The career mode consists of events, be they single tracks or tournaments, in both rally and rallycross – its shorter, sprint style cousin.
Perhaps unsurprising, given the spartan fixation on form, there is much of the stripped-back about Dirt Rally 2.0. After a time, it becomes a new kind of right, more like surfing than driving, and there’s a faint ripple of Ridge Racer in the stupid joy of a drift – made all the sweeter for the countless failed attempts that lie in its wake. Twisting your car athwart the track with a pull of the handbrake and coasting round the shelf of a cliff feels blissful and wrong – like being unloosed from gravity. It’s just as well, as the most acute challenge lies behind the wheel, the most fiendish opponent your own instincts.Ĭoming to Dirt Rally 2.0 from the likes of, say, Forza Horizon 4 is refreshing it means learning a new language. I rumbled roughshod through my first championship thanks to the AI, which was content to let me cruise to the top of the leaderboard using rocks and trees to straighten out my wayward cornering. Outside the cockpit, though, the difficulty is yielding. The driving mechanics are brutal but balanced, and, with a crunched bumper for a study aid, the learning curve, while something of a hairpin, is richly rewarding.
But after a couple of hours, the handbrakes, the powerslides, and the pace notes – called out, with clairvoyance, by your co-driver – all beat a new time on the brain. Initially, the feel of rallying, for me, constituted being upside down, sledding along on the roof of my car like an upturned bin lid. True enough, it’s clear that Codemasters has funnelled its focus into the feel of rallying. This, of course, was brilliant news as a rule, the worse the graphics on the bystanders, the better the driving. The onlookers were a mass of papery polygons and appeared to move at 20 frames per second – about as fast as you can fan a flip book. Looking at the crowds clustered near the starting line, I could have sworn developer Codemasters had tried its hand at stop motion. Whenever there’s news of a new Colin McRae Rally game, the question that whips fans into a fever is this: what format will its title take? Will it bear a bold number, like Colin McRae Rally 3? Will it adopt a date, like Colin McRae Rally 2005? Will it, having shed the McRae name, be addressed as Dirt, or its more serious sibling, Dirt Rally? I’m pleased to report that the new game has gone in for decimals, the better to drive home its lust for precision.ĭirt Rally 2.0 furthers the cause of those for whom life is a lap time, and the dirtiest word is ‘accessibility.’ I knew what I was in for just before my first race began.
0 kommentar(er)
