Dirt Rally Review

"The Rally gets Dirty"

Campaign

Dirt Rally is the latest in the gritty racing series taking a particular part of racing and entirely focusing on it. With that we have a game focused on Rally which is traditionally done in a point to point format having competitors race separately attempting to gain the best times.

It's less about the direct race of drivers and more focused on you versus the road in an attempt to beat the circuit with the quickest possible time. They've definitely achieved that with this game as it captures the essence of Rally Sport perfectly with condensed yet large in scope races that make you feel like you're in all these breathtaking locations across the world.

Whether it's high in some mountain forest in Sweden or racing across icy slopes elsewhere the race is linear yet it feels like these environments are widespread. It's also a brutal simulation in making you focus on conditions of the environment and punishing you if you're not careful as I had my fair share of slow motion wipeout flips off the courses which is great.

The career mode is also well done as you start out with old school vehicles and build your way up to the top not only grabbing a variety of new cars on the way, but also building a driving team. You'll need to higher engineers, train with them and basically just drive to improve what's available to you.

The races are done in sets with multiple locations so each area provides a solid amount of time depending on how quick you're on the course. Aside from the many core tournaments there's also a full online section to compete against the world with daily, weekly and monthly events to take part in for great rewards.

Gameplay

The game looks quite stunning and it's very realistic in the design of the environments. I was very impressed with the looks of the various environments and how well it captured these locations. Some of the races I were in took place on muddy dirt roads; others in a desert terrain, some took place on iced cliffs and my personal favorite was taking a regular track then adding some weather tweaks such as rain. The environments really do look great just like the cars themselves and part of the fun of this series is getting these cars a little muddy or banged up.

Obviously some of the perfectionists of racing will like to keep everything pristine with clean races, but I like to have a bit more fun with things. There's also an interesting aspect of the game where you'll need to fix your vehicle occasionally between rounds with each tab of the vehicle health taking time which you have a limited amount of between the races.

It's very true to being a simulation of the sport in many ways and while I find the driver beside you annoying it's quite authentic. I found the crowd of people could have maybe looked a bit better though that's just a small aspect of the racing and the cars themselves handle very well with the controller.

The Conclusion

Dirt Rally is a stellar racing game capturing the Rally aspect perfectly and I'm sure fans of that will be thrilled. It's also great for regular races though not quite as welcoming to the casual crowd as it's more of a simulation.

I had a great time playing the latest Dirt and I'm sure anyone that like racing will as well. The game is packed with content with a good selection of cars, tons of tracks and probably the widest available environment selection in a racing game.

The circuits were also well done providing a variety of challenges with each and I enjoyed the unforgiving nature of having my car launch off the track as it was nice to watch. Dirt Rally a solid racing game that handles well and feels true to the Rally experience.

Dirt Rally Review on Xbox One
Review Code Provided by Codemasters

Rating Overall: 8.4