I knew I would enjoy Dirt Rally 2. The first game gave me months of pleasure, as I’d
make it a daily routine to load it up and to grind away on the single player campaign
by a few tracks a day. My experience with this sequel started the
same way. I knew how difficult the campaign would eventually become, but it’s hard to
ever imagine struggling when I’m beating the other rally drivers by a good 20 seconds
or so, even in races where I messed everything up spectacularly.
But sure enough, the difficulty level gradually ramped up and my advantage over the other
drivers diminished. Eventually I reached the hardest ‘Masters’ tournament, whereupon
I suddenly went from coming first in every race to barely scraping the top 20. In this
final leg of the single player campaign, my progress slowed to a crawl as each race became
a torturous grind of learning each and every corner… and yet nothing helped me. I was
still losing to the AI drivers- often by more than 10 seconds! Any hopes of beating the
campaign were slipping away, and with it, so did the enjoyment I got from the game.
For those who don’t know, Dirt Rally 2 is a rather lonely game. In the traditional Rally
mode (Which I mostly stuck to), you don’t see another car, apart from if they crash
somewhere along the course in which case it’s tradition to ram them before carrying on.
The closest you get to interacting with the other drivers is by comparing your times with
those at the end of each section, and finally on the leaderboard for the race itself. But
while I never saw another car racing, it didn’t matter. Their names on the scoreboard were
enough. As the single player campaign wore on, S Bernard and S Stemnes became as real
to me as any rendered foe could have done. My times landed fractions of a second either
side of theirs, with me hoping to finally claw victory by risking a dodgy corner or
by praying that they get into a horrific accident at some point along the way.
But alas, my situation in the final master stage of the single player campaign seemed
beyond redemption. Those AI drivers didn’t make mistakes- and even when they did, they
still found ways of pipping me to the post! I wasn’t having much fun… so gave the
single player campaign a break. And it’s at that point I decided to try
out the online component of the game- something I hadn’t ever attempted in the first game!
By this point I must have clocked up more hours on the Dirt Rally games than most people
had done, but it didn’t help my nerves. For those first few online races, I felt like
I was being judged, and that every mistake would some how permanently hinder my record
in some way. Merely loading up the daily race was enough to get my heart-rate up!
I needn’t have worried. The daily races are just that: every day, a random vehicle
on a random track is chosen, and you have one chance to drive around it as best as you
can, whereupon your time will be put on a leaderboard for the rest of the day. The moment
the next day starts, whatever happened the previous one no longer matters- that progress
is wiped, your terrible time never to be seen again! I soon grew very fond of these daily
races. They reset at 11 every morning for me, and it became a routine for me to be on
the main menu, waiting for the new races to start. I soon learned that, while I was no
match for the best drivers in the game, if I got in there soon enough I could claim the
top place on those daily charts- if only for half an hour or so!
It didn’t matter that I’d never see those other drivers. I knew that if I held the high
score, until it was beaten, everybody would face my times on every section of the track.
That they too would begin to imagine what kind of person I was like, or how I managed
such a great time on that difficult corner near the end or whatever. It gave me a sense
of power and would put me in a good mood for the rest of the day.
More often than not, in these daily races I’d get too confident and would end up smacking
face-first into a tree at some point. But it didn’t matter, since the moment tomorrow
rolled around, I’d have a fresh chance to gain a high score, and a fresh chance to risk
my dignity around every corner in pursuit of that perfect time!
But these were just the daily races. These would be a single track, somewhere between
3 and 10 minutes in length. These are difficult enough in a game like Dirt Rally, where any
small mistake could doom your car and your chance of finishing the track.
But as if that wasn’t punishing enough, there are also weekly and monthly challenges-
which span far more tracks and locations. Monthly challenges are over 20 tracks long,
spread across 3 different countries. That’s a gruelling challenge in a game like Dirt
Rally 2, where misjudging a single corner could severely damage or even write off your
car, dooming your chances of making it to the leaderboard!
I still remember my first monthly challenge. Within seconds I messed up, rolling my car
and ruining any hope of a highscore. The perfectionist in me wanted to end it right there and then.
But I continued. I limped to the end, completing the first race. Sure enough, I was a long
way down the leaderboard. Terrified of destroying my car completely, I switched to a far slower,
more cautious driving style. And to my surprise, this resulted in faster times, and my place
on the charts gradually crept up, no doubt as other, ‘better’ drivers messed up and
wrote themselves out of the race. And then it dawned on me: maybe it wasn’t
that I was better than the other drivers. Maybe the others hadn’t crashed their way
out of the tournament. Maybe the tournament was so long that many better drivers simply
hadn’t bothered reaching this far through it! Maybe I was doing well, simply by turning
up! And by not going away. Like a bad fart. Who cares if I’m the 500th fastest driver
in any single race? By being more patient than the rest, and by grinding my way through
all those tracks slowly and cautiously, I had still managed to fight my way down to
the top 50 overall! And this was without even driving particularly quickly! I hadn’t memorised
the courses. I would often brake earlier than I needed to, losing a few seconds. But I was
beginning to understand that this was better than braking too late, losing many seconds.
And infinitely better than not bothering to start the race in the first place.
Doing well in Dirt Rally 2 is not about being fast. It’s about being the most consistent.
The most boring. About knowing your limits, and by driving comfortably below them at all
times. About knowing when to be overly cautious, and about minimising the chances of each corner
being your last! I took great pleasure in this, by going far slower than I thought I
needed to, yet somehow, still coming ahead of most who undertook this formidable monthly
challenge! Don’t get me wrong- I was far from being
the best. It seems like some drivers never make a mistake! They would soundly beat me
by a good few seconds in every stage of every race, and their advantage over the course
of a monthly challenge would consistently grow from the seconds and into the minutes.
The mere idea of matching them in a single segment became an insurmountable challenge.
Even along seemingly simple straight sections, they’d soundly secure superior scores, surpassing
my subpar struggles and I soon succumbed to settling for second place! Or 50th, as the
case may be. When you only know your rivals by a name and
a time, it’s easy to hate them. To dismiss their achievements by assuming they’re cheaters.
After all, how can anybody possibly be better than me?! I would often feel I had aced a
section… only to still be 5 seconds behind the best! One day I had had enough. I google-stalked
one of these cheaters. Catty7073 was always near the top of the leaderboard, so I searched
for him online, expecting to find a VAC-banned steam account to confirm my suspicions. But
instead, I found a dedicated youtube channel filled with rally clips dating back years!
This wasn’t a cheater- Catty was a long-standing, passionate racer who had clearly invested
untold hours into becoming the legend he was! My perception of this game changed in an instant.
I was NOT the best -not even close- and people like Catty were proof that I had a long way
to go! I developed an admiration for him and all he had achieved. If anything, the lonely
nature of this game works against people such as Catty- he’ll never know how much those
below him look up to him as being impossibly excellent at the game, and what they’d give
for just one result like the ones he manages almost every time.
It became a humbling and reassuring tradition to search for names such as his on the leaderboards,
to know how good it was possible to become at the game. Even being within 10 seconds
of his time felt like a huge achievement to me and my ego melted away as my respect for
this game grew. Coming within 10 seconds of a good Dirt Rally driver feels like more of
an achievement than coming first in most games. I undertook more monthly challenges, managing
some with minimal mistakes and securing a position in the top 100, or even the top 50
in the world. That was enough! I didn’t need to be the best. I just needed to be the
best that I could be. I took pride in my own journey, in my successes
and failures. I started taking the time to tweak my car to give myself the slightest
advantages! I still have no idea what I’m supposed to do here- I have GTR Technical
to thank for that. Even if I didn’t know what I was doing, I felt safe following in
his tracks, secure in the knowledge that he knew a lot more about it than I did!
For a while I had all but forgotten about the single-player campaign. I was happy doing
the daily, weekly and monthly challenges. I enjoyed seeing where I’d come against
the rest of the community, and greatly looked forward to the next race, wherever that might
be. Even the Spanish ones. This game was an excuse to get up in the mornings, and something
to think about fondly even when I was AFK. But eventually I felt it was time to finish
what I had started. I returned to the singleplayer campaign. I may have been 17th. I wasn’t
even hoping for 1st place any more. But any place is better than not finishing at all.
And to my delight, the AI drivers’ performance started to deteriorate towards the end of
the first bunch of stages, and I began to climb my way back up the leaderboard and ended
up doing better than I expected! The AI drivers’ cars started falling apart, and even greater
mistakes were made. In the first country at Masters difficulty I clawed my way back up
to 2nd place. Then again in the second of the 6 countries. Then I reached 1st… and
then it became apparent that the AI on some countries was better than on others, and I
scored first place on the rest of them as well.
There was a bit of a wobble at the very end. I became accustomed to having unlimited tyre
replacements but an update must have rolled out to patch that and I ended up running out
and having to finish the game on a very worn set of tyres. It would have SUCKED to fail
so close to the finish. But luckily for me, they held up. The very last race I lost by
20 ms- which I take full responsibility for with this ludicrous display across the finish
line. But it was still enough to secure a victory overall, and with it I beat Dirt Rally
2’s single player campaign… on a keyboard, in third person mode. Just the way I like
it. And suddenly, I felt that I had done what
I had set out to do with this game. I was finally ready to move on to other games, and
to put Dirt Rally 2 behind me. I’m happy to accept that I’ll never be as good as
drivers like Catty. Not even close. But it doesn’t matter. In fact, I’m happy there
are people like him out there, who show how much better I could become at the game if
I wanted to. Even where I am, far below him, I feel like I’ve bettered myself, and am
still far beyond many of the other drivers in this game. I know the importance of leaving
corners fast, even if it means slowing down more than I’d like to going into them. And
I know how to get out of a skid in a rear-wheel drive car. It might even save my life one
day! I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with Dirt
Rally 2. Perhaps even more so than with the first game. It has humbled me, and has felt
like a real journey. I have so much to say about the game, about how different the various
types of cars feel. How some are so overpowered it’s comical, while others are almost too
nice to drive. I always do the worst on the Spanish stages for some reason, but take perverse
delight in equipping wet tyres and watching my place rocket up the charts as everybody
else foolishly chooses dry! I love encountering those bits of stages I’ve painfully mastered
previously, now easily managing a great time that puts me ahead of most others in the daily
races. I enjoyed earning money to slowly max out my crew’s skills. I can complain about
how the paid DLC is teased in your face on the main menu every day. Or how internet access
is always required, stopping me from playing the game when on holiday, or how it would
occasionally cut out and ruin my progress at the end of a monthly. Actually yeah I will
moan about that because it’s really stupid and there’s no need for it.
But overall, if I condense Dirt Rally 2 down to a single memory, it’s a happy one that
has more than earned its place in my top games of all time list. It has bettered me as a
person. I have learned to accept that I’m not the best, but have found solace in just
being better than I used to be. It has taught me patience. The importance of consistency.
And how it’s sometimes better to operate comfortably within my abilities rather than
to always be pushing them further. And, perhaps more than anything else, it’s taught me
the true meaning of pain. Again.