Accessible yet tough and grimy yet gorgeous, Dirt 4 sets a new standard in rally racing.
If 2015’s Dirt Rally was Codemasters flipping over the couch cushions and finding the key to something special, Dirt 4 is the studio prying open the barn door and rediscovering the whole car. With a properly meaty career mode, literally endless racing thanks to its procedurally generated stages, and the best sound and visuals Codemasters has ever mustered, Dirt 4 has redefined what we should expect from modern rally games.
The most amazing part of Dirt 4 is its new custom stage creator, which Codemasters has dubbed ‘Your Stage’. It’s an incredibly simple tool to use. There are just two sliders – one for length and one for complexity. That’s it. The process is instant and easy, and time-of-day and weather can be adjusted for any stage you create. Stages can be up to 12-or-so kilometres long and the off-track respawn limits have been pushed right out so when you crash, you can crash big.
The Your Stage tool supports five countries in Dirt 4 – Australia, the United States, Wales, Sweden, and Spain – which each offer very different terrain and demand different things from us behind the wheel. Australia is gravel-based, with a mix of wider areas with uncluttered verges and tighter zones that twist through the bush. It’s quick and it can be a bit forgiving, provided you have the space to make an error. Spain is quite different; it’s a tarmac-based affair lined with curbs, railings, and high stone and rock walls. It’s quick too, because there’s a lot more grip, but there’s a bit less margin for error here. I’ve clattered down more than a few Spanish hillsides blazing into bends at maximum attack.
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There’s nothing about Your Stage courses that makes it obvious they’ve been built by an algorithm rather than a bunch of humans.
You can’t raise or lower bits of your custom tracks yourself, nor can you push and pull certain sections around to customise the end product, but the impact of having a unique stage curated for every career event (and a bottomless supply of them at your fingertips outside of the career mode) cannot be understated. You can also save the ones you like most and share them with friends. Brilliant stuff.
Most impressive of all, there’s nothing about Your Stage courses that makes it obvious they’ve been built by an algorithm rather than a bunch of humans. Segments are seamlessly blended together. Trackside detail is varied and the game’s pace notes – provided by Welshman Nicky Grist and Canadian Jen Horsey – are always accurate.
Five environments is probably the bare minimum Codemasters needed (the traits Dirt Rally’s Finland, Monaco, and Germany would have brought to this game are missed) but we’ve definitely gained more than we’ve lost here. No more cheeky reverse stages or repetitive shared track sections, and no more belting up and down the exact same stages for months on end; Your Stage is a gamechanger for rally games.
Until now, Codemasters’ Ego engine games have always looked a little muted. Not Dirt 4. The lighting is the best that’s ever come out of Codemasters, from the way it plays off the different paint types and car surfaces to the way low sun lights up thick fog in a bright orange haze.
The visuals still lack a little of the sharpness of some of its peers in the racing space (and some shadows get a bit choppy) but there’s a lot of great detail here. The heat haze wafting above the wide starting straights in the stadium-based Landrush events; the compacted dirt surfaces baking under the harsh sun. The leaf litter lining the unsealed backroads of Michigan, churned up and dancing in slipstreams. Dark new mud being caked upon dried, pale dust over the course of several heats of a Rallycross event. The absurdly good water splash effects.
I also love the way Dirt 4’s cars often look quite battle-weary, and not just after events when they’re carrying damage. The Dirtfish Rally School training cars are great examples; they don’t look like they’ve just rolled off the lot. They look like cars that have are punished and pummelled on a daily basis, with grubby glass and battered tyres, caked with dirt.
Then there’s the sound, which is brilliant. Blasting over cattle grids sounds like the burp of a minigun, and the constant sweet, sweet exhaust overrun sounds like Satan half-choking on a pistachio. Sometimes I play in chase cam just so I can better hear the crackling pops of the exhaust, but it’s a real treat inside the cabin, too. A symphony of squeaks and clunks and buzzing bodywork at high revs, the sound design plays a vital role in making Dirt 4’s cars feel like real machines being pushed to their limits.
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Weight shifting is improved, as is the feeling of aero grip at higher speeds.
Dirt 4 has two physics modes – Simulation and Gamer – and leaderboards and online challenges segregate the two. Simulation is my preference because it makes the entire experience a real wrestle with a wheel. Weight shifting is improved, as is the feeling of aero grip at higher speeds. If you’re worried about Dirt 4 losing the brutal edge of Dirt Rally, don’t be.
But don’t be worried about Dirt 4 being too hard for you either, because with the Gamer physics setting and various assists available it’s far more welcoming. I find the Gamer setting feels fine with the assists off but overall it takes away the need to put weight over the front for turn-in and can feel a bit too responsive to me. But having that option adds layers of accessibility to the experience without ever crippling the serious rally sim at its core.
Career mode is a big step up from Dirt Rally, too, fleshing out the experience with team facilities and upgrades to spend your money on. The facilities and resources you have will determine how effective and useful your engineers and other staff will be for you. There’s a bit of micromanagement involved – particularly when it comes to staying on top of sponsor deals – but it’s a huge improvement from the admittedly soulless Dirt Rally. You’re also encouraged to build a personalised fleet of cars in order to enter as many championships and series as you can. I like how it’s easy to apply a consistent theme across all your cars but I think the livery editor could do with some more functionality; as it stands a lot of it is pre-set and ultimately results in cars that look a bit amateur lined up beside cars adorned with existing professional liveries. Something simple, like better control of the logo placement would probably be enough; more vinyl elements (like stripes and such) would be a nice bonus.
The car mix is good, covering all major eras of rallying. Some categories are really well populated, though some are not. There is lots of great retro stuff, with the ’80s and ’90s quite well represented. The 2000s aren’t as well covered; the contemporary Group N/R4 cupboard is a little bare, and the 2000CC class is a bit of a weird one, bundling up a 2001 Subaru Impreza WRC and 2001 Ford Focus WRC and pitting them against the WRC manufacturers' world title winning Focus from 2007.
Also noteworthy is the Official World Rallycross Championship mode, which returns from Dirt Rally with most of the top World RX Supercars, the RX Lites, Group B rallycross, and a few more tracks (although not all the tracks in the real-world series are included, so it feels a bit truncated). It is such a great racing format for video games, though; short tracks, unique format, and astonishingly powerful cars going door-to-door. There’s also the Dirtfish Rally School, which is an awesome open area used for joyriding, testing, rally lessons, and some genuinely fun time attack events. And there’s the return of Dirt Rally’s regular community events, only this time it’s with stages that are always new to everyone who participates, plus curated and custom PvP competitive multiplayer modes for lobbies of up to eight (but no splitscreen).
Multiplayer stood up well during testing with friendly players, though I fully expect the uncompromising and close-quarters nature of rallycross and Landrush (American, TORC-style short course off road racing) may be a frustrating cauldron for those trying to race clean(ish).
The Verdict
It’s perhaps symbolic that Codemasters has included Colin McRae’s old co-driver in Dirt 4 for the first time in one of its rally games since Colin McRae Rally 2005, because Dirt 4 very much feels like a return to the good old days of the series. Hearing Grist’s pace notes again – a voice drilled into my brain in the late ’90s and early 2000s via my ravenous consumption of all games beginning with the word ‘Colin’ – has taken me back nearly 20 years. Back then Codemasters’ rally games were the yardstick against which all other racers with off-road aspirations were measured (at least up until the likes of Richard Burns Rally and WRC: Rally Evolved). Well, those days are back. Accessible yet tough and grimy yet gorgeous, Dirt 4 sets a new standard in rally racing – and its well-considered career mode and endless stages inject it with tremendous stamina. Absolutely stonking brilliant.
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