Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo bill themselves as all-encompassing driving games
and often feature legendary rally cars, but they’re really about sticking to the pavement.
Any time they attempt to get out on the gravel, it feels half-hearted in comparison.
Thankfully, over the years,
Codemasters has been at the forefront of giving rally racing the attention it deserves.
Their latest, Dirt Rally 2.0, provides a focused, authentic,
and unflinching take on rally and rallycross.
One thing Dirt Rally does not do is hold your hand.
You can jump straight into the action without being forced through a tedious tutorial, but at the same time,
it can feel like you’re left a bit in the dark.
If you don’t peek at the tire menu between races,
you might have no idea that you should switch to a fresh set of rubber.
When you start rallycross, you’re told that you need to take a Joker lap, but the game
doesn’t take the extra moment to explain exactly what a Joker lap is.
And when you complete a championship, you’ll suddenly find yourself promoted to a new rank
without any idea what awaits you later if you keep going.
While a lot of these things aren’t that hard to figure out,
players may encounter moments of confusion simply because the game makes too many assumptions
about what you already know without providing ways to learn more.
Everything in Dirt Rally 2.0 is centered on two very different forms of motorsport:
rally and rallycross.
Rally is essentially a solo affair, taking you down remote winding roads,
getting from one end to the other as fast as you can.
With high speeds and limited visibility, a co-driver calls out the turns ahead,
and the car with the fastest run wins.
Meanwhile, rallycross is more frantic, putting you in a tight pack of cars
that aren’t afraid to trade paint as you run laps through quick circuits.
The different sports involve different sets of specialized vehicles,
and you can focus on one over the other as much as you like.
You can participate in championships through an ongoing career
or piece together your own races and challenges in free play.
Going through the game’s career is all about having a persistent experience over the long term.
Starting a championship is a commitment to taking a single car through numerous races across the globe.
The game is so serious about it, that you can’t even participate in a daily challenge
if your only eligible car is currently enrolled elsewhere.
You’re also limited to just five retries per event,
with events composed of multiple races.
So if you make a big mistake, you have to decide whether to burn a retry
that may be more valuable later or continue on and try to make up the difference.
There are real stakes involved since your car does take damage
as you bounce and bump your way through the stages, particularly in rally events.
Smash into a tree, and not only will that knock your headlights out for the rest of the race,
but that damage will carry into the next race as well.
There are service areas to make repairs,
but they’re only available at set intervals,
often requiring you to get through multiple runs before you can get the mechanics on the case.
Even then, you’re only allotted so much time for fixes,
so if your car’s too banged up,
you’re left having to choose which parts to repair and which to drive broken.
To help alleviate this, you can invest some of your winnings
not just in the durability of your car, but in your staff as well,
training your engineers to be more efficient to get through repairs more quickly.
As you spend more time with the car, they’ll also monitor its performance,
unlocking upgrades as you put more time on the road.
It’s this perseverance through the long haul that separates the career
and makes it more rewarding than just a string of individual races.
Rallycross is more generous with repairs, but it’s similarly focused on long-term investment.
Rather than hopping from track to track, each event has a more authentic structure,
allowing you to get comfortable with a course’s layout through optional practice rounds,
then participating in four qualifying events, semi-finals, and finals.
It really allows you to take the time to learn the ins and outs of a course, but it can be unforgiving too
as you can fail to make the cut in the earlier rounds and not even get to participate in the main event.
Outside of the championships, the career mode also includes daily
and weekly challenges with big rewards, each of which only allows one attempt.
So you’d best go elsewhere if you want to practice first.
Unfortunately, the game also puts extra challenges for Deluxe Edition owners right in your face,
prompting an extra $30 purchase if you want to participate.
That cost includes a lot of additional content coming in the future, but
displaying the challenges this way feels like more of a turn-off than an incentive.
In free play, you can jump into time trials or set up custom events to play by yourself or with others.
Multiplayer doesn’t appear to be a huge priority though.
There’s no matchmaking, just lobbies set up by individual players
that could be at vastly different skill levels.
Of course if you get into a decent group, it’s fun to compete,
and the pressure’s on since you have to live with any mistakes.
What’s most frustrating, though, is that online play can only have up to eight real players, but
sticks to event rules dictating 20 drivers,
filling empty slots with AI.
It can be annoying to beat everyone in a rally race, yet still find yourself in 16th place
or to get into a rallycross event and realize that
the real players are separated from each other, each competing in different heats against AI.
Tucked away in the free play menu, there are also additional championships for historic rally series
as well as an FIA World Rallycross Championship.
Both of these options include some extra presentation in the form of video introductions,
with footage of the real cars and locations,
and the events themselves are no pushovers in terms of challenge.
While there are some issues to be found with how parts of the game are structured,
these are all secondary to just how insane Dirt Rally 2.0 feels to play.
Barreling down a narrow path with a wall on one side and a cliff on the other
with twisting turns, changing elevation, and bumps threatening to knock you off course
is absolutely intense.
With lengthy stages that can last 9 or 10 minutes at times,
it takes a lot of concentration to continue processing the directions from your co-driver
and respond appropriately.
Let your mind wander a bit, and you’ll smash your car,
but when you’re at your best, the flow feels natural and almost automatic.
The responsive handling is key, and there’s a lot of nuance needed
as you’re often managing the gas pedal in small increments
to maintain the proper momentum without giving too much power.
The feel between different classes of cars as well as between individual cars is clear,
and the turbo-powered Group B vehicles are simply monsters
that will punish you dearly for using too much throttle.
There are only six locations for rally events, all with a number of stages,
but each place is clearly distinct.
There’s the muddy jungles of New Zealand, the forest roads of New England,
rocky cliffs of Argentina, the winding pavement across Spanish mountainsides,
and the farm roads passing through villages in Poland and Australia.
Races can take place at various times of day, and the clouds can open up to pour down heavy rain.
As if this sport didn’t seem dangerous enough,
blazing through one of these roads in the middle of the night can be terrifying.
Dirt Rally 2.0 is a great looking and sounding game overall with solid performance,
however there are some rough edges and distracting bugs.
The visuals tend to flicker in various situations,
and rallycross intermittently renders opponents’ cars
with one wheel randomly floating several feet in the air.
The biggest issue though
comes with audio, as the sound will drop out completely at times for no apparent reason.
Even with on-screen symbols, it can be difficult to navigate without your co-driver’s voice in your ear,
essentially forcing you to quit to the main menu to reload the race.
Dirt Rally 2.0 is an excellent and demanding driving game
that strives for authenticity through abundant detail.
A lack of primers may make newcomers hesitant,
but it doesn’t take long to get up to speed.
At times it can take a lot of patience, with yourself more than anything,
but it’s an exhilarating ride through and through.
Easy Allies reviews are made possible by generous viewers just like you.
If you like what you see, check out patreon.com/easyallies to help us make more.
For just $1 a month, you can gain access to weekly updates, spoiler discussions, and exclusive shows.