Codemasters play by their own rules, their games often attempt to bring a level of depth and skill to arcade racers in a way rarely seen outside of Bizarre games. Grid, F1 and Dirt all sit in a place between simulation and fantasy and unlike their recent competitors like the Shift series, Codies are largely successful at bridging the gap. Grid and Dirt 1 still stand today as two of my most loved racing games, standing proudly next to GTR2 and iRacing. Unfortunately Dirt 2 missed the mark, Codies stripped away a lot of the features I loved from the first game such as Hill-climb events, a campaign that let you progress through your own proffered race-type and a stylish, focused and consistent aesthetic, and replaced it with a brash ‘extreme sports’ vibe and an emphasis on big trucks and circuit races.

Dirt 3 hits the floor running with a large preference to rally driving, most of the events are rally or rally cross with tracks inspired from key real world locations such as Finland, UK and Kenya. There’s a range of cars available from today’s turbo charged beasts to yesterday’s Arbaths and Audis, there’s even a range of 90′s and group B cars available to those of you who want to relive the Collin Mcrae Rally 2 days.

This is the first Dirt game to almost feel like one of the old CMR games, a series I loved with a passion, I still miss the serious vibe of those games with the post-race timed repairs and checkpoints which bleeped appropriately telling you if you are ahead or behind the pole time for each section. It’s a bit of a shame then that Codemasters still feel like they have to make Rally look ‘cool’. They learnt a few lessons from Dirt 2, but still a lot of the in your face graffiti, X-Games and irrelevant race events remain though thankfully they are toned down.

So while there is less ‘woah dude!’ There seems to be twice as much painfully annoying menu dialog with tediously long explanations of what every single menu item or race type is. Straight away from creating a profile you are introduced to four different faceless characters, each one talking to you like your some kind of driving Rainman. It’s a somewhat okay idea in principle as it stops first time players from skimming over the details and just jumping into their first race blind, but in practice it feels like a very tedious un-skippable cutscene, thankfully the more you progress through the game the more they shut up and just let you race.

On the track Dirt 3 roars, this is the best handling model Codies have ever produced. There’s a surprisingly steep learning curve at the beginning because as I said at the beginning, Codemasters play by their own rules, but once you nail the handling you quickly turn into a master driver much quicker than you would in a sim. Part of what makes the handling so great is the excellent course design, each bend, ditch, slope and crest is designed so that your car bounces and slides round the tracks at break-neck speeds, you will be amazed at some of the moves you pull off on-the-fly because the track design tends to ever so subtly guide your car into it’s own momentum. The co-driver is also Scottish and excellent, plus the large variety of rally class vehicles are impressive with each group feeling noticeably different from each other. The only bad thing i can think about the controls is, where is clutch and H-pattern shifter support? To be honest though, I don’t care when the handling is this much fun. For some reason Codemasters can’t seem to do a cockpit view that I’m happy with but they do the best bonnet cam in the industry which is how I play the game

A surprise success in this game is the insane set of multi-player modes. Outside of the usual races and time trials you have crazy concoctions such as ‘Invasion’ which tasks the players to fight off a robot invasion by smashing into cardboard objects while avoiding cut outs of city buildings. There’s also capture the flag and Infection type game modes. Such is the robustness of the driving physics and the confidence Codemasters have in their players that these multi-player modes are a welcome addition to the usual run of the mill modes that are expected. I do feel though that if Codies are going to start playing around with this sort of car lunacy it would be much better fit and received in a new Micro Machines title.

The sound design and DSP effects as always is industry leading with thousands of highly detailed sound effect components being played and morphed in real time as you thrash your mechanical monstrosity around the tracks. Graphically it’s easily the best looking Ego engine game out there with particularly detailed environments. The only bad blotch on the overall aesthetics is the eclectic collection of God awful music tracks, I don’t know why racing games feel like they have to please everyone with music selections. I think it’s better to do things the Wipeout way, think about the style of the game and match the music to it.

The series is back with it’s strongest entry. The best driving physics in all of Codemasters history coupled with meticulously designed tracks creates a super fun and pure arcade racer that in it’s best moments feels like what Sega Rally Evolved should have been.
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About the author

Michael Manning

Michael is a sound designer and composer working in the games industry. His portfolio can be found at www.manningaudio.com