PC Gamer UK 01.2021 @InternationalPress75

The problem, is that recently Dirt

Rally and its sequel came along.

Lovely, strait-laced Dirt Rally. It

was so brilliant it reminded us how

much we missed pace-notes, and

realistic offroad handling, and drizzly

Welsh lanes. Just like

that, we like the old

style of rally game

again. The one Dirt was

invented to revitalise.

Which leaves game

number 5 without a

clear raison d’etre. All

the core elements, its

essential Dirt-osity,

were devised as a deliberate

departure from sim-minded, realistic

driving. But right now, as Dirt Rally 2

enjoys a passionate community and

sim-racing esports gain momentum,

sim-minded, realistic driving is

exactly where the excitement is.

Of course, you might really fancy a

non-taxing racer, where braking is

genuinely optional and a familiar

pyramid of events wraps itself around

you from the career menu like a

comfort blanket. We all fancy that

sometimes, and Dirt 5 is those things,

certainly – it’s just a very familiar

version of those things.

The handling model doesn’t want

to step out at the back

and have you wrestling

to find balance. It

wants to comply. You

can toss most vehicles

into most corners with

a quick lift of the

throttle and emerge

more or less on the

pace. And, ah yes,

there’s the wadge of race events in

the career mode menu, each with

medals for arbitrary tasks. As you’d

expect, cars can be daubed in colours

and vinyls and sponsor stickers until

they’re ready to detach your retina.

From structure to track design to

presentation to handling, it’s all

exactly what you expect to find in a

Dirt game, delivered without

surprises or noticeable steps forward.

Surprises aren’t in abundance on the

track either. There’s a lot of fireworks

and confetti and pyrotechnics going

off as you hit a jump, but AI drivers

don’t mix it with you or with each

other as they would in a GRID game.

It’s all a bit civilised, even in the ice

racing events, which prove something

of a highlight throughout career

mode. There are plenty of other event

types – they just don’t discern

themselves very well.

DIG THE DIRT

What you do get a sense of, as you

plunge down the next hill or launch

into an outrageously cambered

hairpin, is geographical variation.

There’s no missing the fact you’re

racing in China, or Italy, or Norway,

or NYC. This sense of touring the

world adds much-needed interest to

your career since the different event

types don’t distinguish themselves

very clearly other than the infrequent

one-on-one showdowns.

It’s at this point that it should be

acknowledged that a team of

hundreds of people worked tirelessly

and adapted to working at home in

order to put this game out. Doing so

is an achievement in itself, and

despite some minor performance

issues in the Steam review build, Dirt

5 doesn’t bear the scars of an unusual

development process.

So Dirt 5 isn’t a bad game, then.

Whereas Project CARS 3 seems to be

jutting out its chin and actively daring

you to find something of the

franchise’s prior identity which you

liked among its new mess of utterly

characterless racing, Dirt 5 is guilty of

the opposite. Instead of jettisoning its

identity it’s playing too safe, holding

onto it too closely in search of the

apocryphal casual racing gamer

who’s scared of brake pedals.

NEED TO KNOW

WHAT IS IT?

An offroad racer with a

splash of Tony Hawk’s

that doesn’t like

braking

EXPECT TO PAY

£45

DEVELOPER

Codemasters

PUBLISHER

Codemasters

REVIEWED ON

i7 9700K, RTX 2080 Ti,

16GB RAM

MULTIPLAYER

Up to 12

LINK

store.steampowered.

com/app/1038250/

DIRT_5/

60

Codemasters’ Dirt 5

offers up some arcade

offroad racing of the

sort we’ve played four

times previously.

VERDICT

It’s all a

bit civilised,

even in the

ice racing

events

W

ho and what is Dirt 5 for? I don’t know the answer, and

I’m not sure Codemasters does either. After all, this is a

series that made a name by injecting a bit of extreme

sports culture into the Colin McRae Rally series, which

was itself beginning to feel a bit warmed-up by 2007.

Colin McRae: Dirt was fresh and fun, chucking its pace-notes out of the

passenger window and doing a doughnut just because it felt like it.

STUCK IN THE MUD

DIRT 5 ventures down a

well-travelled track. By Phil Iwaniuk

AROUND THE WORLD

Dirt 5, travel correspondent

NORWAY

Rolling hills of delicious

snow. Aurora Borealis?

Every night mate.

UNITED STATES

A frozen tundra

punctuated only by

icy puddles.

CHINA

Where bamboo and

lasers meet. Ancient

and modern at once.

GREECE

Look at the quality of

these roads? Where did

all that EU money go?

Dirt 5

REVIEW