There have likely been better ideas in the history of the human race than this. You're strapped tightly into a Lancia Stratos, some 240BHP being channelled through its rear axle, and ahead of you lay a thin gravel road that winds through thick Finnish forest. As another sharp rise in the road sends you flying, pine leaves and birch branches tickling the airborne undercarriage, you start to question the sanity of it all.
What's never in doubt, though, is that this is as exhilarating as driving gets. When it all goes well, anyway. Dirt Rally, Codemasters' continuation of a series that can be traced back all the way to 1998's Colin McRae Rally, is quite possibly the studio's first ever full-on simulation after almost two decades in the driving genre: a game where it's important to understand how to dip the weight balance forwards in a front wheel drive in order to get purchase when entering a gravelled corner, or to attune your right foot to the turbo lag found in an raw Group B monster. More significantly, Dirt Rally's a simulation of the true make-up of many motorsports; the excitement doesn't come easy, and it's balanced out by equal measures of fist-pounding frustration.
Dirt Rally can be a savagely difficult game, its months in Early Access earning it the reputation of the Dark Souls of driving games. The full and final …show more content…
There are thrills elsewhere, too, from the precarious, vertiginous blasts of Greece to the impossibly dangerous forest trials of Finland, where Dirt Rally's greatest challenges lie. It's there, in the pure speed and the survival horror that comes through seeing the rev needle bounce off the limiter in top gear as pine trees fly past, that Codemasters' new brand of driving is at its very
What's never in doubt, though, is that this is as exhilarating as driving gets. When it all goes well, anyway. Dirt Rally, Codemasters' continuation of a series that can be traced back all the way to 1998's Colin McRae Rally, is quite possibly the studio's first ever full-on simulation after almost two decades in the driving genre: a game where it's important to understand how to dip the weight balance forwards in a front wheel drive in order to get purchase when entering a gravelled corner, or to attune your right foot to the turbo lag found in an raw Group B monster. More significantly, Dirt Rally's a simulation of the true make-up of many motorsports; the excitement doesn't come easy, and it's balanced out by equal measures of fist-pounding frustration.
Dirt Rally can be a savagely difficult game, its months in Early Access earning it the reputation of the Dark Souls of driving games. The full and final …show more content…
There are thrills elsewhere, too, from the precarious, vertiginous blasts of Greece to the impossibly dangerous forest trials of Finland, where Dirt Rally's greatest challenges lie. It's there, in the pure speed and the survival horror that comes through seeing the rev needle bounce off the limiter in top gear as pine trees fly past, that Codemasters' new brand of driving is at its very