multiplayer, in which you join a server with up to 100 players, with whom you compete for the best time on a given race section.

DiRT has just the right balance of realism and arcade that I like in racing games. I felt like a real competitor, but at the same time the game wasn't overly difficult. Rally tracks are excellent and sometimes force you to fight not only with your opponents but also with the track itself. And when you lose this fight, a great damage system will be revealed, not only cosmetically, but also in terms of car performance.

But DiRT is not only about rallying, but also about off-road racing in general. You will also find rallycross (rally specials on circuits), rally raid (races on long tracks in the desert), hill climb (races up the hill), CORR (short off-road tracks) and crossover (special 1vs1 tracks where the opponent is half move the wheels). While there are many rally tracks, the same is not true for other disciplines. For example, rallycross only has three tracks, so it gets boring pretty quickly. After all, DiRT is still primarily focused on rallying.
There is a wide range of cars of several categories to choose from, which you can also set up in different ways (although I prefer not to mess around :)).

Unfortunately, not everything is rosy. The driving experience is spoiled quite strongly by the insanely strong brakes of all cars (you will be surprised a lot for the first time) and not always completely predictable physics, when sometimes you hit a big stone and you barely notice it, and sometimes you hit a small stone and because of it you roll over (in is a Mitsubishi Montero expert).

Graphically, DiRT is at a very good level, even if the optimization falters a bit (as evidenced by the fact that DiRT doesn't go to maximum detail for me, while DiRT 2 does :)) The sounds of the cars are a bit strange, but otherwise the sound aspect is also good (especially music).