DiRT Rally 2.0 DiRT Rally 2.0 - Codemasters Masterpiece

[Paul Jeffrey]

DiRT Rally 2.0 – Codemasters Greatest Achievement yet?

Following on from the surprisingly impressive DiRT Rally of 2015, Codemasters have plenty of expectation resting on their shoulders for the new game – and they have seriously delivered.

The wait for a true successor to the fabled Richard Burns Rally has been a long and often frustrating journey for rally fans, with many pretenders stepping into the ring only to be seemingly knocked straight back out again, including it has to be said Codemasters themselves - although the original DiRT Rally was certainly the closest yet to dethroning the widely acclaimed king of rally games.

Despite lacking an official World Rally Championship licence, and initially shipping without some of the more popular content from the original title, DiRT Rally 2.0 immediately comes out of the starting gates with plenty of headline grabbing new features and goodies, over and above the original title and even introducing things that have yet to be seen within the rally game genre.

Dropping the well-intentioned but poorly executed stage generator from Dirt 4, Codemasters have instead switched their attentions to developing deformable surfaces within this new release – introducing a crucial element of the real world category into the simulation and opening up a significant aspect of strategy and tyre management that was so starkly missing from the first title.

Codemasters have done stage deformation very, very well, adding to DiRT Rally 2.0 a significant increase into the depth and richness of the driving experience, whilst also increasing the useful playability of the game. With this new feature active on all locations within the title, in theory each pass of the same stage can present a wholly different driving experience, depending on the conditions of the roads and weather at the time of departure, as well as your running order in the rally itself. Start further back; expect to encounter a less than ideal road surface when out on stage.

This aspect alone makes DiRT Rally 2.0 worth the price of entry for me, and is one of the single biggest improvements Codemasters have made to any of their racing game franchise in the last 10 years. It’s that good.

The feel of the road under your wheels, and the way the car reacts to those different road surfaces, is improved considerably over the original game – itself a step above the competition in the rally game marketplace. Codemasters have clearly spent much time fine-tuning the car reaction to different racing surfaces, and these details shine through clearly when strapped into your virtual car of choice.

While we talk about cars, DiRT 2.0 does a very respectable job of presenting a nicely entertaining selection of vehicles right from the very off – with various different classes of car represented in the game more than making up for the lack of a modern WRC licence. Returning once again are the Group B monsters from the 1980’s, however Codemasters have attempted to mix things up a little by sprinkling a wide variety of different cars into the sim – so lovers of modern machinery still have something to enjoy thanks to the R5 class – featuring such beauties as the Skoda Fabia and VW Golf amongst others, while those of us with longer memories get a bonus with plenty of historic content – the ultimate king of which has to be the 90’s Group N era and the stunning Subaru Imprezza of Colin McRae, still iconic some 24 years after the great Scotsman took to the stages of the world in that wonderful car.

Traditional point-to-point rally cars aside, DiRT Rally 2.0 also does a very good job of representing the FIA World Rally cross category of racing – with plenty of content from the main series and various support categories available to do battle over what appear to be significantly updated and improved rally cross stages. More of which are set to come in future DLC packs for the game.

DiRT Rally 2.0 Full Car List

This category really has stepped up over the original DiRT Rally in almost every way, now offering a very convincing and visually stunning experience for players to enjoy. WRX has impressed me the most this time around, really stepping up in every aspect to present a very, very enjoyable representation of the category within DiRT Rally 2.0.

Moving on to the driving experience itself, I need to talk about wheel support for a little while – boring I know, but worth a few moments of your time.

I am using the SimCube OSW Direct Drive wheel for this test, and it needs to be noted that this isn’t a supported device out of the box, so some fun and games need to be had in order to get it working and producing force feedback within the sim. Plenty of google searching and overwriting of internal game files later, the wheel is now a functioning device within DiRT Rally! However, although “working” and producing force feedback, at least at this early stage I’ve been left very underwhelmed by the level of detail the force feedback is producing through my wheel. Ok, I’m getting some weight in the wheel, and the absolutely major hits and jolts are registering, but the very fine detail and the small things that communicate from the road surface to the car just aren’t present at the moment, which has frankly left me feeling a little bit disappointed.

The surface detail just doesn't feel present in the game, leaving me the impression of driving over smooth surfaces no matter what car I choose. I suspect this is specific to my own wheel, however increasingly I'm hearing of others with similar experiences, using different wheels, so that could be something to keep an eye out for as more and more people gain access to the title. What I will say however, is that the physics do feel more convincing than DR1, with more of a weight transfer feel than the previous release, and generally just stepping up the feeling over and above the original release.

DiRT 2.0 Supported Peripherals

Now to be fair I’m hearing plenty from the community about how they feel the handling of DR2.0 has improved over previous games, so I’m left wondering if it is more down to my own wheel configuration, coupled with the fact OSW isn’t supported out of the box, that is leaving me with a numb ffb experience from the title. With this in mind, during my review I am going to deliberately step away from further ffb and handling discussions, as I can’t be sure exactly which parameters are affecting my experience at this stage. I will say however, with the OSW patch and my current settings, for a driver at my (low) level of skill, the handling and feedback experience is ok, if a little "flat", although it certainly doesnt reach the heights achieved by so much else within the game…

… and those heights are very high indeed.

DiRT Rally 2.0 is shaping up to be the thing that pretty much every sim racer has been wanting to see since the glory days of Richard Burns Rally back 2004, small issues aside – hard-core, visually stunning, plenty of gameplay depth, audibly outstanding and with enough detail to present a game that you just want to keep heading back to for more and more punishment out on the stages.

Oh, and it finally has good mouse support to !

As for a career mode, DiRT 2.0 does play around with this idea, but somehow feels like it hasn’t quite gone far enough to capture the imagination over longer periods of time. Here you can hire and fire people for your team, however as a long time doubter of the usefulness of career mode style gameplay features, the lack of any depth in this department isn’t something that will keep me awake at night – anything that delays going out on stage – the actual core of the game – is best kept to a minimum in my opinion, and is a sideshow at best. It’s also worth pointing out that all cars and stages are accessible from the off, so no need for any long grinding through the game to get that car / rally combo you’ve been wanting to try.. Thankfully.

DiRT Rally 2.0 does some things very well, and some things can on occasion feel a little bit under loved, almost as if the studio have been that keen to make the action on stage as best as it can be, leaving the stuff on the edges of the driving experience a little bit behind the main gameplay itself. Frankly, this is something that is very easy to overlook, as the good things within this title are just exceptional, and more than make up for any of the small annoyances here and there.

Does DiRT Rally 2.0 deserve the unofficial crown as king of all rally Sims past and present? I think so, and by quite a margin.

DiRT Rally 2.0 will release February 26th 2019.

If you want to discussion the game with our passionate community, and read about the latest news, check out the RaceDepartment DiRT Rally 2.0 Sub Forum for a great place to share your mods, catch the latest news and chat about the game with our community. Give it a go, just keep it DiRTy!

Like what you see here at RaceDepartment? Don't forget to like, subscribe and follow us on social media!

 ​

 

[theravenousbeast]

Actually hiring a current rally driver for proper input in development (and not just for quotes like iRacing did at times) is solid proof of them trying.

"they just want to make a fun game that is just convincingly realistic enough so enough people are into it, all in order to make a fun game for this niche market in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of money to maximize profit"

What they're actually making is a game that's just convincingly realistic enough for a reasonable part of the hardcore simracing crowd AND for the casual players. Why? Because there's no serious money to be made catering only to the niche market. And from what I can tell both DR1 and DR2 seem to be a success at that.

Until SMS or Kunos or anyone makes a serious offroad effort Codemasters can keep making only gradual improvements. They've pretty much crushed any efforts by Milestone and Kylotonn sales wise and the steam charts tell the story about the playerbase.

 

[TylerDurden4321]

The first paragraph about hiring a really driver means absolutely nothing. They also have F1 drivers praising the accuracy of the tracks of their F1 games, right before those go right back to iRacing and rFactor for doing some casual fun training.

about your second and third paragraph: I completely agree.
They can even afford to lose a big part of the hardcore audience for not being realistic enough, because many of those players still buy almost any racing game anyway. If they can beat WRC7 even by an inch in the physics and FFB department (as in "being convincing", not even in "being verifiable realistic"), it will be good enough even in the long term for the Codies.

 

[theravenousbeast]

The first paragraph about hiring a really driver means absolutely nothing. They also have F1 drivers praising the accuracy of the tracks of their F1 games, right before those go right back to iRacing and rFactor for doing some casual fun training.

Come on now. I don't think they ever said any F1 driver was involved with development. That's just marketing BS.

With Jon I genuinely think he had a big part in getting DR2 the way it is. (for better or worse depending on who you ask)

 

[bogani]

Come on now. I don't think they ever said any F1 driver was involved with development. That's just marketing BS.

With Jon I genuinely think he had a big part in getting DR2 the way it is. (for better or worse depending on who you ask)

Jon has been working with Codies 9 to 5 for about a year on this. It's not like he just popped in every other month or so to give some advice, he's literally there all the time.

The good thing about Jon is that he's not only a darn quick IRL driver, he's an avid gamer consuming every rally title he can get his hands on. This means he also knows what he can expect from the virtual world, while other advicing token drivers might not have a clue about gaming and basically come in and say 'This is pretty good' no matter how good or bad it is.

I've had many nice chats with Jon during the handling prototype testing we did many months back. He's a very dedicated young man that really want it to be as good as it possibly can be.

 

[RCHeliguy]

That's pretty cool, but I've mastered rolling down the cliffs in Greece in Dirt Rally 1.0

 

[Case_]

They've pretty much crushed any efforts by Milestone and Kylotonn sales wise and the steam charts tell the story about the playerbase.

And yet I would say at least when it comes to car handling, both SLRE and WRC7 are kinda bit more fun to drive and feel a bit better IMO, the cars feel like they have actual weight and a better throttle response, compared to still somewhat disconnected cars of DR2 (even though it has certainly improved since the original DR).

(Here come the angry disagrees... )

The good thing about Jon is that he's not only a darn quick IRL driver, he's an avid gamer consuming every rally title he can get his hands on.

That may very well be, but he advises people to set their damper and spring to 0, so that should tell you something

 

[theravenousbeast]

That may very well be, but he advises people to set their damper and spring to 0, so that should tell you something

Yeah that kind of tells you even he doesn't understand the ins and outs of the EGO engine force feedback

 

[Case_]

(I wouldn't really expect him to, I'm just kinda annoyed at the fact that he put out a video a few days back on how to set the FFB, and of course he included this advice in it, so the myth lives on and is validated by yet another person who seemingly knows what they're doing...)

 

[MarkR]

What they're actually making is a game that's just convincingly realistic enough for a reasonable part of the hardcore simracing crowd AND for the casual players. Why? Because there's no serious money to be made catering only to the niche market. And from what I can tell both DR1 and DR2 seem to be a success at that.

They can even afford to lose a big part of the hardcore audience for not being realistic enough, because many of those players still buy almost any racing game anyway. If they can beat WRC7 even by an inch in the physics and FFB department (as in "being convincing", not even in "being verifiable realistic"), it will be good enough even in the long term for the Codies.

In this case I think you are both correct. A rallying game that can appeal to both sim racing and casual is where it has to be to be both fun and profitable. I watch F1, touring cars, rallying etc etc with my kids and we also play pretty much all the racing games from Mario Kart to Forza Horizon to Wreckfest to racing games (Forza 7 etc) to the more serious sim stuff (AC etc). DiRT 2.0 falls somewhere between racing game and sim for me, it's game mechanics are mighty fine (as with F1 2018) as well as being a challenging drive. With the accessibility features we can all, young and old, play so that has to be part of this equation too.

For all the reverence of RBR there is a reason it was a commercial failure, most people back at launch just didn't get it at all when compared to the massively popular Colin McRae games. as much as a 'hardcore' rallying game might be enjoyed here, who else would buy it? I remember when the Lombard RAC Rally GB was hardcore and you had to be up at 3am and find your way to a farm track to see the cars go by. Now it's all instant gratification and spectator stages. I've got to say that is why I also admire the Dakar 18 devs, that is courage to make a rallying game on that scale.

Back to DiRT 2.0 though, that Group N Impreza behaves a lot like the real car, even if the raw data says otherwise, in terms of subjective feel it is damn close.

 

[White Hawk]

Very distracting if the in-game steering wheel animation is rigged to only 540 degrees, for example, or even less, when you have more angle on your steering wheel. Always makes you confused if there's an input lag happening.

Well, that doesn’t happen to me as I match the rotation, still if the animation doesn’t rotate far enough still doesn’t bother me but I haven’t seen that lately.

 

[bogani]

Back to DiRT 2.0 though, that Group N Impreza behaves a lot like the real car, even if the raw data says otherwise, in terms of subjective feel it is damn close.

Speaking of that. I remember when a talented Norwegian drifter and modder brought that up with 'Lord Kunos', that he managed to make the cars behave more realistically with 'wrong' values. This created one of the famous temper tantrums.

 

[bogani]

That may very well be, but he advises people to set their damper and spring to 0, so that should tell you something

Yep, I saw that and even pointed that out.

I'm not 100 percent sure myself to be honest, is there any gain running Damper if you don't use any of the in-game friction settings?

And spring? What exactly does that do? Usually it's just adds a static spring effect?

 

[Case_]

I'm not 100 percent sure myself to be honest, is there any gain running Damper if you don't use any of the in-game friction settings?

And spring? What exactly does that do? Usually it's just adds a static spring effect?

I can't tell you for sure if there is any gain, I didn't have enough time to test it, plus it's kinda hard to do anyway since to be sure it applies the adjustments, you have to restart the game, which obviously means spotting the eventual difference is harder. But from what I've seen, there doesn't seem to be a reason to *not* use it, which is what my point mostly is.

As for spring, I can tell you it certainly doesn't add a static spring effect, not on TM devices and not unless you specifically tell the driver to do that, which isn't the default setting.

 

[bogani]

I can't tell you for sure if there is any gain, I didn't have enough time to test it, plus it's kinda hard to do anyway since to be sure it applies the adjustments, you have to restart the game, which obviously means spotting the eventual difference is harder. But from what I've seen, there doesn't seem to be a reason to *not* use it, which is what my point mostly is.

As for spring, I can tell you it certainly doesn't add a static spring effect, not on TM devices and not unless you specifically tell the driver to do that, which isn't the default setting.

So what effects are you supposedly missing when you set Spring to 0 in the TM driver?

 

[Case_]

@bogani Presumably some of the friction effects. But again, you're approaching it from the opposite direction - you're asking "what effects are missing in this specific game if you set this to 0?", while my point is that there's no reason to advise people to set these to 0 in the first place, much less as a general rule for every single game. (Because that's exactly how the advice tends to be presented - that you should *always* set the damper and spring to 0 because it's *always* better that way, when that's not the case at all. It's better in a few rare cases, in the majority of cases it either doesn't matter or it actually takes FFB components away.)

 

[bogani]

@bogani Presumably some of the friction effects. But again, you're approaching it from the opposite direction - you're asking "what effects are missing in this specific game if you set this to 0?", while my point is that there's no reason to advise people to set these to 0 in the first place, much less as a general rule for every single game. (Because that's exactly how the advice tends to be presented - that you should *always* set the damper and spring to 0 because it's *always* better that way, when that's not the case at all. It's better in a few rare cases, in the majority of cases it either doesn't matter or it actually takes FFB components away.)

Fully aware that it's always been advised to set damper and spring to 0, but at the same time you are saying 'presumably', so you can't actually say the spring is doing anything at all? I doubt that it should have anything to do with friction effects though.

The only time I used Spring was when I tried to get any feel at all when trying out WRC7, and that just added a constant spring force that returned the wheel to the center.

As there is no clear explanation for what settings does what this merely just ends up as speculation. I'll gladly try everything to see if it makes a difference or not.

 

[MarkR]

On the topic of steering weight vs feel we're just back from a great fun karting event this morning, at an indoor Kart centre with a split level track. I know it's Karts not cars but the truth is they are all steering weight and very little in the way of feel. The feel almost all comes through the chassis, it's all about feeling the slide and reacting to it, the only real feel in the wheel is as the weight gets lighter with the loss of front grip. It's the first time I've been on a two level track with 1 storey high up and down ramps and they added a lot of fun, picking the braking point with the extra momentum was tricky. The downstairs part of the track was also slippy, slippier than an outdoor track in the wet if anything, and a great way to learn car control. The kids has a great time sliding around and when I asked them how to control a skid I was greeted with the wisdom of Hudson Hornet
"Turn right to go left" quoted back to me! The track also had a great little feature where they track personal lap data against the ideal for the track, line used, braking points, throttle lifts were all shown and useful as a feedback and improvement aid.

Relating this back to DiRT 2.0 and you know really I think a lot of racing games give the impression of way too much detail in the wheel. The kind of detail you only really get in a handful of well designed lightweight cars on some surfaces - almost anything from Lotus in my experience. I understand why games add that detail (and make the co-driver much easier to hear than in reality) to make the games more enjoyable and so that it is easier to feel what is happening through the wheel. Having the wheel bobble about and shake more wouldn't add much if anything to Dirt 2.0 for me but if it makes people happier with it I hope they add what they can in.

Personally I feel more positive about the state of both real world karting, track, rallying experiences on offer and the racing game replicas we have than ever before. There really is a choice of great experiences depending how real and detailed an individual wants them and that has rarely been the case in the past - it's usually been the odd standout game from time to time. Pretty much whatever racing mood strikes there is a high quality gaming choice available and usually for less than the cost of a couple of hours karting.

 

[AadHofman]

It would be nice if the FFB informed me what the back end of the car is doing. Without it RWD cars are really tough to drive on the limit.

 

[bogani]

It would be nice if the FFB informed me what the back end of the car is doing. Without it RWD cars are really tough to drive on the limit.

But the missing 'road feel' effect that people are complaining about wouldn't help you with that. That is the job of the Self Aligning Tourqe and it's there already. When the back end starts to come around the wheel automatically counters, and that is the clue you get what is happening and you react accordingly.

One thing that could be of benefit is if the rear wheels spinning on throttle would vibrate your wheel, it's missing at the moment. It's a fake effect though as it's not something coming from the front wheels.

 

[RasmusP]

But the missing 'road feel' effect that people are complaining about wouldn't help you with that. That is the job of the Self Aligning Tourqe and it's there already. When the back end starts to come around the wheel automatically counters, and that is the clue you get what is happening and you react accordingly.

One thing that could be of benefit is if the rear wheels spinning on throttle would vibrate your wheel, it's missing at the moment. It's a fake effect though as it's not something coming from the front wheels.

Little comment just for the sake of information:
It's not really that the wheel would counter the slide. It's more that the rear moves and the front wheels stay in place.
Basically "the car moves around the wheel". But since you are moving together with the car and the steering wheel only showing rotation movements, it looks like the steering wheel would counter the movement when in fact, it just stays in place while you're the moving part

I know you know that but I always wanted to have a reason to write that down

Anyway, that's the reason why I had difficulties to drift with my g27 and it's really difficult to drift with a dfgt.
These wheels rotate so slowly that the front wheels don't stay in place. They will turn together with the rear end so you have to "throw" the wheel.

Either way I agree. That's basically the only thing that's perfect in DR 2.0