Choose your off-road discipline
Now unlike previous Colin McRae games, rallying isn’t the only discipline on offer here. What you’ve got is pretty much every off-road, slidey-sideways-in the-corners racing type going. So in a similar way that Race Driver took us through a variety of disciplines, Colin McRae DiRT does the same, but this time just focusing on events that have a minimal use of tarmac as a racing surface.There’s six to choose from which might sound like too few but each one is so well executed and has so much variety that I doubt very much you’ll get bored with any of these for a good while yet. There’s your classic Rally over a set course with a co-pilot to guide you. Then you’ve got Crossover which is derived from those Super Special Stages in the WRC. There’s one of my favourites, Rallycross, a superb mix of tarmac and off-road in the same race. Rally Raid is like Rally except you’re going head-to-head against other vehicles over the same stage. Then there’s CORR which is the spectacular short course off-roading. And finally you get Hill Climb where you whack a massively powerful car up a hill in the quickest time.
Click for larger imageSo, lots to keep you entertained.
To navigate around the various events the Codies have devised a rather nifty 3D menu system for the front end of Colin McRae DiRT. From here you can go for a quick spin or enter the career mode and then work your way up the career pyramid. You don’t have to complete every race in each row of the pyramid, which is handy is you dislike a particular race type. You can’t split off and just race in one championship for one discipline though, which is a bit of a downer… but then, with the racing being this good, you’d be missing out on an awful lot if you did…
From this 3D front end you can customize pretty much everything about your car, from buying new cars to enter other events (a sneaky sort of unlockable) through to car liveries or tuning. There aren’t any magic unlockables in Colin McRae DiRT though, everything revolves around cash. You start off with a bit and a couple of cars and build your career and stable of motors from there.
Click for larger imageThe tuning aspect of Colin McRae DiRT lifts it above the standard arcade racer and, dare I say it, above the Gran Turismo series as well. Yes, yes, I know you can tune your cars just as much in GT as in you can in Colin McRae DiRT, but unlike GT, your racing has an impact on how the car performs.
So, your car is all set, you’ve softened off the suspension, stiffened up the roll and set the brake bias to the rear to let you hang the car on the rears and still turn in… and now you slam into the cliff face along the side of the course or overshoot that first turn and try and plant your car in the crowd… Now what would normally happen at this point in most other racers is that you’d either bounce off and then carry on driving or a piece of the car would drop off.
Click for larger imageIn Colin McRae DiRT driving like a nonce will see you very quickly sidelined. Sure, it’ll look great as bits of the car drop off but you’ll pay a hefty penalty in performance. Lose a spoiler and that’s no downforce to keep those drive wheels firmly on the track. Rev the nuts off the engine in a jump and you’ll bend the driveshaft on landing giving you less acceleration and top speed… you have to nurse your car through the races or you run the risk of either not finishing or not having enough cash to repair the car… which makes the next race even tougher.
If you opt for the Rally Championship mode, which is Colin McRae DiRT’s version of the classic Colin McRae rally games, you’ll have to be even more careful as although cash doesn’t play so much of a role in car repairs, time does. Knacker your gearbox and that’s a mass of time to replace when the brakes and exhaust system also need some work… and when you’re only allotted an hour or repair time between stages, you could well end up in trouble.
Click for larger image