Articles
By Spud Gun
Published: Jun. 11, 2007 1:02 AM
The Colin McRae franchise on the Xbox saw 3 hugely successful releases, each title capitalising on the success of its predecessor and building the franchises reputation and momentum. This all came to an abrupt halt with the release of the Xbox 360, and it has been two and a half years since a Microsoft console has seen a new Colin McRae title. All that is about to change with Codemasters release of Colin McRae: DiRT on the Xbox 360. Recently released screenshots and a high definition trailer that showed impressive graphical quality caused a commotion amongst gamers, but does the end product live up to the hype? And can it truly be called ‘next gen’?
DiRT is made up of several modes, Career, Rally World and Multiplayer. In Rally World you get to compete in a single race, single event or a time trial. Here you can customise you options, selecting different cars, courses, number of laps, etc, but you can only select cars and choose settings that that you have acquired or unlocked in Career mode. As you can imagine, Career mode contains the bulk of the gameplay. It is here that you see the games very impressive menu navigation system. All aspects of the game are accessed through a 3D menu of red lines and arrows hanging in white space. It is easily one of the best looking menu systems that can be seen on the Xbox 360. Career mode consists of a tiered pyramid with the initial 11 races on the lowest tier, most of which must be completed in order to unlock the next tier up. You progress up the pyramid in this manner, competing in gradually fewer races which culminate in the final race at the top of the pyramid. Different classes of car are required to compete in the various races, 4x4, front wheel drive, hatch, etc. There are a total of 46 cars available for you to acquire, and that’s excluding the handful of livery schemes that are available to each car. As you complete races you earn race points and money that you can use to purchase faster vehicles to compete in similar classes further up the pyramid. The greater of the 5 difficulties selected at the start of each race, the greater the financial reward. The increase in difficulty doesn’t just mean faster opposition, it also means that your vehicle is subject to more realistic and less forgiving race damage. Race difficulty also increases as you progress up the pyramid with courses having progressively less margins for error. Your progression through your racing career is assisted by Jason Plato and Travis Pastrana who provide prompts and assistance. You get prompts to progress to the next level of your career as well as increasing your difficulty setting if you are finding it all too easy.
The race types in DiRT are as varied as the car classes required to race in them. You compete in hill climb, rally RAID, rally cross, Championship Off Road Racing (CORR), and the good old fashioned rally racing. So winning a race in the higher difficulty levels is not just a matter gunning it with the default car settings. Intimate knowledge of each track combined with experimentation and the technical tweaking of different cars in the same class is required to get the most out of your vehicle for a given track. Adjusting and tweaking the settings of your car is a science in itself. There is a plethora of adjustable options that can get a bit overwhelming, but Codemasters have put in an audio help feature associated with each component explaining how to best adjust it for each of the differing road surfaces. The help is well presented and very informative, and you soon find yourself experimenting with settings to see how they affect the cars handling. It is here where DiRT moves from rally game to rally simulation.
Page 1 of 3 | Next Page » - 
