Knights of the Cardboard Castle

Veteran game reviewer Tom Chick once said when reviewing World of Warcraft that he’d always thought that he didn’t like sushi until one day he went to one particular sushi restaurant and learned that it wasn’t that he didn’t like sushi. It was just that he hadn’t had the right kind of sushi before. Well, what goes for Tom Chick when it comes to sushi and mmorpgs goes for me when it comes to racing games and the game that changed my opinion was Grid.

It wasn’t for lack of trying that I never got into racing games for a very long time. I distinctly remember messing around with the original Test Drive, first released in 1987, and over the years I’ve checked out various installments in the Need for Speed series, but nothing really clicked for me. Then I played Grid and everything came together. This is why even though I’m still not generally a big fan of racing games, I paid attention to subsequent releases by the developer Codemasters and immediately bought Dirt 2 when it went on sale.

What makes the Codemasters stuff so compelling for me? Most obviously because they manage to find the perfect balance between realism and accessibility. While true racing simulators like rFactor intimidate the hell out of me, even a racing neophyte like myself can see how arcade-like the NFS games became. (I’m aware that NFS: Shift tries to buck this trend by emphasizing realism but I haven’t played that one yet.) In the Codemasters games, I don’t have to learn to learn anything complicated, like tuning the cars, but the driving model is still realistic enough that I can feel the ground under the tires.

Then there’s the flashback feature that first showed up in Grid. It’s basically a limited use rewind that lets you recover from mistakes without having to restart the whole race. It wound up being so popular that it was included in Dirt 2 and is being copied by competing racing games. Another point is that the games are generally very polished affairs with great production values but without the silly stuff that EA puts into its games to appear edgy and hip. It doesn’t try to inject story elements or hire models to look pretty (NFS: Undercover hired Maggie Q to add eye candy). It’s all just pure racing.

Since I’m neither a connoisseur of the genre nor knowledgeable about real-life racing, this won’t be a full review. It’ll just be a collection of some of my thoughts. As its name implies, Dirt 2, like its predecessor that I’ve never played, focuses on off-road racing. This is best exemplified by the rally events in which you have a co-driver who reads out pace notes to help you navigate through the course. In addition, there are also Rallycross events which take place on a track that’s half dirt and half tarmac. The game includes over 30 different real cars, from models that are familiar in rally racing such as the Mitsubishi Lancer and the Subaru Impreza to really oddball things like the various buggies.

The rally and trailblazer events (which actually use the same courses except that you don’t get a co-driver) are my favorite ones. The rallycross and especially the land rush events feel too contrived and resemble more traditional racing too much. The rally courses are the best looking ones too. The Utah maps, with the imposingly tall cliffs on flat desert terrain, are the best of the lot but the Malaysian maps (even if Malaysia is placed wrongly on the world map) which have you racing through the jungle are great too. Since you inevitably get splattered with mud, the Malaysian maps are guaranteed to dirty your cars the most.

One thing that surprised me at first in Dirt 2 was how easy it is to drift. Grid had actual drift events which I was never any good at and grew to hate. In Dirt 2, since you’re driving over loose dirt or mud most of the time, drifting comes naturally. I’m not sure that it actually helps to get around corners faster as you waste precious time spinning your tires for a second or so before they can get a good grip and launch you in the new direction, but it sure does look cool. The graphics overall are great as always, plus you can now wreck the cars. The damage model is admittedly rather simplistic. Either I completely total the car or it sustains some minor damage which doesn’t make that much of a difference.

All that said, the game isn’t quite perfect. I’d love to see a weather system that dynamically changes track conditions so you’d have to adapt on the fly. Just imagine how much more fun the Malaysian tracks would be if you had to careen through the jungle in a thunderstorm! Plus, despite how I hated the 24 hours of Le Mans events in Grid, I’d really like to see some longer courses in a Dirt sequel, especially with a more advanced damage modeling system, so you’d have to carefully nurse damaged cars to the finish line. There’s not much chance of getting this though as I understand that the first Dirt had more complex damage modeling but the developers decided to dumb it down for the sequel.

This doesn’t change the fact that it’s an excellent driving and a steal at only US$10. You really need either a driving wheel or a gamepad (which is what I use myself) to play it properly, but if you’re good to go and have the slightest interest in off-road racing, this really is the game to get.