May 5, 2023

No more rally. DiRT 5 Game Review

Material content

Winding circles on the track is no longer boring

Serious rally races, with which the series began, have finally become a thing of the past and have been replaced by the most dynamic, never boring gameplay. Apparently, Codemasters has nothing to do with a bunch of fans “so that the car groans on the road like a Zhiguli batin”. A dozen ordinary players took the place of one simulator, for whom downforce and the nuances of grip are unknown concepts. Of course, Codemasters didn’t say, “Gentlemen of realism, all the best.” But judging by the fact that Dirt 5 doesn’t feature any major physics simulation innovations, you can still count on the smart arcade gameplay that the previous titles had.

Photomod sometimes allows you to take beautiful screenshots.

In career mode, gamers will travel through several locations that are noticeably different from each other. And they will let you ride along the sandy African deserts, and along the winding paths passing through the picturesque Brazilian jungle. Ten regions with seven dozen racetracks are not five Colin McRae Rally tracks. And they are executed so beautifully that sometimes they serve as a distraction. We stared at the northern lights, relaxed and did not notice how we forgot to slow down on the turn.

The main emphasis in the game is on circular races of various formats, but there are many other activities. One of the main advantages of Dirt 5 is the “show off” of extreme X-Games competitions with all its ski jumping and deliberately dashing corner entry. For example, Gymkhana. If you haven’t had time to get acquainted with this entertaining discipline, you can watch Ken Block’s YouTube performances, in which the famous racer and one of the key stars of the Dirt series has to demonstrate incredible car control skills. Ken easily crushes the lamps scattered on the road (those that look like a Jedi sword) in a skid and enters the turn with surgical precision, almost catching the walls. The main goal of participating in Gymkhana is to earn as many points as possible by performing all sorts of car stunts like those demonstrated by Ken Block and other professionals.

Video

Reputation, money and experience

At the end of each race, the gamer receives an agreed amount of experience points, money and reputation. To purchase a car, you will need to accumulate special experience and reputation points. Also, with an increase in reputation, some cosmetic effects for your cars become available.

Important: even if the rider completes the track with an extremely poor result, money and experience will still be credited.

Accumulating the required amount of money is quite simple and fast if you play several races and take prizes. The path to the fastest car is to win all the races, as well as receiving the coveted gold award.

However, for gamers who want to customize the car more flexibly, Dirt 5 can offer virtually nothing. Of course, you can change the color of the vehicle, add stickers or customize the controls.

To customize the operation of individual components of the car, you will need to close the game and turn to the legendary Forza Horizon 4 or the more advanced Gran Turismo Sport.

Game system requirements

Minimum system requirements:

CPU: Intel Core i3 2130 / AMD FX 4300;
Video adapter: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 970 GB / NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1650 4 GB / AMD RX 480;
RAM (Random Access Memory): 8 gigabytes;
Free disk space: 60 gigabytes;
Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit.

CPU: Intel Core i5-9600K / AMD Ryzen 5 3600;
Video adapter: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1070 Ti 8GB / NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2060 6GB / AMD Radeon 5700XT;
RAM (Random Access Memory): 16 gigabytes;
Free disk space: 60 gigabytes;
Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit.

Small (or big) problems

But what I won’t be able to talk about is the multiplayer, since, apparently, due to the restrictions of the DiRT 5 press copy, it was not available. We tried unsuccessfully for 10 minutes to find an available online session, but nothing came of it. Therefore, it was not possible to try out the craziest multiplayer game modes like the declared Party Games, but, remembering the very funny spinoff Dirt: Showdown, you don’t have to worry about this component. In addition, the version for the current generation of consoles will be updated to the nextgen for free. Therefore, very soon we will be able to drive in DiRT 5 with even more attractive visuals and increased frame rates on Xbox Series X, Series S and PlayStation 5.

But, back to the main topic. Regularly during the game, we had some kind of errors related to the network connection, which most likely also happened due to the servers that were not working at that time. It’s funny that the error codes are named after different fruits. No peaches were seen (if you know what we mean).

Sound accompaniment

Avid fans of auto racing – both in real life and in virtual spaces, will not let you lie. Without the roar of the engine, the squeal of brakes on sharp turns and the rumble after landing from the next springboard, extreme races would lose the lion’s share of their attractiveness. Fortunately, this did not happen with Dirt 5. Polyphony Digital recorded a lot of high-quality sounds – everything rumbles, creaks, whistles and makes noise, as if the player himself is inside a racing car. But there are some suspicions that some of the sounds were borrowed from previous games in the series.

In addition to car sounds, to please the ears of the player b

In addition to car sounds, peppy compositions from electronic music and light rock, RnB and other genres will please the player’s ears. In this regard, Codemasters has completely done a competing Need for Speed series, where in the last part at the moment they clearly went too far with Latin American hip-hop. Melodies in Dirt are unobtrusive, fit perfectly into the pace of the races and do not make you want to turn off the music in the settings and connect your own player in the background. The soundtrack featured Volcano, Chemical Brothers, The Killers and other famous bands.

Tutorials in career mode are voiced at a high level, for which thanks to the notorious Nolan North and Troy Baker. One actor acts as our mentor in explainer videos for each type of competition in the game, and the second one will become a competitor in the fight for the championship. They can also be heard in local interviews and podcasts. Unfortunately, there are no subtitles for Russian-speaking players. Although racing is not the genre where this is a critical drawback. The roar of the engine for racing fans is an international language, and entertaining chatter between races will still be missed by the majority by pressing the Enter key.