DiRT 4 DiRT 4 Released!

[Paul Jeffrey]

Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC players can now finally get their hands on the new Codemasters release, as DiRT 4 officially hits the game store shelves today.

Although some parts of the world have been able to pick up a physical copy of the game for console over the past couple of days, today marks the official worldwide release of the game across all platforms, bringing the fourth iteration of the popular DiRT franchise back to the forefront of off road racing on PC and current generation console machines.

Featuring over 50 cars the likes of the Ford Fiesta R5, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VI, Subaru WRX STI NR4, Audi Sport quattro S1 E2 plus many different machines from different classes of World Rallycross, Landrush and Crosskarts, run over five unique rally locations and a five Rallycross venues, the new game looks to firmly establish itself as the biggest and best inclusion to the DiRT franchise of games to date.

DiRT 4 is available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC today.

If getting down and DiRTy is your thing then we know the place to go... check out the DiRT 4 sub forum here at RaceDepartment to get your fix of news, events, mods and discussions around the new Codemasters rally game. Go on, it'll be fun I promise !

Have you tried DiRT 4 yet? What are your impressions of the game? Do you think the title is comparable to DiRT Rally in terms of driving experience? Where does it rank against other DiRT franchise games? Let us know in the comments section below!

 

[anton_Chez]

So after a day of testing Dirt 4 again from an alternative source following my refund, I need to give further impressions on the matter. It has taken me some work and a little adjusting to style from Dirt Rally, but the title does indeed seem to be not as bad as some of us has made out to be. It is definitely weird in the way it starts you out, (forced tutorial) and the force feedback settings have a lot to do with how I have managed to get it drive-able. A few things I have noticed:

The brake seems to be a lot more responsive, you don't need nearly as much pedal input for the brakes to really bite. In DR it feels like the brakes are hardly working and you need to stab them and throw the weight of the car around to disrupt forward momentum. I keep spinning because of using the same input as DR and now that I have adjusted the amount of pressure I need to get similar brake force, it's much better.

The RWD cars (80's BMW in particular) do seem to have over-steer tenancies, despite what a few have noted here and other places. Perhaps they are not as savage as they were in DR but that may just be down to me having driven them a lot now (E30 is one of my most driven cars if not the most). Who knows which is the more correct, though.

Another thing that I felt was different was the feeling of driving over gravel in the wheel in both titles. Now that I have messed with the FFB sliders, having them a little different to DR, I have gotten some of that feeling back. It's not as numb as it was at the beginning. Simvibe and motion help with this obviously, but I tested it raw at the start for balance.

The stage creator seems cool, the most looked forward to feature of this title from me for sure. I have not used it enough to spot common patterns, but fingers crossed it does what it was designed to do and keep things fresh for a long time.

Graphics also seemed a step back from DR on my first run through. Not sure what has changed (I managed to get a patch to the latest version so it may have been looked at) but they are definitely better now. I have also just updated to the Dirt 4 release Nvidia driver, so performance (after a little tweaking) is also fairly rock solid on triples now. One thing mentioned by someone else is that they need to get rid of that stupid advanced blending option. It's ON by default and it shouldn't be. Overall now I'd say that it looks good to very good, and I like all the weather options that give it an advantage over DR.

So after all that, and a day of reinstalling RBR and the mountain of mods to get it where I had it before Dirt 4 was released after seeing D4 in the state it was in immediately after launch, I am 95% sure that I will repurchase Dirt 4 and put many hours in it. I will still keep DR and RBR handy so that I have all of them available to race in, but I have some faith that Dirt 4 will give a good platform for an eventual Dirt Rally 2. With a stage creator v2 implemented for a future Dirt Rally game, I am very much looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

**For those that may frown at my method of retesting Dirt 4, consider that setting graphics settings ALONE can take multiple hours to get the title running optimally. Steam allows you a grand total of 120 minutes to finalize your decision on whether you wish to support a potentially trash release from a developer, or rather put $60 toward DLC from devs that show love and passion for both their titles and its customer base. I will repurchase Dirt 4.

 

[LuMue]

One thing mentioned by someone else is that they need to get rid of that stupid advanced blending option. It's ON by default and it shouldn't be.

Where do I find it ? Don't know the translation as my game is running in german...
DR went nearly full on ULTRA on my PC and now I'm not really satisfied so far...

 

[Leynad777]

Change the saturation of the clutch if you haven't. If saturation is set to hundred you need to press the pedal fully. Not favourable

My clutch is already setup with a deadzone on the last throw, but i will try.

If you use H shifter you can't get around not using the clutch--but you can map the clutch to one of your shifter paddeles-so you can have your left foot at the brake at all times..

There is a pure h-shifter setting without clutch and certainly the fastest way apart form sequential shifting. Maybe i just stick to sequential shifting with my HE. This way i can use the tough-AI-setting with a chance to win and upgrading historic Rallycars with sequential shifter isn´t uncommon.

 

[Charly7478i]

After playing many hours.... here are my impressions of DIRT 4.
The positive or good of the game:
1) 12 SS per event / rally in free mode. If we put all the stages in maximum we arrive
almost to the 160/180 km by rally! Fantastic.
2) The end of each stage does not end unreal and abruptly as DIRT RALLY... so but we are
driving a few meters more to the marshal and stop, fantastic also, much more real.
3) 60/90 competitors divided into two classes in career mode !! Great !! We finally run
two or three different classes at the same time.
And here this point has two bad things... the first that in free mode only runs one
class (30 competitors) and there is no championship of constructors (brands)...

Negative or bad game.
1) 5 Locations... is unacceptable. Simple as that. And the first day of playing and I'm
bored, are very identical, a shame what they have given us .... Codemaseter already
had the map of: Monte Carlo, Germany, Finland and Greece!!! It cost nothing to do one
more and we had 10 locations... Really the worst thing away from the game of DIRT RALLY 4
almost that you have to consider buying it or not because the stages for more than this
the "your stage "After a few days they become very monotonous and similar environments...
also it is incredible that in DIRT RALLY there were 6 locations and here they give us 5..
Incredible that a new game has less than the previous one instead of giving us more
locations! Disastrous Codemaster decision.
2) The only one rally of asphalt (Spain) the routes are hyper monotones, all routes
double hand... no narrow routes nor monaco style or san remo... none of that, very
ugly the environment of tarragona.
3) Again they make the same mistake again in DIRT RALLY... and it's like the times
show !!!! Where they saw the boys of codemaster the times in rally asi:
148: 25,478 (That translated would be: 2h 28m 25s 478/1000......) horrible,
frightening way to show the times ... something never seen in the WRC since they created
the races in general... neither in rally nor anywhere are shown like this...
And what is worse... in this DIRT 4... There is no difference with the first and the
previous !!!!!!! Incredible !!!! Unacceptable! We have to take calculating by hand
To know the difference from time there is between us and the first and us and the
previous and the last one driver that goes behind ours... very bad...
The conclusion both me and 5 friends that we were fanatics of DIRT RALLY despite being a
big lie that few realized, DIRT RALLY had only 2 stages per location ... that were
running in reverse and in small sections of those same Stages ... making us believe that
there were 12SS for Rally.
With that in the end never again as much as I and my 5 friends are going back to buy a
game more of Codemaster.

 

[Leynad777]

Where do I find it ? Don't know the translation as my game is running in german...
DR went nearly full on ULTRA on my PC and now I'm not really satisfied so far...

D4 is running even better here than DR in 4k, but never use the borderless mode

 

[LuMue]

but never use the borderless mode

Why not?

 

[anton_Chez]

Where do I find it ? Don't know the translation as my game is running in german...
DR went nearly full on ULTRA on my PC and now I'm not really satisfied so far...

It's at the bottom near motion blur. I think those 2 are the last options, both are on/off selections, not low medium etc. That rapes frames. Silly option that should only be allowed to be enabled manually. It turns on even in High preset.

 

[TzZyO]

I have to say that "unwanted helper" problem is truly annoying. When it's not there, D4 feels like a good sim. But when it kicks in, it totally kills the mood. Also, the abrupt departure of the cars is a bit too much maybe? Almost an on/off switch. Still, I much more enjoy it than not. And DR 2 will most likely be great.

 

[RaceNut]

Which car/location/weather? I think I saw that behavior in some situations, but I also saw the opposite. Like, when I brought the M3 to DirtFish and tuned in what I considered a "drifty" setup. It was a complete mess... After resetting the setup the car was more than drifty enough, except the steering felt rather non-linear, even though I never moved the linearity slider from 0.
Also in the Impreza in heavy rain in Wales scenario I already mentioned, the Subaru exhibited a bit more rotational tendencies than I would like it to have. Nothing that could not be corrected though.

Turning the virtual wheel on for testing might prove useful, by the way. I noticed that at least while stationary, the wheel tends to back down a notch after being turned in one direction. At the same time, it seems to be extremely responsive to the input. Hard to detect any input lag at all. Yet in the controller setup menu the sliders seem to lag way behind the input (something that can be also seen in Assetto Corsa).

Also, it makes sense to always check the setup. If your car has a lot of negative camber on the rear wheels compared to the front (and quite often the default setups are like that), it's natural to expect some self-centering. Though, you said you deliberately tuned the cars into being oversteery, so maybe it's indeed a bug. I have to admit some cars also pretty much ignored my attempts at making them to have more oversteer bias.

It's nothing new for a sim to have only some cars done well. In fact, is there a single sim at all where all the vehicles behave the way we expect them to? As long as it has some cars I'm happy with, I'd say it's worth the purchase. But to be completely honest, D4 should have a lower price for what it offers.


They don't work. They act as a distraction Try hitting the water at DirtFish and you'll see that you have to operate the wipers yourself. I think they are just triggered randomly from time to time. Actually, they helped me with the water once, which made me double check the settings, but it turned out I was just lucky at that moment After visiting the water after that for the next time the wipers wouldn't move on their own. I have an idea why Codemasters made it like that. Your co-driver needs to see the road ahead too, so he kind of bothers the wipers because of that I still wish they would remove that stupidity (or at least not trigger the wipers in dangerous situations) along with the "helicopters hovering right over the goddam' road itself", which is a complete lunacy and an attempted murder.

I need to do further testing using different cars because some cars clearly don't exhibit the same tendencies so I'll make note of the worst offenders. The default setups being what they are may not create a good impression for Sim-mode users either as some cars need to have settings altered pretty heavily to have something that makes sense based on past experience - no that DR was right.

 

[UMC 22]

Remember that Codies say in the video posted earlier that the default setups are deliberately set to be as neutral as possible. Not saying that there's nothing wrong with the physics, just that the lack of oversteer and other stuff might be in part due to a tame setup.

 

[Bozian]

God, I love flying through the hills of spain in the R2-cars

 

[TzZyO]

Indeed, the default setups need to be revised. Maybe for some "real sim" sim handling mode. And if there is actually a driving aid, or just a bug related to it, coming up in the process of driving, Codemasters really need to do something about that. If they are saving that for DR 2, that is really unfair to us, because I can definitely feel the potential of this physics engine now, but the game appears to be a teaser to what is possible. Quite often it really manages to pull off that "driving a car for real" impression.

 

[Thomas Lambaerts]

Today I tried the 208 R5. It was a joy to drive. Sliding it around in wales! TBH I think I like D4 wales better than DR. Feels less bumpy.
With small setup changes the R4 lancer feels pretty good to. Not as great as the 208 though.

About possible stability control, I dunno. Sometimes it does feel like no oversteer at all until spinout happens. But I dunno.

 

[Akra]

Today I tried the 208 R5. It was a joy to drive. Sliding it around in wales! TBH I think I like D4 wales better than DR. Feels less bumpy.
With small setup changes the R4 lancer feels pretty good to. Not as great as the 208 though.

About possible stability control, I dunno. Sometimes it does feel like no oversteer at all until spinout happens. But I dunno.

I thought the 208 was one of the best too. I still don't think it's right, and it still has too much rear grip, but the 208 is one of the best.

 

[TzZyO]

Liked the 208 too. Wales in D4 needs a bit more variety, I think, but I definitely enjoy the location a lot. Can't wait for the next YourStage implementation.