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DiRT

Written by DM on Saturday, June 30 2007

Unfortunately, the stunning graphics come at a price – frame rate. The fps rate never drops to a level that makes the game unplayable, but it certainly takes a noticeable hit. The solo time-trial races are able to maintain a constant frame rate, but the multiple-car events suffer from the get-go. As soon as the green light illuminates, the mud, dirt, and smoke fly from 16 cars, and the frame rate drops to around 20 or so. Once you are able to break free of the main pack, and once the starting hubbub dies down, the fps rate picks up again. To be honest though, you will be having so much fun trying to push your way ahead of the other competitors in those first few seconds, you will hardly have time to notice the graphical hit.

As I mentioned earlier, the game still has all the in-depth tuning options that the rally sim fans will be looking for. In fact, I suggest that even novices take a look at these options and learn what they do because sometimes setting the right slider in the right place can make all the difference in a difficult race. DiRT is full of those little things that make games great, and the tuning menu is no different. Every single tuning option has an optional narration by Travis Pastrana. If you hit Y you can hear exactly what the tuning option does, what it affects, and what increasing or decreasing the value will do to your car. I cannot express how much of an immeasurable help this is to novices and amateurs like me. In fact, Pastrana is features in most menus with his optional commentary.

While it is very easy to get sucked in to DiRT’s stunning visuals and spectacular presentation, I would be remiss if I did not mention the one flaw that the game suffers from. The cars in DiRT all seem to turn as if they were skewered into the screen with a toothpick. By this I mean that most times it seems as if the car stays stationary, and the track moves around the vehicle. This ends up leading to that “floating car” feeling that plagues many racers. Many of the cars seem to have no sense of weight to them; they could be light as a feather for all we know. This is certainly something that Codemasters has to nail down for the DiRT sequel, although it may require an entire engine overhaul.

The online mode in DiRT is, well, disappointing. You would think in today’s day and age that every racer would have simultaneous online competition. Unfortunately, there are no options to race with multiple cars on the track online. Instead, you can run either a rally race or a hill climb at the same time as everyone else, but you never see nor hear the other players. You can voice-chat with the other players, but that isn’t much consolation to the non-simultaneous online setup that Codemasters decided to go with.

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