Nukezilla Review: Dirt 3 (PS3)

Codemasters latest entry in their long running rally series, Dirt 3, improves upon its predecessors in just about every way; an improved graphics engine, weather effects, night racing, online party modes, more cars and a large selection of locations and tracks; there is enough here for long time fans and those looking to get dirty for the first time.

Choose Your Path

Dirt 3′s career mode spans four seasons and is broken up into a set of sponsored events. One of the common complaints with Dirt 2 was the pace and length of the career mode. Dirt 3 gives the player a much more balanced career that will take about 10 to 15 hours to complete, depending on the difficulty. You will be repeating races quite a bit but it won’t feel like the long grind that Dirt 2 was and progress with acquiring cars is faster. As you race you gain experience points that eventually net you sponsorships, which provide you with cars and liveries. There are around 50 cars in all which range from 1960′s rally cars, the legendary Group B era including the Audi Quattro, up to modern day WRC machines.

Events are what we’ve come to expect from the previous titles; rally, rally cross, raid, trailblazer, land rush, and head 2 head. Brand new to the series and never before done in any other rally game before is Gymkhana; this mode is set in arenas with props, jumps, and obstacles to drift around. You’ve probably heard of this mode from the popular rally driver, Ken Block and seen some of this Youtube videos. With a bit of practice, you will be pulling off these exact stunts then uploading them to Youtube with the game’s built in replay feature.

Rally mode is the one most players are going to be interested in; spread out across four beautiful locations, with a fifth location coming via DLC (Monte Carlo) and 32 rally stages in all, this is the mode that players will spend the majority of their time in during the career mode. Your current choice of remote, leisurely driving locations include; Michigan, Finland, Norway and Kenya. Each location offers its own unique challenges, such as Finland having hilariously dangerous ditches that will easily flip a car or Norway’s large snow walls and icy conditions that make driving at the kind of neck-breaking speeds you need to win a terrifying experience.

Meetup in the woods at noon?

Single player wasn’t the only thing that was improved; multiplayer received some new modes that should make sure the community sticks around until Codemasters’ next rally game. New to the series and entirely unique are a series of party modes that I had a lot of fun and many laughs over. Taking place in various Gymkhana arenas you have Infection, which is a keep away mode where one player is a zombie and needs to smash his car into other players. Invasion which has giant robots and building props with the objective being to smash into as many robots as possible. Then there is Transporter, a variation of capture the flag, to round out the party modes.

These modes are chaotic and will leave your car battered, with very little of its frame still intact. If partying is not your thing, there are all of the traditional rallying and off road competition modes available, including a hardcore mode that turns off all of the driving assists and forces you into a cockpit-only view.

For those looking to have some alone time, the time trial mode returns with improved leader boards. Broken up by location, stage and group of race car, this allows players to compete with their friends and the world for setting the best times. To date there have been some serious records posted that are creating some real competition. My hope is that Codemasters will have seasons with leader board resets after so many months have passed.

It’s all in the details

Using an improved version of the EGO engine featured in F1 2010, Dirt 3 delivers some of the best looking visuals in a racing game. Improvements include cars that are even more detailed then the ones in Dirt 2. Brand new to the series and fan-requested for a long time now; night time racing and weather effects (including snow) make their grand entrance. Both offer a very different experience that makes races more intense, with weather changing the driving conditions of the track.

Cars have bright, realistic looking headlights, windshield wipers that work and one of the best damage models I’ve seen to date with the ability to crush or break off just about any part of the car. The only thing really missing here that we hope Codemasters will implement in future titles is a terrain deformation system.

Dirt 3 does have a few nit picks; The Youtube feature mentioned earlier is your only way to share your travels through dusty roads and slippery snow covered trails and it’s a limited one at that. With only 30 seconds allowed and recording and uploading times easily reaching into the 10 minute mark, it is a feature you will only use for the best of the best moments. PC users will want to use FRAPS instead.

An improved rally mode was something Codemasters really hyped up until release. I don’t believe that the traditional point to point mode is as good as it could have been and was under delivered. The length of the stages ranges anywhere from a little over a minute up to around three minutes. Far to short but by no means a dealer breaker either unless you are a hardcore rally fan. It’s frustrating when Dirt 1 had stages such as the historic Pikes Peak Hill Climb and that was around 11 minutes long. This is something that Codemasters is going to have to improve on in their next title.

Rally might not have been the feature it was claimed to have been, but this is hardly a reason to dismiss the game. What is here is not just a sample of off road racing but a fully featured set of everything the sport has to offer. Dirt 3 covers the professional side of rally racing, all the way over to the X-Games side and everything in between. Hardcore and casual fans a like, there is something here for everyone to enjoy and I think the days of rally simulations having just straight up rally only are long over. Other rally games are going to need to take note of what Dirt offers and answer with something that can either equal the game with content, or bring something completely new to the table.