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Now I've been a fan of the Colin McRae games since way back when, ripping down country lanes against the clock at breakneck speeds while constantly fearful of writing off your car has always been one of my favourite things for as long as I've been into racing games. Circuit racing's brilliant don't get me wrong, I've put hundreds of hours into Gran Turismo and when I was younger the TOCA series, F355 Challenge even stuff like Le Mans 24 Hour but there's something about rallying that just equals tension, you can't nudge the guy ahead and sneak past as he's busy wrestling his car off the barrier because he's not there, it's just you, the road and the clock.
Understandably then the original DiRT was quite popular in my house, I wasn't a huge fan of the buggy racing and raid events as the handling never felt as polished as the rally cars and while having seven other cars on the track was fun it didn't feel like rallying as I know it, never the less though I enjoyed it hugely and when I heard about a sequel even though it smelled a little of cashing to get one more game out the license I was up for more of the same.
Unfortunately this is where the disappointment starts because it's not more of the same, it's a very different animal...
It's a good game mechanically, the handling's sweet even if it does feel a touch easier to hold the epic slides that were previously so rewarding and it's very very good looking. The actual rallying aspect of the game however feels like it's been downplayed for more Dakar style raid events, buggy races and rally-cross special races and even though that's what Colin was spending his time on later in his career it seems unfair to see the WRC style events that made him famous take a back seat. The presentation of the game doesn't feel very Colin McRae either, the interface, HUD and voice work all has a very EA Big© feel to it, more like an extreme sports title than a racing game. Every time you cross a finish line it's coupled with a salvo of fireworks from either side of the course, everything is "gnarly", drivers will call you to "throw down" in an fashion almost reminiscent of the Skate games and you can even decorate the dashoard of your car with skulls, hula girls fluffy dice and all manner of other useless ornaments, it all feels a bit too over the top, a bit too big and frankly a little bit too American for my liking.
Your opponents don't feel like worthy adversaries either, Ken Block is without question a great driver, better than I will ever be but to me and I imagine many many others he's "that chap off YouTube and Top Gear" and the rest of the field doesn't seem much better as the only other names I recognise are Dave Mirra and Travis Pastrana who made their names in freestyle BMX and motorcross rather than rallying. Even the roster of cars available caters more to the "extreme" with very little in the way of recognisable WRC cars but plenty of Hummers and stranger choices like the BMW Z4M and the Nissan 350Z, there are no 1600's, no group B monsters, no Stratos, no Citroens, Skoda's and very few Fords either they're all gone, theres still a few Evo's and Impreza's about and even a mk2 Escort to keep the classic rally fans happy but it feels like too little too late in the end.
As a swan song for Colin McRae then I feel like DiRT 2 has missed the mark and become too American as a whole, had it been called Ken Block goes to the X-Games it would have been reasonable to expect the "extreme" nature of everything but to put the game out with Colin McRae written above the title feels wrong and fails to do either McRae or the previous games in the series he contributed to justice in my opinion.
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Originally Posted by Knoxville
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