For the Love of Mud
DiRT 2 does its predecessor one better in every single way, and establishes the series as one of the breakout next-gen racers.
Published: October 6, 2009
It's not just slowing down; you might pitch harder and apply the e-brake differently, you may not use the brake at all and just let off the gas. And, yes, you can just plain avoid that wreck you just got into that sent you from first to last. It should be said that while the game can be something of a breeze early on and even in the mid-way parts of the game, by the end, that first-to-last scenario will become increasingly common, not because of some over-exaggerated rubber-band AI (though I suspect that's in play to a degree too), but because the racers just plain get better.
You'll spend well over 10 hours plowing through the myriad of race disciplines offered in the career mode, too. Rallycross (already enjoyable in the first game) mixes half on-track and half off-road in varying smatterings across the circuit-based courses, Rally events are point-to-point races against the clock (and any staggered racers that might have started before you still on the track), Raid races are effectively Rally ones with bigger, meatier vehicles (baja trucks, buggies and SUVs) and more obstructions to get in their way from one point to the other, Land Rush takes circuits off-road and tosses 'em into stadiums and closed courses for some nice cross-over pile-up potential while Trailblazer is about getting to the finish line in ridiculously fast rally-style vehicles.
That last one, Trailblazer, is a perfect example of the kind of time and effort put into DiRT 2's sense of speed. Drop into the cockpit view (complete with little dashboard bobble heads or fuzzy dice hanging from the rear-view window that react to the actual physics and g-forces generated by your driving) and punch it and try not to get genuinely freaked out by the claustrophobic view and absolutely insane sense of speed. Of all the racers released on the PS3 so far, DiRT 2 is, without question, the most adrenaline-inducing experience I've had.
While most races are fairly straightforward, the some offer up a few variants. Gate Crasher turns the point-to-point races into a controlled exercise in driving through little foam gates, which help knock down the ever-ticking clock. Domination events charge you with setting the fastest times in individual parts of the track rather than the whole lap; crew up on a corner and you'll end up having your section (and its points) stolen from you. Last Man Standing is a fairly standard elimination event where you'll have to avoid being in last place when the clock ticks down rather than the standard per-lap way of pruning the field.
What's impressive about all these modes is that every single one of them and all of the locales they take place in -- from Morocco to LA to Malaysia to Japan to England and beyond -- are fun to play through. Each locale carries with it a different style of track, from the claustrophobic right angles of Battersea in England to the wide-open, built-for-speed bluffside burns through Utah to the arid, swooping meanderings around Morocco. You'll tour jungles, deserts, forests, indoor circuits and all of them -- every last one -- is pretty as hell.
Those visuals are definitely one of DiRT 2's biggest selling points. From the minutae of seeing your unlockable in-cockpit add-ons bobbing and swinging along with your turns to having puddles be a moment of pure blindness as the cascading sheets of water are swept away by your wipers to the mind-blowingly impressive front end where you swoop inside and around a camper in the middle of a huge race event right out into the pit to look over your vehicles. I'm not even sure if the former is real-time (made that much more impressive if it is pre-rendered video by the fact that it reflects your currently selected vehicle nicely), and everything about the HUD is splashed in a neon-soaked kind of scribbly faux-tagged look.
