DiRT Rally Console Review

Shock to the System:

I may not have done my due diligence when it came to researching DiRT Rally. Inspired by thoughts of Sega Rally and its arcadey ilk, I jumped at the chance to play a new title like those venerated classics, especially from the consistently excellent Dirt series. So when I booted it up and found it their most accurate racing sim yet, I was shocked.

Story:

Despite this initial shock to the system, I fell for DiRT Rally pretty quickly. Its smart career mode is evidently the result of a successful early access relationship with fans. It’s a curated mode that plays much more like Forza and its sleek peers than DiRT’s usual (and somewhat bland) campaign offerings, and I was thrilled to see smart design decisions worked into each wildly different tournament.

Gameplay:

On console, the continued lack of a tutorial is even more surprising. You will get the choice of starting out in either rallying or rallycross, but once you’ve bought your first car, there’s no option to sell or trade it, so you’ll have to spend hours getting to grips with that discipline, slowly gaining the cash to buy your next vehicle before you can even access the rest of the content.

I’m pretty surprised that the game wasn’t made a little bit more accessible in some ways, but Codemasters set out their stall very early on into the PC version, and so, in other ways, it’s completely unsurprising that the game refuses to shy away from its decidedly hardcore simulation roots.

Presentation:

The console version of DiRT Rally really doesn’t lose anything in translation to console. The game will still run at 1080p, and still runs at a buttery smooth 60 frames per second.

In motion, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference when compared to a relatively powerful PC.

There’s a very occasional frame drop here and there, and when stationary, a few of the textures seemed like they were a little step down, but really, you’re getting a superlative port here.

Conclusion:

DiRT Rally on console continues to excite and frustrate just as on the PC. Codemasters have done a brilliant job in getting the game to look nearly as good as a PC on the highest settings (certainly I could barely tell the difference), and in ensuring that all the content carries across, for good or ill. A tutorial and some more difficulty sliders would make the game a little more accessible, although you get the sense that this time out, Codemasters have marked their territory into and do not care one jot if that offends anyone.

DiRT Rally, even on the more accessible console platforms, demands that you really put the time into it to get the most out of it. If you aren’t willing to spend hours on a hard learning curve, then like Dark Souls, you may simply find that this isn’t the game for you.

If you are, it’s the grandest homage to rally racing ever to grace a gaming platform. The only thing you can really gripe about is the full price nature of the game when it can be had for significantly less on PC.

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 If you want to read our more in depth PC review of “DiRT Rally” please go here.