by "If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent" (essextee)
Published 10/23/2017 at 09:30
by "If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent" (essextee)
Published 10/23/2017 at 09:30
Tags: unsolicited opinion
; Dirt 4
; Oppo review
STARS: 0
More specifically, how disappointed I am in it. I’m glad I waited for it to go on sale half off instead of at launch for $60. It was not a worthy successor to what is easily my single favorite racing game.
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DiRT Rally was a visceral experience. The handling and sound design were so excellent that you felt in tune with the car even through a dualshock controller. I was able to feel the weight transfer, the tires digging in, the heft of the car pushing its way around the corner, hear the spray of gravel behind the car as I power out of a slide. I could actually feel the front end pushing outwards or the back coming around. It was about as connected with the road as you can get through a computer screen. It was the next best thing to being in that car. Driving in Rally was so immensely satisfying.
So, you can imagine how excited I was when they announced DiRT 4. Every dev update was just better and better news. They weren’t going to dumb it down and make it more “accessible”! They were going to keep a special handling mode just for enthusiasts! Infinite procedurally generated tracks! Hype! Hype! Hype!
I was super excited once all 34 gigabytes of it finished downloading. I couldn’t contain myself as the game launched. I made sure I had the handling mode set to “Simulation” before I did anything else. This was going to be amazing!
The first event loaded and... oh.
Oh my.
I was faced with cars that were floaty and just wafted over the ground with no noise except the engine and some gravel plinks. You have no clue what the wheels are doing at any given moment, and the cars have no weight in the corners. You can’t feel the grip ebbing and flowing like in Rally. It just toggles between “full grip“ and “no grip”. There’s a disconnect between the controller and the events transpiring onscreen.
None of the Rally carryover cars drive like they did in the previous game. The A110, instead of having that intense mechanical grip of a RR car, just smears its tires across the pavement like they were made of ChapStick. The 2001 Focus instantly (as in like 0.5 seconds) flips around the moment you start applying brakes. The Group B cars drive like a pat of butter on a hot griddle.
You know what this handling model feels like? Richard Burns Rally. Coming hot off a game that was as sensational to drive as Rally was, the DiRT team went and made a game that feels like one launched 13 years ago .
The procedural stages are a joke too. Yes, it’s truer to the real rally experience this way, but none of the stages feel like real roads . I can’t quite put my finger on why but they just don’t. You know those corners/complexes/setpieces that make you go “Woah, I can’t believe I just took that section so smoothly, that was so cool!”? DiRT 4 has none of those. The stages are homogeneous and monotonous. Every corner feels the same. I want my lovingly handcrafted environments back, please.
Compare these two videos. Pay attention to the sound and the scenery. The first one is Rally , the second one is 4 :
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Which one seems more immersive? The one that has you plunging down a rough logging trail through a dense forest? Or the one that’s just sort of a ribbon of gravel laid on top of some terrain?
Tl:dr; slick menus and cool cars don’t make up for what’s yet another arcade racer aimed at people who aren’t actually that into cars.
I uninstalled DiRT Rally to make room for this ?
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"CB" (jrcb)
10/22/2017 at 22:01, STARS: 1
DiRT Rally is great. Colin McCrae’s DiRT (came out for the 360 and PS3, I think) was also amazing. Those are the only two I’d really consider worth playing in the series, as I found DiRT 2 a letdown and never played 3.
"If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent" (essextee)
10/22/2017 at 22:06, STARS: 0
I’ve never played any DiRT games besides Rally and 4.
"Nauraushaun" (nauraushaun12)
10/22/2017 at 22:14, STARS: 4
Felt the same with GRiD and GRiD 2. Grid was a masterpiece of car damage, physics that felt real (enough), with flashbacks and all sorts of assists to make the game as accessible and fun as you could want.
2 just turned it all down. It felt like an arcade game and it just wasn’t necessary.
"SVTyler" (svtyler)
10/22/2017 at 23:00, STARS: 1
slick menus and cool cars don’t make up for what’s yet another arcade racer aimed at people who aren’t actually that into cars.
This is what I don’t get: the market for a semi-sim racing game has to be tiny to begin with, why alienate the hardcore fans who spent thousands of hours creating a culture around the game by racing in organized online leagues, creating liveries and paint schemes, taking and editing photos and videos, etc., to pander to the casuals who will play the game for maybe a couple dozen hours over the course of a few months and then move onto something else entirely? I don’t doubt DiRT 4 and Forza 7 sold a few thousand more units above what they might had they stuck to the more hardcore formula, but new customers aren’t who made the DiRT and Forza series such huge hits to begin and sustain the series, it’s the super-dedicated dudes who extend the games’ lifespans by playing them for years and years beyond their release date (see: the huge community who played Forza 4 up until the day 6 came out). Getting rid of those guys gets rid of the backbone of the community, and you can ask Bungie/343 about how well that turned out for future titles in the Halo series.
"Tareim - V8 powered" (tareimgaml)
10/23/2017 at 09:42, STARS: 0
This is the 1st time I’ve actually looked at a video of drit4 in action and wow definitely not going to bother getting that game at all, how can it be so bad compared to rally? I was hoping it was going to be in the same style as Dirt 1&2 so I could have fun with trophy trucks and buggies etc but guess I’ll have to keep waiting
"If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent" (essextee)
10/23/2017 at 09:48, STARS: 1
After 3, Halo just turned into a very good looking Call Of Duty clone. The grandeur of the first few games is completely absent.
"SVTyler" (svtyler)
10/23/2017 at 09:59, STARS: 0
That’s exactly it, they completely sold out to the CoD bros and probably ended selling a few more games initially because “hey cool, Halo has classes now!” but if the numbers I’ve seen are accurate Halo 5 sold less than half the number of copies of Halo 3, almost certainly because people got sick of the same stale FPS tropes. I won’t pretend like the first few Halo games were some transcendent work of art but they definitely lost what made the series so special.
"Bob Loblaw Made Me Make a Phoney Phone Call to Edward Rooney" (braddelaparker)
10/23/2017 at 10:13, STARS: 0
I bought Dirt Rally a few weeks back as a result of some unfavorable sim-oriented reviews of Dirt 4, but even Dirt Rally I’m not a big fan of despite the praise I’ve seen heaped on it. I experience a ton of the toggling between full-grip and no-grip and very little progressiveness. And the tarmac physics model in Dirt rally? It’s....horrendous.
RBR itself may be an outdated game, but with the work the community has done with mods over the years, it’s above and beyond the best physics and tire model out there in rallying. Every time I pick up Dirt Rally I wonder why I didn’t just fire up my modded copy of RBR instead.
All I really want is a reasonably good rally sim with quality rallycross multiplayer. Crossing my fingers that iRacing gets it right here before the end of the year.
"TheTurbochargedSquirrel" (thatsquirrel)
10/23/2017 at 10:16, STARS: 1
DiRT has always been more of a casual game. DiRT rally is really the odd one out in the series that stepped up to replace the aging Richard Burns Rally.
"Dusty Ventures" (dustyventures)
10/23/2017 at 20:49, STARS: 1
I had the same initial impression, but I’ve kept playing it and I’ve found some aspects of it are really well done.
First off, the bad. You’re absolutely right, while the feel and physics of the cars are far more realistic than Dirt 2 or 3, they don’t hold a candle to Dirt Rally. The rear drive cars are particularly bad, 99% of the time there’s no way to get the car to rotate via throttle no matter what you do and on that other 1% it does a sudden 360 into a tree. Speaking of doing a 360 into a tree, I hate any and every car that refuses to brake in a straight line no matter how much (or little) brake I use, which is about half the cars
The generated tracks also don’t hold a candle to the ones in Dirt Rally, and while some locations feel better than others (Wales and Spain are pretty good), the joy and technicality of the stages isn’t the same. That said, I’d like to see them continue to work on this whole “infinite configurations” thing, it has the potential to be incredible a few generations on, and not being able to memorize stages is a big part of rally. The stadium trucks are hot garbage, the crosskarts are a dumpster fire.
Oh, pace notes. It seems like the notes are always early, right up until you’ve got a tight corner at the end of a fast section and Jen calls it just as you get to the corner. Dammit, Jen!
Now for the good. There are a few cars that do actually feel fantastic. The 205 GTI is an absolutely epic little hoonmachine, and the Fiesta R5 is about the most nimble, most controllable, and most fun rally car I’ve ever driven in a game.
Everything about rallycross is better (minus crosskarts because they suck). The tracks are awesome, the lights going green randomly without a countdown is exactly as it should be, and you do get that joy of finding the rhythm and linking corners, especially at Montalegre and Hell.
Having cars randomly stopped on stage is a great added dose of realism, for realism’s sake I wish there were cars stopped about twice as frequently as there are though. I also curse every time the car is on the opposite side of the road from the triangles, usually as I’m skidding sideways trying not to hit the stopped car. Hopefully in future versions of this we see them continue to up the realism by having cars in more varied positions (backwards with their lights shining at you, upside-down and half in the road, off the road and up a tree), and maybe even slow/damaged cars limping down the road with their hazards on.
Random mechanical failures are the devil, but they’re an excellent added dash of realism as well. I do wish they affected the car more though, it seems like just about all of them are an annoying noise that goes away after a while and nothing else. When there’s a brake issue I want to have to brake earlier to make corners or have it pull to one side. When there’s a transmission issue I want slower shifts and missed gears. Make me work for it.
Weather is also improved. You can really tell the difference between a wet stage, a dry stage, and a drying stage. The way the weather can change based on your position in the road order is brilliantly done as well. Oh and fog. Holy shit. The first time you encounter a fog bank midstage and have to drive entirely by the notes is insane.
DirtFish. It’s so cool having DirtFish in the game (and an insanely accurate DirtFish at that. When I need to buy a new car I always take my options to DirtFish and test them out to see what feels best, that’s a great ability to have. The driving tutorials are also far improved over the ones in Dirt Rally.
Career mode is one of the best I’ve seen in a driving game. Beautifully done.
Tiny nerdy things, drones on stage, the bonfires at night in Wales, night stages as a whole, figuring out how and when to cut corners (the 205 GTI in Australia will teach you to be a corner cutting god), the camera helicopter kicking up dust, the camera helicopter not flying when the weather’s bad (check your replay angles, no camera chopper when there’s rain/snow/dense fog), . Basically everything beyond the driving itself is vastly improved. Hopefully they can combine the two in the next Dirt game.
EDIT: Oh! Also excellent, having to drive to the control. Love that extra bit of detail. Although if you’re going to include that you really need to keep reading notes after the flying finish
"Dusty Ventures" (dustyventures)
10/23/2017 at 20:52, STARS: 0
Dirt 4 has trucks and buggies, though not quite to the same extent
"If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent" (essextee)
10/23/2017 at 21:39, STARS: 0
I’m not saying the game has no redeeming qualities, it’s just that the end result is not what I’m looking for in a rally sim.
I agree with you on the damage simulation. Have you ever played TOCA 3? It’s an older Codemasters title. That game had great damage modeling, from transmissions that get stuck in gear to busted struts and loose steering. That’s the kind of detail I want.
"Dusty Ventures" (dustyventures)
10/23/2017 at 22:01, STARS: 1
Despite how the marketing department tried to sell it I don’t think developers ever meant for Dirt 4 to be a rally sim like DR was. It was more meant to bridge the gap between the arcadiness of the original trilogy and the hardcore of DR. If you find it cheap somewhere get your hands on Dirt 2 or Dirt 3 and give that a spin. It’ll make 4 feel a lot more real.
I’m sure there’ll be a hardcore successor to DR in time. Until then I’m happy enough bouncing between 4 and DR.