DiRT 4 Sim Discussion Monday - DiRT Series

[Paul Jeffrey]

From the old Colin McRae series right the way through to the latest DiRT 4 release, we fancy a bit of a DiRTy discussion...

The DiRT franchise of games has taken many forms over the years, crashing onto the scene back in 1998 with the epic Colin McRae Rally for PlayStation 1 and PC. Maximising the popularity of the spectacular Scottish rally champion of 1995, CMR would very quickly establish itself as one of the classic racing games of its generation, setting the scene for a long running series of rally based titles (of varying quality) from Codemasters over the following years.

2017 has seen the latest fruits of that early partnership with the rebranded DiRT series getting its fourth instalment, taking the game a little bit closer to its roots with a more traditional rally stage focussed theme.

So with the very many different flavours of the DiRT series (and its ancestors), let's have ourselves a nice big discussion!

Mondays be like...

 

[Austin Ogonoski]

DiRT 2 was called simcade trash for excessive energy drink adverts and rallycross events in absurd locations...

Only for two major rallycross series to start up in the years following which copied this exact event format.

In hindsight, DiRT 2 is a simulator.

 

[Jockey]

Every dirt game is a simulator because all of them have trees.

 

[ShredatorFIN]

Dirt Rally is the only modern Dirt game worth of anyone's time (just stay out of tarmac)...Dirt4 = understeer simulator 2017

All they had to do is remaster Richard Burns Rally, but nope. Recently got into RBR, and seriously... the praise it gets is no bull. Audio/visuals are crap, but other than that.. still the best rally sim. Even the tutorials are actually better made than D4 Dirtfish, might actually teach people something

 

[MarkR]

The Colin McRae games captured a great moment in motorsport, rallying was exciting and the rivalries between the drivers and the marques were real. Getting up early to freeze on the side of a long RAC or later NetworkQ Rally was a lot of fun. Best of all the road going versions were real cut price performance heroes so the drive home was fun too. The BTCC was also at it's best, I digress but these were good times to be a motorsport fan.

Sainz losing the 1998 title by breaking down 500m from the end of Rally GB is a memory that always lives with me.

Many happy hours with the McRae games, the DiRT games with their career pyramids and unlocks were initially good but lost me when they went all US style.

DiRT Rally was such an unexpected joy especially in Early Access and VR iced the cake.

DiRT 4, well I'm in the minority that liked it and I 100% completed it on Xbox One both single player and online. I don't see the problems others are so vocal about but then look at my history, I grew up with this series so I think it played a lot on the past. For all the faults of procedural generation, it is more 'rally' that the hill climb that Diry Rally leaderboards often became. VR would have been great but not to be this time.

I agree that there is surely still a place for a more authentic rally simulator, DiRT and Codies have other than DiRT Rally been more mainstream. Is there a big enough audience for what is today quite a minority sport? I'm not sure.

 

[KittX]

Thing is, I'm not sure mainstream public gets D4 as well... Maybe because I know how the car behaves, and Dirt Rally feels more natural and intuitive for me, I simply don't know what to enjoy in D4. All the corners are very hard and punishing, you have to always do massive amounts of steering, and to me it doesn't feel different if you're on full throttle or lifting off, half throttle etc. It just doesn't make sense at all. As an arcade racer I'd be extremely bored with all that punishment with no joy to compensate it all. I remember my friends being not into simulators at all, admired RBR because yes it was punishing, but the way the car moves and behaves is so convincing and admirable.

 

[Ryan Robbins]

Dirt Rally is a great game. Excellent graphics, audio, good FF and physics. Good presentation. I think the damage model is a little weak. Good multiplayer. People complain about the lack of courses but there is plenty for me. Haven't tried Dirt 4...from what I hear I doubt I would like it. I am not nearly finished with Dirt Rally anyway

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

DiRT 2 was called simcade trash for excessive energy drink adverts and rallycross events in absurd locations...

Only for two major rallycross series to start up in the years following which copied this exact event format.

Only one RX series started up, and that's the only series that have gone more to the DiRT - style route. To call the "Global" "Rallycross" major is being kind. They have even had races on single-surface tracks. That's not rallycross. It's a championship with 10 SuperCars, where at least three of them are there because they got a deal with the promoters that made it financially smarter for them to go to the US than to keep participating in the World Championship.

The World Championship was not a start up, it was just a rebranded European Championship. It got a serious promoter for the first time in years, and it added two races outside Europe, and on two additional continents, which is needed to get a World Championship status. Other than that, it is the same championship as Martin Schanche got his Mr.Rallycross name from, same championship that Tommy Rustad became the youngest ever round winner back in the Gr.B days in 92. Or the same championship that Alexander Wurz' dad won in 74,76 and 82 and where Matias Ekström's dad was a big figure (both literally and a top driver) in the Gr.A days.

It is also quite telling that the biggest events in the World Championship are Höljes and Loheac, followed by Hell and Estering. The actual purpose-built RX tracks, and not the x-games style tracks.

People complain about the lack of courses but there is plenty for me.

In terms of learning and mastering each stage, unless you have way to much spare time, the DiRT Rally stages will take time to master. But we noticed it quite well in RDRC, that when you have only two stages, run both ways and chopped up. That it gets to repetitive for a championship.
The stage-generator will never provide the extremely detailed stages as we had in DiRT Rally either, but that as well feels to repetitive on certain areas, and the less said about the handling of a majority of the cars the better.
The R2 cars though, they handle quite well in D4.

 

[bloozmahn]

i like dirt rally quite alot.

anyone remember this one?

 

[Rhian]

Fond memories of Colin McRae Rally on PS1, then lost interested when it became DudeBro Rally. Got back into the series with Dirt Rally and it was such a perfect platform to build on but Codemasters just can't help themselves it seems when it comes to rally cars.

 

[VirtuaIceMan]

i like dirt rally quite alot.

anyone remember this one?

I do, as I own pretty much all rally games on PC :-D Rallisport Challenge was by DICE aka Digital Illusions, who did the previous excellent Motorhead and Rally Masters Race Of Champions. They went on to make Midtown Madness 3 on Xbox, Rallisport Challenge 2 and then got into Battlefield and the racing games were history :-/

 

[Pywackett-Barchetta]

One thing I've loved about the DiRT games is that they've all remained extremely distinct (I hear 4 has issues with this but I've yet to play it and can't vouch either way). DiRT 3 is nicely simcade silliness going that tiny extra bit over the top for the sake of fun, and it's just such a bright and happy game that it always lightens my day when I play it. Bashing bumpers in the middle of Shibuya and hurtling down the mountains of Monte Carlo are supremely fun, and somehow both tense and relaxing at the same time. You can really get absorbed in it.

DiRT Rally is much more intense without being cruel about it. It nudges you in the right direction and doesn't compromise on difficulty, but it's reassuring about it. It won't back down and make it easy for you because it's confident you'll learn the ropes; managing to do so is, as such, supremely more satisfying, and even careening off a cliff and mangling my car into an unusable pile elicits a reaction of knowing what I did wrong to cause it.

And I will say it still boggles my mind how much hate DiRT Showdown gets. It's not like the other titles at all - heck, I agree that it probably could've done without the DiRT name, but it's there because it's by the DiRT team - but that's kind of the point. It doesn't pretend to be. It is all-out ludicrous arcade-style demo-derby gymkhana nonsense to the extreme - sorry, the XTREME!!! - but it tells you such right up front. I suppose it's easier to appreciate in hindsight knowing that it was a spinoff and a pure rally title was on the way.

So when it's a quiet night and I'd like to pass the time and center myself, I boot up DiRT 3. When I want a challenge, I boot up DiRT Rally. And when I want to relive the joy of smashing diecast cars together, I boot up DiRT Showdown. I find myself continuing to play pretty much all of the series on its individual merits, which I personally think is a unique trait for DiRT compared to most other ongoing racing series nowadays.

 

[thatmotorfreak]

I played Colin McRae 3 and 4 on my Xbox and drove like an idiot. Then I got DiRT 2 years later and had lots of memories playing it post grade school graduation. it was a dudebro cringefest. DiRT 3 didn't really feel quite the same coming from the previous one but I did enjoy the fact that there was more rally content to play around with. Then DiRT Showdown came along and...well I liked the soundtrack and art style to say the least (Wreckfest, Flatout, and GRID's Fig-8 are far better games than Showdown).

When DiRT Rally came out, I was happy to see the series break away from all the silly dudebro stuff and come back to its roots. I was even more lucky to find out I had a CMR 2.0 CD laying around at that time as well.

It looks like I'm in the minority with DiRT 4 as well; I acknowledge the faults but I still enjoy it with all the new cars and the randomized stages (Repetitive tiles don't really bother me, it's their first time making a stage generator so I didn't really expect too much). It seemed like the Codies really wanted to focus on making their annual F1 game this year to be their best one yet and left DiRT 4 neglected post-release. Really sad...

 

[Matthew Allington]

My first Colin McRae game was CMR05 I spent some time with it but generally preferred WRC: Rally Evolved (which I still say is the best official WRC game to date btw) - CMR05 felt to me at the time like the cars were magnetically attracted to the road!

Fast forward some years to DiRT Rally and I absolutely adore it. The cars were great to hande, the gameplay was intense af and I even spent the best part of a year mastering it with a keyboard. I even enjoyed the tarmac!

DiRT Showdown - got it free, done a few hours on it, actually had some fun. There's no disguising the fact that it's obviously an arcade game, but it's great fun to try and escape from the opponents trying to wreck your car once you've had a couple of beers!

DiRT 4..... eh. Rallycross is great but as far as the rallying goes, online is dead and the AI is broken, the gravel and snow physics aren't very enjoyable either

 

[Jockey]

The stage-generator will never provide the extremely detailed stages as we had in DiRT Rally either

It will in the future.
The stage-generator will be mandatory in racing games, later on, I'm sure.
It all boils down to how many tiles you have in your system.

 

[ShredatorFIN]

Yep I think drastically upping the amount of tiles solves the issues with the stage generator. It's good idea, just execution was left half-way. Also, it's possible to randomize landmarks and vegetation more. And add more variants of those, then "shuffle the bag." Hope rally games don't abandon this idea, it has great potential

 

[darkelf1]

i began to like this series from dirt 1, the menu music is really good.lol......

dirt 2 is ok but need more tracks, dirt 3 is also ok but used xlive, hate that thing...

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

did mcrae2 and 4 (can't remember why i skipped 3, lol) and also cmr05, did dirt, skipped dirt02 because of the dude stuff, did dirt03 and was then very very positively surprised by dirt rally. dirt4 has a great career mode that keeps at least me coming back for bits more every now and then, the generated stages are already pretty good i'd say, someone else already remarked how even with their faults they beat the brilliant dirt rally stages after about the fifth or so run, because it's just not rally to know every single stone along the way inside out and upside down.
For sheer feel, none of the mcrae/dirt titles has yet matched rbr, this is the only rally game i ever had the feeling i pretty much knew what each separate wheel on my virtual car was doing atm and why. the codemasters games have always felt a bit floaty, but since i played almost all of them, they seem to be good enough to keep me coming back for more. looking forwad to some DLC for dirt4 over christmas, once the f12017 madness has died down a bit.

 

[testdriver77]

Played all CMR titles and my last Dirt was #3.
Can remember endless hours playing that first on PS1 and later on switched to a pc.

Somewhere between i have played lot of hours/days/months RBR. This was awesome and the physics were very cool and hard.
It was a success to bring the car to the finish in one piece and in solving that in a fast time...


Then suddenly Dirt Rally appeared and this is my favourite Rally game!
I had the opportunity to play Dirt 4 but "it feels not so good" like DR.
Also the stages do not have a "nice flow style" like the ones from DR.

The best thing would be to keep DR alive and create new stages and bring some cars.
improvement of tarmac physics would also cool.
And remove the rally cross stuff because its not necessary.
But i think CM is already working on DR2....hope so....

 

[ShredatorFIN]

Also one thing regarding RBR... Some say it's overly hard. IMO not true.

The physics and FFB make perfect sense. It's the stages, that make it hard. The vehicle controls are intuitive and predictable like for example Assetto Corsa, not hard at all. It's the stages that are trying to kill you, with sudden intersections, narrow roads, bad cambers and such.

Dirt Rally sounds and visuals, dynamic weather, RBR physics, better stage generator = perfect rally game. Forget all the Landrush nonsense, RX might make for a good game if Codemasters made a game about only RX with the full license. But their next offroad game should focus on one thing, be it rally or RX.

All we needed was Dirt Rally 2, with more stages. Can't do proper tarmac physics? Lose the tarmac stages, solved.