LogFAQs > #957631300

25. DiRT 2 (Xbox 360, 2009)


Prior to DiRT 2, I had never played a racing game with a presentation quite like this. As someone whose favorite genre is racing games, I never got into the real-life thing, only sometimes watching short-track off-road events. The point is that I wouldnt say I am part of the racing culture, but when I first started playing DiRT 2 over a decade ago, It had my attention, especially, as silly as it sounds, with its eye-catching fonts of many varieties.

You are plopped into a racing circuit area, lightly gated but within eye and earshot of various spectators/fans walking around as crews of other racers are hanging around. You head to your trailer, do some basic racing game stuff like pick a name, nationality, and beginning car, and off you go.

Functionally, DiRT 2, which is actually the 7th in the franchise because it used to be named after Colin McRae, is similar to a lot of racing games from that era and even before. You go through various events featuring several, distinct disciplines related to real-life rally racing. Its a loop that I have always found satisfying and felt a great sense of accomplishment from, but I think that the high quality of the courses and modes are what really set DiRT 2 apart from its peers.

DiRT 2 wasnt the first, nor was it technically the first I played, but it is the racing game that I most associate with rewinds. Racing games are one of the more demanding genres out there with the need of constant awareness of course design, driving physics, car physics, and more. For many racing games, races can average around 5 minutes each, so that can be a long 300 seconds with sometimes razor thin margins for error. While some games employ what is called rubberband AI (in a nutshell, they slow down when you are in the rear and speed up when you are in front), those are more prevalent in arcade-style racing games that are geared toward kids/all ages, and beyond that, I have complicated feelings toward the practice.

Anyway, DiRT 2 is more of a hybrid (sim-leaning but with arcade elements), so I can imagine how devastating it could be to lose a race after being nearly perfect for the first 97% and then in the final stretch, you took too wide of a turn or something common of that nature. Also, with there being a lot of off-road courses, sometimes things just get weird from a jump or turn that you seemingly had little control over, amplified if being on a new course or one that you are still getting used to.

Codemasters, the developers of the series and one of the premier racing game developers out there, had a game just before this called GRID where I was first introduced to their rewind system, which I believe are called flashbacks. Depending on the difficulty you play on, you get a certain amount of flashbacks that you can use to rewind the action for upwards of something like 5-10 seconds. Its simple, doesnt feel excessive or cheap, and is a very welcome feature to a genre that demands so much from its player.

I have played most of the DiRT games, and Codemasters racing games, since then, and while I have thoroughly enjoyed all of them, nothing has topped DiRT 2 yet for me.

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