Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1060 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Codemasters Limited
• Released on: 2007-06-15
• Platform: Windows XP

Amazon.co.uk Review

It may be tempting to think of this simply as Colin McRae Rally 6.0, but for once a game has been rebranded not to divert attention from an aging and discredited formula, but because it really is a whole evolutionary step forward for the series. There’s now a far greater range of cars and race types than just point-to-point rallying, with everything from hill climbing to rally cross events included. The game’s also far less parochial than before, with plenty of officially licensed international rally tracks and competitions.

As exciting as all this may be though the game’s trump card is clearly its graphics. After what seems to have been an endless series of next gen disappointments this is one game that clearly could never have been done on the older consoles. The level of detail is incredible, both on the cars and the environment, but what really impresses is how interactive everything is. Pranging your car not only damages it realistically, but whatever you’ve hit as well, from roadside barriers to other racers.

The game’s other great triumph is ironically also it’s only serious flaw. The car handling is superbly realistic, but so much so that it actually makes getting anywhere in the game extremely difficult without an awful lot of practise (and ideally a good steering wheel controller). At least you can go online for a match against others at the same skill level as you though, which does help to avoid too much frustration and helps you appreciate what is probably the best next gen racer so far.
Harrison Dent

Manufacturer's Description
Colin McRae: DIRT is the most diverse and exhilarating off-road racing experience ever with sensational gravel, mud and dirt events the world over. Events include the series' intense point-to-point races and takes players further off-road than ever before.

Race in challenging heavyweight 850bhp cars, drifting on the loose gravel and high-speed blind corners of Hill Climb events along perilous cliff edges. All 12.4 miles of the world famous Pikes Peak International is included, with over 150 precarious turns to negotiate through the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

How about engaging in multiple car races with Dakar-style trucks and super-powered 4x4s on the toughest desert terrain in Rally Raid competitions? Then there are Rally Cross events, switching between dirt and road racing, where the competition is always tight, fast and collisions with your opponents are inevitable. Colin McRae: DIRT also offers a dedicated mode for European, International and Global rally championships featuring official 2WD, 4WD, Classic and RWD rally cars.

Colin McRae: DIRT delivers the wheel-screaming exhilaration of off-road racing with the next generation of the series' sublime car handling and physics system and a devastating new damage engine that ensures players experience every bump in the track, every loose rock, every inch of shifting dirt through the reactive environments.

With an incredible range of off-road vehicles, thrill-packed tracks, modes that make the most of online multiplayer, and more varied events than any other single-championship rally game, Colin McRae is a bigger, faster, wilder racing experience.

Customer Reviews

GREAT..... if you have a computer of a similar spec to NASA's
GRAPHICS:
Ok, I had read all the reviews about needing a very high spec pc and although my pc isn't super duper I thought it would probably work ok like all my other high spec games. I bought my pc about 2 years ago, then it was very good, (7600gs 256mb, 500gb sata, 2gb ram, pentium 2 core duo). Now that is quite good I think. However at 1240 by 1024 at the lowest detail settings it still only gave about 4fps with a steering lag of about 1.5 seconds (my formula force ex steering wheel works perfectly with other games) i decided to turn the graphics down a notch or two. I ended up at the lowest possible setting, still with a notisable steering lag! Even at the lowest setting it still looks sort of ok, but not great at all.
VERY DISSAPIONTED

PLAYIBILITY:
I had the first colin mcrae games on my ps1, the game (although old) was very fun, the handling was great and the menu was top notch. On dirt though, the handling is BIZZARE!!! on dust the back wheels have no grip but the front wheels feel like they're super glued to the ground, the slightest twitch of the wheel sends the car into a 360. But then sometime its the other way round. The steering lag i mntioned earlyer doesn't help either. Also the menu system, although inovative, takes forever to navigate. Like when exiting a race
first you select pause,
then you select exit,
then it asks you if you want to retire or quit to main menu,
then it asks you if you sure you want to quit to main menu,
then it spends 5 seconds saving
then it spends 5 seconds telling you that its saved.
This may not sound to bad but it takes time inbetween each of these steps and after a few races get EXTREMLY ANNOYING.
It's like the game hasn't been thought through by anyone who has any concept of T...I...M...E
The sound is decent though on some cars not great, miles better than the rest of the game.
It is also rather odd in the way the car exelerates (though this might be to do with the graphics). From a standstill the car excelerates normally to about 50mph, then sundenlly, like you've hit a hyperspace button, the world flies backward and it feels like your travelling at the speed of sound, although on the dash it says your only going at 65 mph. I know its not a sim but seriously, this is a bit odd even for an arcade racer.
VERY DISSAPIONTED

OVER ALL:
This game is probably ok for someone who has all the time in the world and doesn't like any realism and enjoys spending £1billion on a computer with 16 processors, a 500TB drive and a 60 GB video card. If you don't have this however, really this is not going to work for you.
No S-E-R-I-O-U-S-L-Y, IT WILL NOT WORK WITH ANYTHING BUT THE VERY LATEST GAMING COMPUTER. If you don't have the very latest £1billion gaming computer, it WILL NOT WORK!!!!!!

VERY VERY VERY DISSAPIONTED



*edit: on fun I meant to put 2 stars but now it won't let me
FUN: 2 STARS

Dont believe the negative reviews
Game is excellent in my opinion. Some of the negative feedback isnt justified.

Yes, you do need a very powerful graphics card but on my 8800 GTS framerate is in the 40's with all graphic options maxed out at 1680x1050

Handling takes getting used to I admit but it's just sensitive thats all. Using a joypad I have completed the whole game with no problems.

On the downside there are a few minus points though.

1) Your saved games can get corrupted (even after the patch) so I'd advise to make a backup of the file.

2) The game really taxes your graphics card and if you're overclocking too much the game will crash or lockup regulary.

But anyone with a high end GPU shouldn't miss out on this.

Get Rally 04, not this.
First, the moans:

I didn't think I would mind, but the American accents really are incredibly annoying! I eventually had to turn the speech off. This is supposed to be a Colin Mcrae game after all... (And I love Americans, honest!)

The hardware requirements are ridiculous. My PC has an E6850 3GHz cpu and a factory-overclocked 8800gt graphics card and I still couldn't run it smoothly at the max settings. I tried various combinations of lower res/lower detail and never really got a decent framerate allied with acceptable appearance.

There was something wrong with the car handling. A light touch on the brakes and the car stopped almost immediately. Conversely, floor the accelerator and the car felt sluggish, and there was little or no wheelspin. Never really managed a good sliding turn.

No sense of speed. The speedometer could be reading 70 or 80 mph, and yet it felt like the car was doing 20 or 30. Some of the races felt like they were being conducted in slow-motion, almost as if they were underwater.

To get to an actual race required wading through page after page of menu screens, and a change in the graphics options almost always needed the game to be restarted (Rally 04 accepted changes on the fly).

The game crashed. Just once, admittedly, but I've played Rally 04 for hours and hours and not once did it go belly-up.


Now, the praise:

The scenery was quite nice.

The realistic damage to cars and trackside objects was welcome.


So, overall, if the programers had paid a bit more attention to car handling and 'feel', and a bit less to flashy, cpu-hungry graphics this could have been a decent entry in the Mcrae series. But they didn't. And it isn't.