I’ve been a long time fan of the original Colin McRae rally games. After his death, the game franchise was renamed to Colin McRae: Dirt, because that really is what rallying is about. Sure some of it happens on tarmac, but the real fun is in the dirt, the snow, and the mud. In the 3rd installment of Dirt, they’ve dropped McRae’s name altogether. The first Dirt introduced a variety of off-road types of racing — buggies, stadium trucks, and Pike’s Peak hillclimb events.
I played the original Dirt on the Xbox, missed Dirt 2, and this time around I got DiRT 3 on the Playstation 3.
The hillclimb events have been renamed to Trailblazers, and there aren’t so many hills to be seen. They’re similar vehicles, but on normal rally tracks. In a way I miss the hillclimbs, but this is fine. Imagine driving a Forumla 1 car on an off-road dirt track, sliding sideways as often as you’re going in a straight line. It’s some intense shit, and while it’s tough, it still stays true to the nature of the rally racing core of the game.
This is gymkhana.
The new addition to DiRT 3, however, doesn’t. Gymkhana. Some boy racer, riceboy, wannabe trick racing crap. Ken Block, the guy who allegedly invented Gymkhana is talking and doing some of the introductions, so the only reasons I can see that it’s included in a rally game is that he’s related to somebody important at Codemasters, or there were some sexual favours in the contract somewhere.
Or maybe he paid them vast sums of money. But if that was the case, then he should have been able to fund a separate gymkhana game, not have it inserted where it doesn’t belong. It really, REALLY doesn’t belong in a rally game. And to make matters worse, you need to complete the events and pass them all before you’re allowed to continue your rally career.
So what exactly is gymkhana you ask? It incorporates drifting, jumping, doing donuts, spins, and jumps into one an annoying, difficult, cock-blocking racing event. It might not be so tough for those of you who play street racers, and do drifting and donuts and all that shit, but I’m here to play a rally game. Gymkhana is a completely different discipline. But the fuckers at Codemasters have designed DiRT 3 in such a way that I can’t finish the career mode without being at least mediocre at gymkhana.
Sadly for me and the money I spent on the game, this isn’t the case. I can’t get past the fourth series until I complete two gymkhana events. So I’m 20% through the game, and I’m stuck with single player mode. I guess I could try playing online multiplayer, but playing these games from New Zealand usually results in crappy latency, combined with my crappy wireless that keeps dying on me (the wired part of the broadband connection isn’t in my apartment), and the fact that half of the people I’ve encountered gaming online (on console games anyway) have a combined mental age of 12.
It’s not all bad. I’m just raging at the moment because that’s cheaper than smashing my controller through my TV screen.
The graphics are spectacular.
The graphics are stunning. The attention to detail is amazing. Everything down to spectators and photographers dashing across the track when they spot you coming round the corner. The scenery, the cars, everything is spot on.
However, on the flip side, the one majorly annoying thing about the menus and the race intros is that you can’t click past them. There are several “cut-scenes” — pure audio, mind you, nothing as fancy as video here — and you have to listen to them in their entirety. They add absolutely nothing to the game. They’re basically your racing team announcing what’s coming up, or that they’ve “talked to the sponsors” and allowed you to run a new race when you unlock something new. It’s not as self-congratulatory as all the animations on every single damn menu and trophy win on Gran Turismo, but it’s close.
Developers: please, please, for the love of bacon, let me press X to get past your menus, animations, and cut scenes. I know you’ve put a lot of effort into them and I know they’re pretty, but I don’t want to have to sit through them every fucking time.
Oh, and the music choice is complete arse. There’s no way to customise your playlist and remove tracks you dislike. It’s all or nothing. I chose the latter.
Right. So the actual playability — the driving and controlling the cars is very smooth and responsive. It feels great to play. DiRT 3 doesn’t have the over-the-top physics that Sega Rally did — you know, the mud that splattered on your car and weighed it down, making it handle differently, or the way you’d cut ruts into the track for successive laps that if you didn’t hold exact the same line next time around, you’d end up with slower lap times — none of that. DiRT 3 has found that sweet spot between an arcade racer and a simulator. The game engine, EGO 2.0, is probably the best I’ve ever played.
See, this is rally driving.
I think this’d make a great multiplayer rally game for when friends are over, and single player one-off races as I’ve mentioned, but that has limited appeal. To me, the inclusion of the gymkhana events is the single biggest letdown. It’s killed the single player career mode for me. Boy racer games certainly have their appeal in their demographic, but unless you’re a fan of both styles of racing, then this probably won’t be your cup of tea. You’d be better off getting the original Colin McRae: Dirt if you don’t have it already.
Games that include odd modes of play just for the sake of being different, or so that they can stand out in a crowded market are all well and good. But when they force those game modes on you, to the point where you can’t continue without doing them, then that’s when I draw the line.
Gymkhana is clearly a big part of this game. The car on the cover is a gymkhana car, not a rally car. I just wish I’d read some reviews before buying it — but hindsight is about as useful as tits on a screwdriver.
