Release Date: 07/12/2015
Played On: Win
Available On: Lin / Mac / PS4 / Win / XBO
Time Played: 8h 7m
Progress: Halfway through the Clubman Championship
Developer: Codemasters
Publisher: Codemasters
Is it a sin to dislike a game, simply because it caters for an audience that you're not a part of. Or should we be more objective and consider its merits, somehow attempting to guess what a different gamer would think of the same game. Well, this isn't that kind of blog, and I ended up not liking Dirt Rally very much.
Let's start with a bit of context, as I've been a big fan of racing games for a long time, and my favourite series has been the Dirt series. I've played every title since Colin McRae 2, right up to Dirt 4, which I am currently playing on PS4. I praise Codemasters for being the gods of rally racing games, and I've sunk many hours into so many of their games.
Along comes Dirt Rally; the follow-up to Dirt Showdown and the port of Colin McRae Rally. Both of the latter titles received mixed reception, mostly because Showdown leaned hard into the arcade aspects of the series, and didn't include any traditional rally disciplines. Instead it featured wacky cars in demolition derbies and figure eight races.
People kicked up a stink over how much of a departure Showdown was from the core experience of point-to-point rally stages. So much so, that Dirt Rally seemed to be a direct response to that criticism, as it leans into traditional disciplines as much as Showdown strayed away.
The only kinds of racing you can do in Dirt Rally is traditional rally stages, hill climbs, and rally cross. Although, this doesn't mean that it's light on content, as there are many cars to earn and countless tracks to master.
All the standards are there if you're familiar with any of the Dirt games. The courses are all around the world in varying conditions, from tight windy tarmac in the mountains, to wide open dirt tracks in vast bushland. There's snow, gravel, dirt, mud, and everything else you'd expect in a detailed rally experience.
The vehicles are the same, as you're given the option of cars from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Group B, Group A, Group R, 2000s, 2010s, 1600s, and more. This is nothing new for a core game in the series, but each group of cars in Dirt Rally seems to be a bit lean. Of the groups I sampled, there were only a few cars available in each. This stands in stark contrast to other titles in the series which feature just about every make and model you can think of.
A newer feature in Dirt Rally is a layer of team management, which tasks you with hiring engineers and staff to work on your cars. Thankfully the system was later improved in Dirt 4, as this one seems to be thrown together at the last minute. Basically the only real impact your staff have on the game are that their skills will affect how well they can fix your car and make improvements.
Instead of upgrading parts and buying better cars, your vehicles are now upgraded depending on how far you've driven them. It's a weird feature, as you only get that better engine after you've driven a thousand kilometres, or something like that. The same idea is applied to your staff as well, as they gain perks after being with you for a predetermined amount of distance.
This is where Dirt Rally starts to fall apart for me, but we're not quite at that point yet. The thing is though, that these systems are reduced to nothing more than menu selections. There's no personality or life given to these elements in the game. It's as if they included the white box versions in the final game and forgot to finish off the interface before publishing.
However, the value of these inconsequential systems can be easily dismissed with excellent mechanics and simulation, which Codemasters are very good at. To that end I have to say that Dirt Rally is an example of the quality you've come to expect from the masters of rally racing games.
Every track is beautiful and the graphics are really something to admire. These games are some of the only racing games where I actively want to watch the replay after each stage. The environments are more detailed than ever before, and the cars move realistically and impactfully over the terrain.
This goes for the real hardcore mechanics of driving the cars as well. The Dirt series has always shown excellent tuning of physics and how the cars move and react to the environment. Of course, you can tune many different elements to get the feel you're after, but I've never bothered with that level of micro-management. The series has never been as hardcore about its simulation aspects as something like Project Cars, or Gran Turismo, but it's always felt authentic and approachable.
At least, that's what I would have said if Dirt Rally hadn't come along and changed my mind. This is where the game starts to lose me, as it feels like this is trying to be a more "core" experience than is typical for the series. I said it before, but it really feels like this is a direct response to the arcade nature of Showdown, except they've gone too far in the other direction with this one.
Yes, if you're a hardcore rally game player, you might love the unforgiving difficulty and limited disciplines to choose from. However, there should be a warning on the box for the rest of us who might end up thoroughly disappointed after a short time in the game. Granted, I loved it when I started playing for all the reasons I've mentioned above, but after eight hours I gave up in frustration. I happily uninstalled it, knowing I could go back to the welcoming warmth of Dirt 4 instead.
What killed this game for me more than anything, is that for some reason Codemasters decided to leave out a difficulty setting. Instead, you just enter the minimal races on offer with any old car you can afford, and go for it. As you level up and finish more races, you get to enter harder races, and so on. It's the most annoying thing about this game and a real deal breaker for me, because it applies a hard ceiling to how far you're able to progress in the game.
Now, I'll be the first to tell you that I am not very good at racing games, but they're kind of like fighting games for me. I'm terrible at them and not very skilled, but I think they're some of the most fun you can have in a video game. I love racing games in all their forms, but especially rally games with different disciplines and classes to explore. Rally stages are a lot of fun for me, as they are a competition against myself, instead of against AI opponents. Sure there are times to beat, but essentially you're on that track alone, and you'll only get to the end if you drive well enough to not wreck along the way.
This is why I appreciate having a gentle difficulty setting, so that I don't end up being dead last in every single event. It's why I set the opponent drivers to one of the easier difficulties, because that's where my skill level lies. I've played enough racing games to know that I'm a novice player who will find the easier difficulties challenging, but that doesn't stop me enjoying all these games because thankfully, most of them have difficulty settings for that very reason.
By the same token, I would argue that for those hardcore racing fans out there, the higher difficulties will offer a greater challenge than normal. For those that want to perfect the line on every corner to shave off the tenth of a second needed to win, the hardcore difficulties are there to satisfy them.
Dirt Rally doesn't have any options for setting difficulty, which has to be annoying for everyone that doesn't fit the one setting they provide you with. It makes no sense in a game where most of the competition comes from times, so there's even less to balance on most stages. I could understand how tweaking different AI behaviours could take a lot of effort, but rally stages only involve the player's car racing against the clock.
Some might say that this the definitive hardcore experience for the Dirt franchise, and I wouldn't disagree that much. In fact, I'd say that even if that's the case, it's still a terrible decision to cut off any player that isn't a hardcore enthusiast. Mainly because the hardcore enthusiasts can still be satisfied by higher difficulty levels, while easier difficulties can suit everyone else.
My frustration over this whole omission of difficulty settings is also targeted at games beyond Dirt Rally, which is often a hot debate in forums around the web. I'm in the camp that thinks Dark Souls would be better if it offered a difficulty setting, and that fixed challenges are short sighted and lazy. Games without settings to let you play in a way that suits your own interests, are basically asking everyone to conform, or give up.
So it is with Dirt Rally, where I found myself enjoying the first few races I played, only to hit a difficulty wall after only a handful of hours. Even so, I continued to struggle through and placed dead last in every event I entered. I didn't mind though, as I ignored the standings and just had fun driving the cars and seeing the tracks. At least until I realised that you have to place in the top three to earn any money and progress to better cars and better events.
Thus, the ceiling gets hit extremely early in the game for a player like me. Not only did I reach a point where I couldn't earn any money, but I still had to pay my team for their contracts. It suddenly became a huge grind for minimal cash, which is super demoralising when you're constantly not even in with a chance.
The experience turned from thrilling and fun, to frustrating and depressing. Not only was the game telling me how terrible I was all the time, but it made me take more risks, which only made matters worse. I ended up hating how my cars felt to drive, as I could never get them to sit on the road and they slid all over the place constantly. The slightest bump sent me flying off into the trees or down a tiny bank that for some reason I couldn't drive back up.
I took to the forums to see if I was missing anything, but it seemed the only thing I could have done differently is use a wheel instead of a gamepad. I'm not the only one who found the controls a bit unwieldy, but I suspect you'd have a better time if you have a wheel to drive with. For everyone else, there's a need to tweak dead zones and the like if you want to use a gamepad. Otherwise you'll soon be spending all your time correcting shifts in momentum, instead of making purposeful decisions.
Before too long, I was poor from finishing last and paying my staff, so I couldn't even buy new cars to play around with. I ended up with little more than a few crappy cars I couldn't control, and no real way of finding anything fun to do.
The final gasp of hope came in the form of changing up disciplines and trying something else. I couldn't afford a hill climb vehicle, so I bought a rally cross car instead and entered some races. Long story short: I think I attempted about ten rally cross races, and came dead last in every one of them. I couldn't even get close to my opponents on the track, no matter what I tried. I even resorted to fiddling with the gear ratios to up my acceleration, but it didn't help.
That's about when I decided to uninstall the game and stop hating myself.
Now, as I write this post and reflect on Dirt Rally, I really don't have many nice things to say about my experience with the game. Sure it's beautiful to look at, and the physics feel nice, but the difficulty spikes way too early and the game becomes unplayable. Sure I could grind away for countless frustrating hours to earn a new car, but I could also spend that time enjoying myself in another game instead.
I suppose that's the real kicker, that I didn't end up finding Dirt Rally enjoyable at all, which is super disappointing. I've been a big fan of the series since I was in school, and they've never put a foot wrong until now. Showdown might have been a bit of a joke for being an arcade racer that gave up on rally racing entirely, but at least it was accessible and I had some dumb fun playing through the entire game.
There's an argument out there saying that really hard games shouldn't dumb themselves down for everyone, which is valid and I'm all for hard games being hard. The thing with Dirt Rally is that it's an entry in a series that has always been accessible to everyone and nothing short of enjoyable to play. I mean it when I say there should be a warning on the box telling old fans to stay away from this game, as it's a complete betrayal in so many ways.
I don't need to win every race, and I don't need to be the best at a hardcore game. What really kills Dirt Rally for me is the fact that there's a hard ceiling on the amount of fun I was able to have with it. I suck at most racing games so I'm used to losing races, but I'm also used to having fun, which this game is not.
Proof that even the beautiful ones can be total pigs when you get beyond the surface. If you like to be slapped in the face constantly, or think you have mad skills behind the wheel, then have I got the game for you. If you're anyone else, go play Dirt 4 instead.