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Dirt 4

Dirt 4 Hands-On

It's an attempt to merge Dirt 3 and Dirt Rally, but how does it handle?

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Dirt Rally is a very good game, being praised worldwide, and rightly so, for the past year. It's a lot of people's favourite in the racing genre, however, it is undeniably difficult, maybe even too difficult for the casual player. Dirt Rally is for the hardcore audience, and anyone who doesn't want to invest hours in learning the techniques of active weight distribution, understanding of data, and what type of driving style to apply in different situations, won't really be able to enjoy it. Codemasters knows this.

During the initial presentation of Dirt 4 in a studio in London, Paul Coleman told Gamereactor that although Dirt Rally was a huge success, their one regret is that they didn't make the game more accessible to the masses. The idea of ​​Dirt 4 is therefore that it should suit everyone, casual and hardcore rally fans alike. Whether you are a driver or an arcade simulation professional, you will be able to customise your rally experience and make it just as difficult and challenging as you want it. Senior Executive Producer from Codemasters Clive Moody describes it this way:

"Most people cannot drive a rally car at 70 mph over a stage you'd find in, for example, the Monte Carlo Rally. But the important thing is that we love rally and we want as many as possible to have the chance to do that, too, and they should enjoy our game. It was not a particularly difficult decision when we looked at what we have created with Dirt Rally, with Dirt 4 we want to keep everything we had, but we also want to make it more accessible to a larger audience."

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In Dirt 4 you have two basic settings to choose from, in order to adapt the challenge; Simulation is Dirt Rally with a few improvements, and Normal is designed for the uninitiated player who wants Dirt 4 to feel like Dirt 3. The idea is that this will slowly help players to gradually learn more, becoming more interested and creating a deeper understanding of how cars work, and then turn up the difficulty level with time. To help with this there is also a new and improved rally school where theoretical lessons are mixed with segments of a more practical nature. There'll even be a completely open area to test different cars in.

In the pre-alpha version we got to play in London, both difficulty levels were present, along with two cars and one country, Australia. We chose normal difficulty and also selected some different preset types to further adjust the difficulty level within that setting, with the option to choose between Gamer, Racer, Pro and Fearless. The different settings will of course come with different types of assistance filters turned on, and result in varying bonuses the higher up you go. The first race we took part in was set to the normal Pro setting, and we were sitting behind the wheel of a Subaru WRX STi NR4.

Our first reaction was that it feels like a lighter Dirt Rally, but without feeling as arcadey as Dirt 2 or Dirt 3. Although all the assistance filters worked to keep us on the track, it makes the car feel somewhat unnatural. Although we felt it was more simulation than arcade, it's easier to stabilise, the brakes are easier to handle, and our mistakes weren't as catastrophic as they were in Dirt Rally.

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The highest degree of difficulty - Fearless - is locked in this version of the game, but when we started our second round in Simulation, it felt exactly like Dirt Rally. Clive Moody says that they've been very careful so the game doesn't feel too divided between the two levels of difficulty; it's the same game, in other words. The stages we played in Australia felt more dynamic than those from previous games, too.

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Content found in Dirt Rally, such as rally and rallycross are still there, but so are historical rallies and "Landrush". The latter features buggies and larger trucks along with narrow roads where planned corner taking is just as important as blocking opponents from the inside lane. The game mode is familiar from earlier Dirt games, but that's also the only backwards glancing feature here. There is no Gymkhana, no overblown presentation with fresh spray paint, neon menus or extreme sport stars complementing us each time we successfully overtake an opponent. Everything feels more serious this time around, more like Dirt Rally, with stylish, classy, and clear menus and a sober presentation, like in the first two Colin McRae Rally games a long, long time ago.

The big news in Dirt 4 is a mode called Your Stage, which lets you create completely personalised tracks to race on, and an important part of the rally is to keep track of corners and distances. "Your Stage" automatically generates new routes to these destinations and you can fully determine the length and complexity of each leg, and then put the time in before challenging your friends.

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The Ego engine appears to have been updated as well. Simulations seldom boast crisp graphics, instead it's the calculations relating to the car physics that uses up most of the memory the game needs to function. Dirt 4 runs in 1080p and 60 frames per second on all platforms (PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One). We asked if we can expect PlayStation 4 Pro support, but received only a vague response. Most importantly, however, the audio still sounds incredibly detailed, with gravel clattering inside the wheel, and motors growling loudly.

With Dirt 4, Codemasters wants to merge Dirt 3 with Dirt Rally, and by doing that make all rally fans come together as one big happy family. Creating a dynamic system when it comes to how challenging and realistic the physics are is something that a lot of developers have tried, but very few have succeeded. Codemasters are on to something here, though. Dirt 4 feels like a well planned and ambitious project that will hopefully cater to all those Dirt Rally players who felt that there were wasn't quite enough content in the last game, and to the Dirt 3 fans who wanted more rallying and less gymkhana.

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Dirt 4Score

Dirt 4

REVIEW. Written by Kim Orremark

"It's more than just a worthy sequel to both Dirt 3 and Dirt Rally, it's a true masterpiece."



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