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DiRT 4 Review Thread

Why did they remove the ability to really dial in track length and complexity? Just tried it for the first time and even though the slider is there now directional inputs move it to like 5 set spots but preview vids showed you could literally pick anywhere along the spectrum...
 
I really wish they went deeper with the career mode. You can build a team, pick sponsors, and do different disciplines. Why not let me hire #2 drivers to run events and make money for me. Grid 1 did this. It's also annoying loading into a separate thing just to change sponsors.


Is the career handmade maps or are they using the course generator?

Generated maps they chose for career. Everyone is getting the same courses in career.
 
So far I'm having a blast but codies rarely lets me down on the driving front. I miss the old menu styles like 2 and 3 had though. And the load times are pretty bad. At least they have some decent music (depending on the track) to listen to. And they knew the load times were long because they put in a little beep and a rumble on the controller to let you know when it's done. If you're going to have long load times at least let someone surf gaf til it's done and an alarm since you have to press x when it's done /sarcasm. Still having fun despite the load times (hopefully they'll fix them).
 
I really wish they went deeper with the career mode. You can build a team, pick sponsors, and do different disciplines. Why not let me hire #2 drivers to run events and make money for me. Grid 1 did this. It's also annoying loading into a separate thing just to change sponsors.




Generated maps they chose for career. Everyone is getting the same courses in career.

It's weird that they went quite a bit more in depth with the team management aspect but the career itself feels so video gamey with its really short "championships" and unlock pathways. I much preferred the seasons of dirt rally
 
kinda shocked at the lack of attention this game gets here...Care to explain Gaf?
Dirt 4 is back to business as usual after the unexpected high of Dirt Rally. Dirt Rally wasn't just good; it broke from the regular grind of development and release that Codemasters had been on for the past while. The entire lifespan of Dirt Rally, from Beta to release to updates, was a total surprise and such a love letter to long time fans of their work.

But Dirt 4 is a return to their predictable cycle of fun, but not exceptional, releases. Hard to be very excited about it after Dirt Rally.
 
I feel like Dirt 4 was made just because they could, not because they should.

Why did they remove the ability to really dial in track length and complexity? Just tried it for the first time and even though the slider is there now directional inputs move it to like 5 set spots but preview vids showed you could literally pick anywhere along the spectrum...

Unless there is a real technical reason this is a really poor choice for them to make, honestly going to list it along with removing accelerated tire wear from F1 2013 back in the day, dumb.
 
You know, had I seen more elevation changes, camber in corners and a slider for track width(-differences) I probably would have already pulled the trigger. Now I will really have to do some soul-finding.

I swore not to buy all 4 of the big racing games this year and sonce I never had as much fun playing the GTS Beta as I usually have playing DiRT Rally, I really thought, I'd be buying DiRT 4 day1 or in the Steam summer sale, but now I'm really not so sure.
 
Hmm. This career is deeper than expected. I see now why they went with simple menus. Still wish the load times weren't so damn bad. Soundtrack is catchy. Can't help it when I hear so much of it.
 
still no OT? WTF

No one has stepped up to make it yet. I'd do it but I don't have the time right now. If there isn't one by next week I might just do it, lol.

But Dirt 4 is a return to their predictable cycle of fun, but not exceptional, releases. Hard to be very excited about it after Dirt Rally.

This is my problem right now, DiRT Rally was so incredible and exactly what I've wanted for so long that I'm just not sure if DiRT 4 is something I want. I mean I am still having a blast with DiRT Rally!
 
So i went back and played dirt rally to better compare the handling. Shockingly, as it goes against my initial impressions, they are very similar. I do feel like the tires bite into and plow through the road surface more realistically in 4 where dirt feels a bit more like you are gliding across the surface. Also, braking is much trickier in 4 and can really through the car out of whack. Some of the cars are really challenging to bring high speeds down for big corners following a straight (2000cc sti, looking at you), whereas braking was always super easy in dirt rally. Steering correction seems easier in 4 though.

Surprisingly though, I think the cockpit view changes are responsible for me feeling like I needed a decent amount of adjustment time to the game - specifically the steering animations. Dirt rally mapped the full controller motion to hardly any wheel turn, whereas the animations in dirt 4 run the full degrees of wheel movement. Slight adjustments left and right visually look like so much more as the dirt 4 driver frantically tries to keep up. Full movement actually has him throwing the wheel around hand over hand. While I play exclusively from cockpit these days, I recall having a similar adjustment period from forza's limited animation to pcars2 full in much the same way.
 
after looking at a lot of those I really don't see how people are saying this game looks bad...at least on PC it looks nice to me

I don't think anyone is saying it looks bad, but rather that artistically it appears to be less detailed than DiRT Rally is. Especially with regards to stage details and scenery. And from what I've seen it might not be entirely unfounded, but without more exposure it's probably too early to say for certain yet.
 
Out of curiosity I checked the leaderboard after a later career event... 111 times. Wut.
 
Hmm. This career is deeper than expected. I see now why they went with simple menus. Still wish the load times weren't so damn bad. Soundtrack is catchy. Can't help it when I hear so much of it.
All sounds good to me. 3's soundtrack was great.

Hoping the loadtimes won't be an issue on PC. Gonna dig my wheel out of the closet for this.

Also still waiting for the OT...
 
I'm gonna reserve judgement until I manage to get further into the campaign/career mode. As of now, I'm a bit disappointed after absolutely loving Dirt Rally. I'm only 45 minutes in though and still in FWD cars. So just gonna keep on chugging. I can't recall if the FWD cars felt like this in rally or if it was because I avoided them. Here's to hoping things turn on well! I do want to love this game.

Edit: To add a little clarity before I call it a night... The FWD cars seem to do a lot more steering with the rear wheels than they did in Rally. It's like there's more grip on the back. I softened up springs and sway bars to try to get it to float around a bit on the back so I could swing it out; but it didn't work. I tried trail braking to lift the weight off the rear; switched up the brake bias a bit. I dunno.... Something just feels off. I'm sure it's partially because I put days into Dirt Rally, and that I probably know a lot less than I give myself credit for when it comes to the dynamics of a rally car. The career options do seem quite a bit more comprehensive than Rally.... Gonna give it another go after work tomorrow.
 
Yeah there's a strange lack of awareness or enthusiasm for this :(

Sad to hear all main courses are generated, DR felt so hand crafted

Let's be honest, the marketing for it has been pretty lax, when you get people on here, which is a core gaming forum, saying that they didn't realise it had been released, you got to think something is up with the marketing.
 
Yeah there's a strange lack of awareness or enthusiasm for this :(

From what I’ve read in various forums and heard in vids and such, it seems like a lot of people really wanted DiRT Rally to be followed up by DiRT Rally 2, with more content and possibly an easier mode for the less hardcore so they could have fun too, but still the razor focus on pure rally that DiRT Rally mostly had. Instead Codies developed DiRT 4, which is back to their more generic “rally experience” games. It seems like many people just aren’t getting excited for the return to formula format.

I still don’t see why they just didn’t keep developing DiRT Rally for a while, they had a winner that could have sold DLC for a long time. Patch in a better career mode, offer more cars and more stage locations for sale and they could have made a ton more money off of what they already had. Oh well, I’ll know this weekend whether or not I’ll be buying D4 for the PC after customer reviews and such. I may end up just sticking with DiRT Rally until a more pure rally focused game comes out down the road.
 
From what I've read in various forums and heard in vids and such, it seems like a lot of people really wanted DiRT Rally to be followed up by DiRT Rally 2, with more content and possibly an easier mode for the less hardcore so they could have fun too, but still the razor focus on pure rally that DiRT Rally mostly had. Instead Codies developed DiRT 4, which is back to their more generic "rally experience" games. It seems like many people just aren't getting excited for the return to formula format.

I still don't see why they just didn't keep developing DiRT Rally for a while, they had a winner that could have sold DLC for a long time. Patch in a better career mode, offer more cars and more stage locations for sale and they could have made a ton more money off of what they already had. Oh well, I'll know this weekend whether or not I'll be buying D4 for the PC after customer reviews and such. I may end up just sticking with DiRT Rally until a more pure rally focused game comes out down the road.
I agree that Dirt Rally is by a fair margin their best entry in this series, but I'm not sure if it was a win-win formula for them. For us, of course, it was amazing, but if you look at the numbers on Steam Spy you can see that while Dirt Rally sold 650k copies, Dirt 3 sold 962k. And while we were dreaming of Dirt Rally 2, a lot of people put off by the simulation aspects of DR were crying out for a Dirt 4.

EDIT: this guy posted his opinions on Dirt 4 coming from Dirt Rally. Pretty interesting, actually!

I'm already downloading it on Steam. Can't wait to try it myself tomorrow. :D
 
I wonder if adding dlc will be easy for this. The track creator at least means that tracks don't need to be designed but I assume just art for the environment and to for the track creator "pieces".
 
I wonder if adding dlc will be easy for this. The track creator at least means that tracks don't need to be designed but I assume just art for the environment and to for the track creator "pieces".

Well, they still have to model the 'chunks' used by the stage generator, so I don't think it would make a difference. Or maybe it's even more demanding than making handcrafted tracks, depending of how much variation with the 'chunks' they want to put in.
 
From what I’ve read in various forums and heard in vids and such, it seems like a lot of people really wanted DiRT Rally to be followed up by DiRT Rally 2, with more content and possibly an easier mode for the less hardcore so they could have fun too, but still the razor focus on pure rally that DiRT Rally mostly had. Instead Codies developed DiRT 4, which is back to their more generic “rally experience” games. It seems like many people just aren’t getting excited for the return to formula format.

I still don’t see why they just didn’t keep developing DiRT Rally for a while, they had a winner that could have sold DLC for a long time. Patch in a better career mode, offer more cars and more stage locations for sale and they could have made a ton more money off of what they already had. Oh well, I’ll know this weekend whether or not I’ll be buying D4 for the PC after customer reviews and such. I may end up just sticking with DiRT Rally until a more pure rally focused game comes out down the road.

I like the idea of Dirt and Dirt Rally being too different platforms going forward. I actually really like the less sim style that Dirt has given us in the past, without that Gymkhana stuff though. I could do without that.
 
Is the focus really all that different here? I mean dirt rally had rally cross and hill climb, two modes I never touched and I have a feeling most of the hardcore dirt rally fans ignored as well. Dirt 4 also has 2 modes other than rally, including again rally cross and ditching hill climb for land rush. The later of which is certainly further removed from the rally experience, but if you aren't playing you aren't playing so who cares?

Dirt 4 feels like pretty much a continuation from dirt rally to me.
 
Is the focus really all that different here? I mean dirt rally had rally cross and hill climb, two modes I never touched and I have a feeling most of the hardcore dirt rally fans ignored as well. Dirt 4 also has 2 modes other than rally, including again rally cross and ditching hill climb for land rush. The later of which is certainly further removed from the rally experience, but if you aren't playing you aren't playing so who cares?

Dirt 4 feels like pretty much a continuation from dirt rally to me.

From what I've read and seen on Youtube most impressions say the sim mode is very close to Dirty Rally but it doesn't quite feel as unforgiving which could be due to the track generator being slightly more generous with the width of the stages and will miss that hand crafted design that Dirt Rally had.

Seems very positive though and is still much more like Dirt Rally/old Colin McRae games in theme rather than the DiRT series. Just a little less focus than Dirt Rally on solely Rally and the challenge of completing a stage.
 
From what I've read and seen on Youtube most impressions say the sim mode is very close to Dirty Rally but it doesn't quite feel as unforgiving which could be due to the track generator being slightly more generous with the width of the stages and will miss that hand crafted design that Dirt Rally had.

Seems very positive though and is still much more like Dirt Rally/old Colin McRae games in theme rather than the DiRT series. Just a little less focus than Dirt Rally on solely Rally and the challenge of completing a stage.

Trust me, the tracks can be at least as challenging as dirt rally's. They can be VERY narrow and have crazy elevation changes. IF the game is a bit more forgiving it's in a counter steering assist to help you recover from mistakes, but I'm not even sure about that. This game is still plenty difficult :)
 
Framerate seems to chuckle playing Landrush isn't it? Especially when taking corners it's not 60 fps it seems or is my mind playing tricks on me?
 
Trust me, the tracks can be at least as challenging as dirt rally's. They can be VERY narrow and have crazy elevation changes. IF the game is a bit more forgiving it's in a counter steering assist to help you recover from mistakes, but I'm not even sure about that. This game is still plenty difficult :)

Damn, I guess that's it, you sold it to me :)
 
Trust me, the tracks can be at least as challenging as dirt rally's. They can be VERY narrow and have crazy elevation changes. IF the game is a bit more forgiving it's in a counter steering assist to help you recover from mistakes, but I'm not even sure about that. This game is still plenty difficult :)

That's great to hear. From the videos I've seen the majority of the tracks do look wider than DiRT Rally's stages, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I have noticed some really nice elevation changes in the DiRT 4 vids so far, but nothing like some of the steep hairpins and switchbacks like many DiRT Rally stages have in them. It's possible that they are there and I've just not seen them yet in a video. And the loss of the hill climbs saddens me as I love rally hill climbs, I really wanted more of them in DiRT Rally, not less.

Player opinions and reviews are what will either convince me to buy it this weekend or hold off for a sale price years from now. I just want a game that can offer me more than DiRT Rally does already, and if it can't then I'll just save my money for some future possilbe successor.
 
i will say that the track creator isnt as robust as i'd hoped, you will recognize corners constantly (some sections even seem to repeat over the course of a stage), but as of now its only as i'm going through them or have passed them that it clicks. stages still feel fresh in that you really dont know whats just around the corner aside from your co-driver calls, and this is awesome.
 
If I platinumed dirt 2 and liked dirt rally, should I go arcade or realism?

I heard Paul Coleman say in an interview that sometimes they do studio internal playsessions on their rig and even some of the more hardcore guys sometimes are switching to arcade (or is it called gamer? whatever...) because they just want to have a more casual fun time.

The answer is probably "both" depending on your mood.
 
If I platinumed dirt 2 and liked dirt rally, should I go arcade or realism?

I'm guessing you should just try both it is easy enough to swap over. If you platinum'd Dirt 2 then you may prefer arcade but if you also enjoyed Dirt Rally and played that more recently then maybe focus on simulation.
 
anyone have arcade impressions? curious if its actually much more accessible like the older dirt titles.
 
anyone have arcade impressions? curious if its actually much more accessible like the older dirt titles.

The 'gamer' option makes the game feel way more accesible than DIRT Rally. I think the controls feel
like a mix of GRID and the DIRT series before Rally.
 
The 'gamer' option makes the game feel way more accesible than DIRT Rally. I think the controls feel
like a mix of GRID and the DIRT series before Rally.

This is correct. I am playing on arcade with all assists off. Playing on demanding for the AI level (one level below the most difficult at start). Perfect for me. It is way more accessible than dirt rally (which I love), especially with a controller. Great game (loading times aside). The career mode is really cool with an almost rpg like aspect (or at least I role play as an up and coming driver that starts his own team, yes I'm a nerd).

Edit: with all assists off on arcade it is more challenging than previous entries to me. I also played sim handling since I liked dirt rally and it's really good as well, but I'm having a blast with this due to the career mode primarily. And even though the menus are plain, what they lack in flash, they make up for in depth (at least in the career aspects).
 
This is correct. I am playing on arcade with all assists off. Playing on demanding for the AI level (one level below the most difficult at start). Perfect for me. It is way more accessible than dirt rally (which I love), especially with a controller. Great game (loading times aside). The career mode is really cool with an almost rpg like aspect (or at least I role play as an up and coming driver that starts his own team, yes I'm a nerd).

Edit: with all assists off on arcade it is more challenging than previous entries to me. I also played sim handling since I liked dirt rally and it's really good as well, but I'm having a blast with this due to the career mode primarily. And even though the menus are plain, what they lack in flash, they make up for in depth (at least in the career aspects).

Game feels somewhat more arcadey with the gamer controls but I don't really care, it's a great option and the game isn't as frustrating for me as Rally often was.

For what it's worth...In an interview with EDGE Codemasters told that the plain UI and menus were deliberate. When I first played DIRT4 I was disappointed, but the racing feels so damn good that I don't even care anymore.
 
So I'm actually one of the few noobs out there who consider Dirt 2 and 3's driving model one of the best ever and I put hundreds of hours in those 2 games. In this case should I go with gamer handling when I get the game tomorrow with assists off like you guys say?
 
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