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Colin McRae: DiRT

Buff up your portfolio of off-road skills

With the new racing disciplines comes an expanded Career mode which spans the DiRT universe. Single-event specialists need not apply, as the focus on point-to-point racing is gone in favor of an all-inclusive racing career. Walking up the rather intimidating Career ladder provides an ample amount of gameplay for the purchase price. Consistency is key in Career mode, and the sheer breadth of racing disciplines rewards well-rounded drivers. A more focused rally experience can be found in Championship mode. Championship mode is classic CMR territory, where rally die-hards can choose from traditional car classes and race on the European, International or Global circuits.

Finally, there's Rally World, which is really a quick race mode with a fancy name. Rally World lets you test unlocked vehicles on various tracks in all disciplines, and it's the perfect place to get accustomed to the controls. The new racing disciplines are a fresh addition to the series, and the CORR racing had me reminiscing of nights at the arcade spent playing Super Off-Road. DiRT features extensive statistics tracking, and your personal records cycle through during load times. Rally racing fans lose nothing, and everyone gains with the expanded Career mode.

Classic Rally Championship mode is still here.

Quick racing can be found in Rally World. Time trial fanatics rejoice.

Enemies on the track but friends off it?

Multiplayer is a key aspect of any racing game. Even though the AI in DiRT is competent and scales with the selected difficulty level, I was anxious to hop online to race some human competition. Codemasters have opted for a rather transparent matchmaking system: you enter a username and password, and then you're tossed into a random lobby with other racers. Online multiplayer is offered in the form of Quick Races or Custom Races. There's little difference between the two, as in each mode players vote on the selection of track/car combination. But with only potential racing options available - Rally and Rally/Hillclimb - there's little need to randomize the racing option with a Quick Race.

Since all online racing is point-to-point, you'll never see another driver, although the game does update a progress indicator with other drivers' positions. The Leaderboard of worldwide rankings for various disciplines, classes and tracks is a great feature. There's even a real-time World Record ticker which can scroll at the bottom of the menu at all times.

It's a good start to building a community. Improving the chat and voting systems would go a long way toward sustaining the online race community. Without true group racing - multiple cars on the same track in the game's non-Rally modes - there's little incentive to race online. World records and bragging rights are nice, but hardly exciting.

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