Dirt 4 Review: Ford Fiesta R5 Is the Raptor of the Digital Race Track
Cover the world in gravel and sideways fun via the latest Dirty Rally video game adventure.
When Dirt Rally arrived in 2015, it felt like Codemasters had found the path towards the future. Dirt 4 represents a full-circle transition towards the ideas and concepts that were so brilliantly expressed in Rally, in the end creating a game that is more approachable, more entertaining and more enjoyable.
Dirt as a franchise has catered more towards the hooligan gamers looking for a good time, rather than enthusiasts of rally racing. It was the incredible focus on simulation racing and the race-craft of stage rallying that made Dirt Rally such a standout title. Dirt 4 continues this focus on extreme realism and unpredictability, but has made several strides to bring the more casual racer back into the fold.
When you first start the game you are prompted with a choice between driving styles. You can choose “Gamer” or “Simulation” and the various driving assists and difficulty modifications will be adjusted accordingly. If you go Gamer, you can mostly play it like a Need for Speed game, where you just hammer the gas to go, and slam the brakes to slow. Choose simulation, and you are greeted with a much more granular level of control over your car, and this is where Dirt 4 excels. Subtle applications of the throttle or brakes will adjust the attitude and weight balance of the car in a way that feels natural and realistic. It doesn’t have quite the same iRacing-esque bite that Rally does, but the simulation is still phenomenal.
When you couple this driving feel with the co-driver yelling directions at you, Dirt 4 takes realism to the new level. And that’s before we even start talking about the best new enhancement to the game, Your Stage. Your Stage is a new tool that randomly generates a new track at the press of a single button. Choose from one of the five main locations, adjust how long and how technical you want the circuit to be, and then the game just makes up a random track. If you don’t like the way it looks, press generate again, and you get a new track. In theory, you could play this game for thousands of hours and never see the exact same track twice. The randomization varies wildly as well, from elevation changes, turn construction and more.
When you add in the adjustable weather and time-of-day, you are faced with essentially limitless replayability.
Beyond the straight course rally racing, Dirt 4 also adds other off-road racing disciplines into the mix. Landrush mode lets you do short-course truck races with your choice of Pro Buggies, Crosskart and Pro-2 and Pro-4 Trucks. Although the lack of the track diversification makes this mode get old quickly. If you want to do some circuit stuff and have some serious fun, check out the included Rallycross mode.
These races take place on several of the real FIA sanctioned tracks, and the quick wheel-to-wheel action provides a great distraction if you are getting tired of the normal stages.
If you are new to the racing simulation genre, or if you have zero experience with rally racing, Dirt 4 makes it really easy to learn the ropes thank to the inclusion of DirtFish. DirtFish is a real-life rally school in Washington, just east of Seattle, and they have teamed up to provide a training session mode for Dirt 4. There are various lessons raging in skill level and difficulty to master, and each one takes place at a digital representation of the DirtFish campus. With the addition of the “Gamer” driving difficulty, Dirt 4 is actually quite welcoming to new players.
Car selection is also good across the various modes with more than 50 cars present in total, ranging from modern WRC and Rallycross cars to the great classics from the 1970s and ‘80s.
The game is not perfect however, and there are some things I would love to see fixed.
Visually, Dirt 4 is a step behind the competition. With games like Project CARS and Forza 6, the visual fidelity of racing games has made a major leap. Dirt 4 is not ugly by any stretch, but it doesn’t have the same quality and ocular punch of the major competitors on the scene right now. Thankfully that lower visual quality does mean the game can run relatively easily on modern hardware. Dirt 4 also does a good job of filling the world with lots of interesting details like spectators, drone cameras, road debris and more to help flesh out its world. So it might not be the best-looking racing game, but its world feels more alive than many racing games.
While the game possesses near infinite replayability, those who are easily bored could find it hard to pick up the controller day after day. In its pursuit of starker realism, Dirt 4 has gone away with much of the bombastic music and dynamic menus from previous entries in the series. The new cleaner menu style and reduced musical presence feel more subdued, and less interesting. Even the new series narrator, former Colin McRae co-driver Nicky Grist, delivers his lines so calmly and smoothly that he could just as easily be reciting a lullaby, rather than telling me what makes Whales such a great place to race. It all just makes the time spent between races feel like a slog, and after 65 hours with the game, it easily became our least favorite portion.
We also lament the lack of VR functionality. Playing modern racing games on a VR rig with a full wheel and pedal setup, forever changes your perception and enjoyment of simulation racing. It all feels so much more natural when you are placed into the world, rather than sitting in front of it. Codemasters has said that the potential for VR support is still open for a future update, but they have no concrete plans yet. Let’s cross our fingers and hope.
Overall Dirt 4 feels like the perfect progression of the series as a whole. Its more developed gaming modes, wide car variety, and defining Your Stage feature help make Dirt 4 feel interesting, new and fresh in a way that few racing games can manage. It won’t light your optical nerves on fire like the stunning new Forza 7 or Project CARS 2 wants to, but if you are looking for the best way to get sideways and dirty, Dirt 4 is the obvious choice. It’s raw, realistic and unpredictable in all the best ways. So take a seat, fire up your favorite rally machine, and show the forests of Whales what you are really made of.
Dirt 4 was reviewed on PC. It was played with both an Xbox One controller, as well as a Fantec racing wheel/Playseat setup. The PC used to test the game was the Project Stingray VR gaming PC.
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