Colin McRae: DiRT 2 Review [360]

04 Sep 2009 at 18:14:00 by
Systems used to review this title: (360)

OK rally fans, hang on tight because you're going to be going on a ride you probably didn't expect to find yourself on.

Colin McRae DiRT 2 is here, and it's bigger, better and faster than you expected it to be.  If you're a hardcore rally fan, you're probably going to be disappointed because the rally aspect of the game has been watered down, and it's immediately noticeable.  Instead you have a range of varying events which take place across the globe.  Each location has its own speciality event, and this can vary from the standard, twisting rally stage, to off-road events.  You'll find favourites, such as the Baja races in California to more technical street races in Tokyo.  You'll also have the opportunity to explore new locations, all of which are unlocked as you progress through the game.  Flitting from location to location, and there are nine of them across the globe, you'll earn experience points and money as you progress through the career mode, with achievements part of the fabric of progression.  This I like.

The money you earn will initially be spent speccing your vehicle up or buying new vehicles in different classes so you can enter more races.  The experience points will unlock different locations on the map, but not all the races within the locations will be unlocked.  Team races, for example, require higher experience and in-game friends to enter.  The best way of unlocking these friends, names like Ken Block, Travis Pastrana and Tanner Foust, is by completing all of the stages you can within a location.  Not only will this increase your XP by unlocking more events, but it will also get you noticed and gain that "Reeeespecpa", or respect, which you'll need.  Once you're friends with other drivers, who each have their speciality, you'll be able to enter team events.

But let's talk a little bit about the car and how the game works.  If you're a Codies fan and have played previous racing games you'll know that they're pretty damn good at what they do.  Highly acclaimed Race Driver GRID changed and upped the quality of racing games, taking full advantage of the then newly developed and evolved EGO engine, the engine which ran the first iteration of DiRT.  And not only has the engine made the DiRT 2 universe a wonderful place to drive in, but it's allowed the developers to take advantage of some of the driving tools the studio has pioneered, like the flashback system.  I had completely forgotten about the flashback system until I accidently hit the right bumper button, which brought up the replay camera having gone back five or six seconds.  With the press of the X button you can go back in time to that point and avoid any horrendous crash you were just a part of.  The amount of flashbacks at your disposal depends entirely on the difficulty setting you've set the race for, with five flashbacks being the most you can have at any given point.

There are six difficulty settings, with Hardcore, the hardest, not giving you any flashback options.  You're also able to choose whether your vehicle will take damage, or if it'll only be visual.  In addition to this, you'll be able to tweak your car set up, and although the options are very basic, it at least gives you the chance to try different car set ups by messing around with ride height, brake bias, suspension and the rest.  Although you can mess around with these settings, ultimately it makes little difference, maybe shaving off a couple of milliseconds if you find yourself in the groove of the game.

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