Matts Blog

Incase you were confused, its about Colin McRae’s DiRT2 – released for the PC only yesterday [4/12/09] over here in the EU and UK. Unfortunately the US have to wait until the 8th forum posts suggest.

While I could write most of what I have said on in that thread on here, I won’t – I spent quite a while in the early hours (somewhat sleep deprived I should note) writing a post over on the EGC site. It goes into a fair bit of depth, and really I only want to expand on a few key notes which I didn’t go into this morning – but please, read the post first.

One of my first gripes of the game was how it threw me into the racing – the last time I saw this was in the Need For Speed games, it has the unfortunate side effect of not letting you get used to the menus – and it stops you from configuring controls on a game which you have no manual as a reference. As well as this – the main menu is a little bit higgledy-piggledy, often making you navigate through multiple menus just to get to the options screen; which can be frustrating if you hit back too many times.

That said, its a minor gripe – and something I wish game developers would just stop doing, it is different – and looks nice… but just gets frustrating and lacks functionality/ease of use. The other issue, relating to this same area is when you finish an event – your character looks round in the same pattern, and it took me a while to get clued in that flags and billboards were changing to my recent events. Great puzzlement ensues as I have no idea why that’d actually happen… but safe to say the motion does get repetitive.

Bar those two problems, the game is fairly friendly – doesn’t always feel like its being a jerk when other (AI) players natter with you or others… even if that doesn’t seem realistic – or do they in the real thing? I really don’t get a chance to watch rally, so I’d have no idea… but it seems infeasible. Er, one last whine – I like the technical jargon attached to my co-driver… this proved a lucky find, as “left, easy” suggests I should slow down, rather than keep my speed up – and vice versa for “right, hard”. I was relieved to get “left 3, 40, crest, jump” again – reminds me heavily of the older rally games I used to play; it might be an arcade racer, but couldn’t we teach something the hard way? Notably understanding those commands?

Seriously, no more rants! I love it, even with its small problems – especially the rally, trailblazer and gatecrasher events (as they are fairly similar)… and that is really what I would love to see more of. Did they ever take a vote on peoples enjoyment of the 4×4 and buggy events? Where they ever as popular as rally? I’d be curious to know.

A couple videos I took, mainly to test my video settings – but they turned out quite well… some rubbish/miniscule editing with Windows Movie Maker, but they are mostly still as recorded (half resolution, 25fps… but they do drop below that, hence the odd stuttery section).