“Hey! Watch what your doing!” as dave mira says when I ram into him going 100 mph. I am talking about the game Dirt 2 and not actually ramming into the real Dave Mira. This isn’t your normal rally racing any more, which the first Dirt game focused on, it has a blend of rally and arcade style racing. Codemasters takes pride in their racing games, it’s they expertise if you will, and with Dirt 2 they have really given this game their all. Many of you who don’t know, colin McRae died in 2007, said he was one of the top rally racers out there and Dirt 2 is a homage to Colin McRae.
Dirt 1, as I said before, was more of a standard rally; race against the clock and all that. It was said that Dirt 1 has the best menu design. But Dirt 2 has stepped it up and has again impressed us all with its free look menu design. Your menu is pretty much everything around your RV, for example if you look at the map on your table with the right stick, it’ll show you all the races (career mode) and if you look at the door you can exit to where your car is and customize it to your style. When your outside your trailer you can see the crowds and you can hear music off in the distance. It’s a menu system that you have never experience before.
You start off the game as a up and coming racer who has yet to make a name for him/her self. Your first car is Colin McRae’s Rally Cross car. You gain experience points through races and missions. When you level up you open more levels, gain liveries (car skins), dashboard items and other fancy little gifts. For those of you who like to drive behind the wheel rather then behind the car, you’ll get to enjoy all the gifts on your dashboard and rear-view mirror. The max level you can reach is 30, but believe me, its quite a challenge to even get to half way there.
A player can choose between 6 difficulties before they race, as one would expect the higher the difficulty the more money/experience points you can get and not to mention the amount of flash backs you can use. You’ll have so many car options to drive from during each race and you’ll be driving all over the world, like from Croatia to Malaysia even China. During Each race, you will be pinned up against tough world racers and not just no named people. Codemasters even put the real voices of all the racers on this game and they will talk to you during the racer or challenge you to certain events. It’s a weird experience because I’ve always wanted people to say my name during games but in Dirt 2 they actually do that, If your name is on the long list that they have. I mentioned Early about a flashback, well its pretty much self explanatory if you have a major crash or didn’t take the turn like you wanted you can rewind time back to 15 seconds before hand and correct your mistake; but depending on your difficulty your only allowed a certain amount.
Missions were added in Dirt 2, which are in race tasks that give you extra exp at the end. There are many different missions each with 5 levels. For example you have to do a certain amount of spins or drift a certain amount, things of that sort.
Graphically the game is gorgeous. Real affects of driving through dirt and mud, your car will get dirty and will have mud splashed on it, a neat little feature that I came across was if your driving behind the wheel and your go through water, your windshield wipers will activate and clear the windshield of the water. The environments are stunning, one lose track of where their driving when stumbling upon a sunset going over the landscape.
Each car has its own feel to it so you can’t really drive one way with a fast rally cross car and then try to drive the same way with buggies. So you will have to learn and adapt to the cars specs and try to become an all round good racer with all the cars.
Players will have all sorts of events to choose from, from your basic rally to your domination race, which is earn the best time in sections of a race track to gain points.
And all the events that you can race in career mode can be raced in online. While racing online a new player doesn’t have to worry about only being able to drive the really bad cars, all cars are unlocked for a player to race when online, and it evens the race track. Compared to the career mode, online can be very different and aggravating. In career mode racers will slow down and try not to ram you if you cut them off or get in their way, but online other players will hit you as hard as they can for no apparent reason and it can get very frustrating and its oh so satisfying when you hit the person back and they go flying and end up in last place.
Overall Dirt 2 is one amazing piece of work, its graphically beautiful, game play is amazing realistic with a hint of arcade, and the story line is easy to follow, not to mention the easy/interesting menu design. This game really appeals to the racing and non racing fans, such as my self and I love this game. At the end of the game there is a Colin McRae race event which I think is a nice remembrance to Colin McRae and his family.
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