Release Date: 06/06/2017
Played On: PS4
Available On: Linux / Mac / PS4 / Win / XBO
Time Played: 37h 32m
Progress: Completed all Rally events / most Classic Rally / some Landrush & Rally Cross
Developer: Codemasters
Publisher: Codemasters
After a relatively disappointing experience in Dirt Rally, I figured it might be worth getting back to the mainline series. Sure I might not be as talented as you need to be to succeed in a more 'hardcore' take on rally driving, but at least this one has difficulty levels. However, it turns out that difficulty isn't the only thing that can kill the series.
To start with though, I feel obligated to mention that my experience with the Dirt series has taken a certain path over the years. I first got hooked with Colin McRae Rally 2.0 and have played every iteration since. It's been a ritual of my gaming life to eagerly await every new iteration that Codemasters has deemed worthy of distribution.
The original Dirt was a giant leap forward from the original Colin McRae series, as it added more event types and loads of content to tackle. The literal pyramid of events was a satisfying challenge to overcome, and the presentation and gameplay was at the top of its class.
Despite the gameplay remaining consistently excellent in Dirt 2 and Dirt 3, new events were introduced and hotly debated online. Turns out that Gymkhana can be quite the controversial addition to a rally franchise, even though I enjoyed the variety it offered. After all the core rally stages and extra events like Landrush and Rally Cross were still in abundance.
Then the series took a bit of a vacation with the poorly received Dirt Showdown, which leaned heavily on the arcade side of life with demolition derby events and novelty vehicles. I actually enjoyed Showdown for what it was and played a whole heap of it, but I agreed with a lot of the criticism that highlighted how much content was missing from the game.
At the time it seemed like nobody wanted the Dirt series to be more casual, as they'd already built a reputation for excellent mechanics and decent simulation aspects. Showdown basically threw all of that out the window in favour of something that should have had "more accessible" as it's subtitle.
To make matters worse, Showdown was followed by a lacklustre port of the original Colin McRae Rally to modern systems. I didn't play this version, but opinion seems to be relatively unanimous that it was a steaming failure doomed to be labelled as a cynical cash-grab in the era of remasters and reboots.
So we had a highly respected series of rally games that managed to find a balance between hardcore simulator, and enjoyable racer. Then Showdown and the Colin McRae Rally port come along to leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth about the lack of content and the casual arcade direction the games were heading.
Enter Dirt Rally, which promised to be a pure rally experience for serious fans of the series. I've already written about Dirt Rally and expressed how I feel about it, but to sum it up: I feel like they corrected too hard in the opposite direction.
Dirt Rally ended up being completely inaccessible to a player like me, who usually sets opponents to easy and sight-reads stages without repetition. This was the first Codemasters racing game that I didn't end up finishing, thanks to it turning into a massive grind on account of my own limited skill.
By the time I had retired Dirt Rally, I figured it might be nice to pick up the latest mainline game in the series and get back to the Codemasters racing that I know and love. I actually replayed Dirt 3 in the meantime thanks to the "Complete Edition" coming out, and enjoyed myself immensely. So surely Dirt 4 would be more of that awesome experience that I've come to know and love.
Let's stop for a second here, as I'd like to make a note of the fact that this is one series of games that I have always picked up and enjoyed. For years I would grab every racing game that had that Codemasters seal of approval. It's not only limited to the Colin McRae/Dirt series, as their other racing games always reach a minimum level of quality thanks to a development team that really know how to make cars go really fast.
Hence, when I talk about a bad experience in a Codemasters game, especially in a mainline series like Dirt, it's with a heavy heart. I've always loved and trusted this developer, but they're starting to lose me somewhere along the way and none of us enjoy that moment when you know that your relationship is doomed to fail.
Suffice to say that I fired up Dirt 4 with a glint of optimism in my eye; knowing in my hear that it would be the cleansing experience I yearned for after Dirt Rally wore me down. I didn't even bother researching the game, as I'd already enjoyed Showdown more than most, so I figured I might be safe. I guess I should listen to my own advice sometimes and never base decisions on assumptions without the expectation of getting things terribly wrong.
Without a doubt, there's a lot of good in Dirt 4, which I'll focus on first. This is indeed a return to form for the series and many of the systems we're used to from Dirt 3 make a return here. There are multiple event types (but only 4), as well as a free-roam compound, driving challenges, and some team management.
The obvious omission from the game are extra event types like open Raids and Hillclimb events. Even though I really enjoyed these events in particular, it's not the worst thing in the world to not have them around anymore, but there's not a lot to replace them. All that's on offer are Rally, Landrush, Rally Cross, and Classic Rally, which should be enough to keep anyone busy, even though it seems limited at first.
Within each even type there are a couple of sub-types, such as Landrush including both trucks and buggies. Others like Classic Rally are broken up into events for each vehicle class and era, all with a number of tracks and championships to tackle.
Additionally, the team management aspect has been beefed up a little and there are a number of things to do outside of racing that will make your life easier on each stage. Hiring better engineers and staff will mean your car gets repaired faster and cheaper, or you're able to attract better sponsors. Upgrading your team's facilities will provide better workshops, or even merchandise, which all result in more cash in your pocket from each event.
Of course, the best part is designing a livery and colour scheme for your team so that every car you drive looks good. It's the closest thing to a character creator that you can get in a racing game, and I'm always happy to mess around with it for a few hours. Thus, the team management aspect is perhaps one of the strongest systems in Dirt 4, even though it ends up being a bit of a grind and a lot of upgrades fail to have any noticeable impact.
Although, the absolute best feature in the entire game is the training section that's been added to the free-roam compound "Dirtfish". Training features a series of short events intended to teach you the fundamentals of rally driving. Each tackles a concept that is explained theoretically before testing you on a test track. The topics range from simple braking techniques, to advanced weight distribution and acceleration control.
Just like some of the best fighting game tutorials, the training mode is an essential tool for someone like me. I'm the kind of player who isn't going to trawl the internet to find better techniques, and I'll never tune my car and repeat stages to try and get a better time. Having the option to spent a couple of minutes at a time learning and testing a driving technique is a much more enjoyable way to learn something and improve.
In fact I'm happy to report that after doing the first tier of training lessons, I became a better driver (in-game of course). All of a sudden I was thinking about shifting my car's weight before entering a corner, and how to brake efficiently through different turns on varied terrain. I have no idea if it made a difference to my overall times or not, but I felt more competent than I ever have before.
Another feature that makes a return in Dirt 4, is a viable difficulty setting that actually works. Like a lot of racing games you can turn various assists on and off, but I was very pleased to find a setting for opponent difficulty. What's more, I pulled that sucker right down and didn't feel bad about it for a minute. After all, winning every race no matter how terribly you perform, is a great way to earn more money and not have to grind through gruelling stages over and over again.
The moment to moment game mechanics are still as good as they ever have been. In fact, a lot of the game engine changes seem to have carried over from Dirt Rally. It makes sense that they'd keep the driving physics and performance consistent, so as much as this is some of the best driving in gaming, it's not at all surprising.
What is surprising, is how the difficulty balance sways wildly between disciplines. I managed to win easily on the lowest difficulty during Rally and Classic Rally events, but completely bottomed out in Landrush and Rally Cross. For some unknown reason, every opponent zoomed ahead of me with ease in these events, even though I had the difficulty set to its lowest possible setting.
Now, I'm not saying that getting beaten is the problem, but the same difficulty doesn't seem to carry over from event to event. During easy Rally stages I was beating my opponents by ten seconds or more, while in the arena races I was being smoked by the AI who would often end up leading by thirty seconds or more.
This inconsistency really boggles my mind, as it goes far beyond a simple skill check. I could accept that maybe I'm not as good racing on arena tracks as opposed to open stages, but it wouldn't make that much of a difference. Instead it seems that the AI balance has been drastically adjusted for any event where you can see another vehicle.
Unfortunately this ends up reminding me of the imbalances I found throughout Dirt Rally, which were frustrating to say the least. In Dirt 4, I have to admit that I never finished all the Landrush and Rally Cross events, simply because I found it impossible to beat. Sure I won a couple of Landrush heats by the skin of my headlights, but I couldn't even get close on the Rall Cross tracks, even after hours of attempts.
Of course this might spark the idea that perhaps I'm just not talented enough to play the game, but after years of enjoying the series, I think I have a pretty good read on how the difficulty is balanced. I'm well aware that I play on easy, but that's because I know I can succeed with the economic systems if I play that way. It's a real bummer to find out how quickly the game turns into a grind-fest when you're consistently losing races and there's no other options to make life easier.
I've had similar complaints about Dirt Rally, but the difficulty isn't even the worst part about Dirt 4. I mean, I can accept that maybe I suck too much for certain parts of the game, but the rest should be enjoyable and fun. As it happens, one of the biggest "improvements" in Dirt 4 turned out to be the single worst feature of the entire game.
If you check out the Wikipedia page for Dirt 4, you'll find reference to the "Your Stage" system, which procedurally generates rally stages. I don't know if Codemasters ever had licensed stages in their games, but they certainly had hand-crafted ones. In previous games you'd often find yourself racing in both direction on a stage, and eventually getting used to every available location and its variants. In Dirt 4, all of the career stages are built with the "Your Stage" system, which means that each and every stage ends up being unrecognisable and ultimately bland and generic.
In an attempt to explain what I mean, let's use a comparison. Previous stages in the series had to be built and designed ahead of time. This meant that the designers would take into account the flow of the entire stage and how it feels to "play" as well as how realistic and detailed it was. Often this meant that different locations would present entirely different experiences, as each stage would be tailored accordingly.
Racing through Spain in Dirt 3 meant narrow tarmac roads, tight turns, and lots of hairpins. As opposed to somewhere like Greece, which featured wide gravel roads, lots of drifting, and high speed corners. Each environment had its own identity and presented unique challenged to overcome.
In Dirt 4, there are five locations that act as little more than tile sets that have varying weather and different textures to look at. Sure Sweden has snow and ice everywhere, and Wales is wet and muddy, but thanks to the procedurally generated stages they all end up blending into a single mess.
The further you get into the rally stages, the more this procedural generation becomes a major issue, as you start to reveal its limitations. To make any one stage work, the system has to build tracks that connect, so it essentially pieces together sections of track in whatever order it wants. Think of it like dominoes: you can get many combinations during a single game, but the tiles and numbers are repeated throughout.
At this moment in time I could describe to you a number of tile sections in Dirt 4, simply from the memory of having driven them over and over again. The fact is that there isn't enough variety to make the procedural system work effectively. Not only do multiple stages repeat the exact same sequence of turns and sections, but a lot of stages are filled with repetition as well.
I can't tell you how many times I've been driving through a rocky section, only to be hit with a right-hairpin, followed immediately by a left-2. Or how many times I've tackled the snowy sequence of a left-3, followed by an bumpy-right-4-with-logs-outside. Not to mention every other combination of turns that come up over and over again. Some of the later championships feature about thirty stages, which not only repeat each other, but will repeat themselves three or four times in a single stage.
The unfortunate result of all of this is that playing Dirt 4 becomes very boring, very quickly. By the time you reach the final championships, it feels like you've already seen everything the game has to offer and you're just going through the motions to tick the boxes and get things done. It's why I didn't finish the other disciplines after completing every Rally event, as I was completely burned out on every stage I drove.
I'll admit that I typically hate procedural generation in just about every form it can take. It seems like it was never a thing until games like Minecraft and The Binding Of Isaac managed to do it well, and then everyone decided they needed it in their game. The fact of the matter is that while procedural generation works well in certain scenarios, it's not something that will add anything to a lot of genres.
In a series like the Dirt series, using procedural generation ends up feeling like a rip-off. I have to assume that this was introduced because it was easier to implement than hand-crafted stages. At least I hope that's the reason, as I can't come up with any other benefits.
It really bums me out to have to say that Codemasters have really been dropping the ball with their rally games recently. As I write this, Dirt Rally 2 has been released and right now I have no desire to even look at that game, which speaks volumes. Remember that this was one of the few developers that I would follow closely and eagerly buy their new games with confidence. Now I think I'm going to have to say goodbye to Codemasters and start looking elsewhere for my racing game needs.
I really can't quite put into words how disappointing this is. Especially when there's still the framework of brilliance that has always existed in Codemasters games. The driving is excellent, the game engine is masterfully tuned, and zooming over rally stages in a Dirt game is still some of the best around.
It's just a shame that some key design decisions have turned this machine of precision and expertise, into a grindy, unbalanced, and unenjoyable mess. Perhaps I just need to accept that everything changes over time, and maybe I've finally outlived my relationship with Codemasters. Maybe I'll send them some flowers and a card with a gentle let down inside.
"Thanks for all the hours of racing joy, but I feel like we've drifted too far apart."
Recently, I’ve been adding gameplay videos to my YouTube channel and I figured it might be a nice addition to these posts. Sometimes the only way to see what a game is really like, is to see it in motion, so from now on I’ll be adding a gameplay video or two to the bottom of these posts when possible.