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The original only featured rallycross tracks on multiplayer. This is a pure-bred racing game that doesn’t make the mistake of trying to force appeal to both genre fans and casual consumers.ĭiRT Rally 2,0 fixes its predecessors biggest flaw of all by implementing a fully-fledged online custom lobby mode this time around. We want a core racer that supplies the cars and the tracks and lets us do the rest. The core racing fan who is going to keep playing this for years in the future doesn’t value some poorly written story attached on late in development. However, Codemasters have gotten this one completely right in my mind. There’s not much else and for some, this is probably going to make you feel there’s a lack of an end goal in mind. Similar to older Forza Motorsport titles, you race, you get credits, you buy cars. Progression is based on climbing tier lists across Rally 2.0’s two disciplines: rally and rallycross. The campaign features no story and instead chooses to focus on the old-school idea of just letting you play the game. This seems like the kind of feature you’d play for the first week and then never touch again. A.I Challenges don’t give unique rewards and pay out slightly worse than their online counterparts. It’s an okay addition and doesn’t harm the game but it does feel a little lazy. A.I challenges are single-player only and perform very similarly to standard campaign events. Standard dailies pit you against other people in a classic leaderboard time trail set up. Thankfully, they are back once again but this time with the addition of A.I challenges too. They offered great replayability for those looking for a long-term experience. The use of daily, weekly and monthly challenges was something I highly praised in the original. DiRT Rally 2.0 is tough as nails.Ĭodemasters haven’t introduced a wide range of new features but optimizations of existing features are present. Obviously, having more assists than I choose to play with helps a lot but even then you are going to need to invest time to get decent at this game. I love that grind and practice to get better but it isn’t going to be for everyone. No exaggeration, it took at least 40 minutes of practice before I could even begin to somewhat consistently attack routes I already knew well. I made it through four corners before locking up my brakes and flying off a cliff at 80mph. Powered by a mighty 550 BHP, 2.1 Litre, turbo-charged straight-five engine. Perhaps the single most exemplary example of what people think when you say ‘rally car’. The one of a kind, Group B Audi Sport Quattro. Perhaps the highlight of this difficulty jump is when in the first hour of play I decided it was a good idea to give one of my personal favorites a ride. The step up to RWD Historic 2 is pretty difficult and then anything beyond that starts to require significant practice to just not crash into flames every run. You might think this would make for a suitable introductory car class but the reality is that you are simply left unprepared for what is to come. Whilst iconic classics such as the Lancia Fulvia do feature, everything in these entry classes is very slow. Anyone familiar with rally or motorsport probably knows front wheel drive cars are far from optimal for racing purposes. You start off with the lowest tier rally class, FWD Historic 1. This game is one hell of an unforgiving, tough cookie, It does not have time for your potential lack of skill. Punishing mistakes is a theme that DiRT Rally 2.0 sticks to religiously. Wet surfaces slow you down and punish over-zealous driving hard. Noticeable tweaks have been made to weather impact with heavy rain, in particular, changing how you should approach each stage very differently. It’d have been a big risk to mess around with the handling model too much. Some may call that copy-and-paste development but in Codemasters’ defense, the original felt about as good as it could have. They both feel and play almost identically. Going back to see how the original felt for direct comparison pretty much led me to one conclusion. It’s time to see if DiRT Rally 2.0 lives up to my steep expectations.ĭriving wise not much has changed at all. When Codemasters announced it would be getting a sequel last September, I had big hopes they could build on the original to make something truly special. It wasn’t perfect for sure, but the overall driving experience was so good you could easily overlook its relatively minor flaws. The original DiRT Rally still holds up as one of the greatest racing simulation games of all time.