What with so many new racing games on the market bringing us such wonderful features as gutted single-player campaigns, clunky broken AI, and lootboxes (as well as me generally being cheap), I was quite grateful to have a friend find me a copy of an older one I'd yet to play, specifically Colin McRae: DiRT 2. One thing I've appreciated about the Colin McRae Rally / DiRT series is that there's pretty much no re-use of content or treading of the same ground; even going back to an older title, it's a brand new experience. The announcer and a few courses re-appeared in the far different demo-derby title DiRT Showdown, though.
I could go on and on about the physics feeling right, but if you've tried any of the DiRT games, you know they're generally consistent. DiRT 2 is arcade-style and rewards a well-thought-out racing line while also letting you go a little more aggro on the jumps and cinematically excessive on the drifts. You can set good times in modern-day cars almost completely sideways, but purists will be glad to know that a few secret cars behave far closer to the original CMR2 physics. What really sets DiRT 2 apart is a unique presentation; menu screens are diegetic and experienced from a first-person view as you move about your driver's RV, parked outside of whatever event you've just attended. You select events off of a map on your table or posters on your wall, customize cars in a tent outside (stickers accumulate on the interior view for each major event you win, and while it's no Underground 2, you can customize all sorts of silly things like adding fuzzy dice or making your horn play Greensleeves at top speed), and even sit through loading screens that track your flight to the next event. It doesn't sound like a game-changer, but it has a unique charm. You never really leave character the whole time; it keeps momentum.
Adding to this presentation is a unique tone, far more focused on having fun with your friends and partying than serious prestige. It caught a lot of flack at the time for "Americanizing" the series, and while I can't entirely see it for the full package, it does at least show in the driver roster. With no WRC license, the main drivers are pretty much entirely either Rally America stars or fictional. Still, something that gives it some personality is being able to impress, befriend, and eventually team up with other drivers, including those real-world rally stars. It's wonderfully amusing to hear Travis Pastrana joking "has Ken (Block) tried to sell you any shoes yet?" or Tanner Foust congratulating you on taking second in the rallycross races he invariably dominates. They bicker to you and among themselves mid-race, which could be annoying, but in my opinion, livens things up a bit and makes the cast matter again in a way I haven't seen a racing game do since the first GRID.
I can see where this alienated people at the time especially, though, from the very over-the-top energy-drink-fueled excessive style of this one. No subtlety here. Rally is a small portion of the game now, with Rallycross, Trailblazer (hillclimb), and Landrush (buggies/trucks) vying for attention, but the rally stages are still well-constructed and well-voiced (you have the option of SEGA Rally style "easy left, hard right" or 1-6 system "left 5, into right 2", which is very nice if you've learned the 1-6 system because the simplified instructions are less informative. Also, minor detail I love, the co-driver will shout aloud if you crash mid-instruction). The course designs range from reasonable, like winding Chinese countryside or sprawling Utah cliffs, to wonderfully excessive, like battling through a track built in Battersea (the next game would make this location open-world instead) or leaping and sliding through Shibuya's streets. It's all very much Hot Wheelsy, focused on having a good time above all else. Mix that with an
excellent soundtrack, smooth physics, and the gratuitous energy drink advertising making sense in hindsight when the two leading rallycross series are Red Bull Global Rallycross and FIA Monster Energy World RX, and you've got a great, surprisingly peaceful and cute title. It's just silly fun.
Minor notes of my own personal experience: It weirds me out that "Evan" is a voice option here and I'm graced with actual drivers saying "hey, Evan, nice win", but DiRT 3 and Showdown cut that name from the list and I was stuck as "Dude". Having played a ton of GRID, I appreciated a Ravenwest livery instantly unlocking for the game-starting Impreza when it found my old save. Also, the RV just got a jack-o-lantern when this month started: cute touch.
Digging out some older titles, as well, I've recently reinstalled Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2. My nostalgia has not served me well here, at least not on PC; NFSIII aged a lot better. Awkward floaty physics and some heavy RNG on pursuits make this less fun than it was back in the day... but as a kid, I really only played Be The Cop mode, so in a sense, the rest of this game is new to me. And that mode still holds up perfect. Ram supercars off the road until they stop? My kind of virtual police work. Still, it has a certain tone that later NFS games veered from that I don't know how to place. It's very much not afraid to be silly where it benefits gameplay, even if it contradicts itself. Going too fast in your Lotus Elise? The police will try to pull you over. Go faster? You're too much of a threat to public safety for them to safely pursue and you're home free. They see you still going? Time to call in the helicopter to drop explosive barrels in the middle of public roads and detonate any cars that hit them. It genuinely forced a laugh out of me when I got arrested and the "Busted" cutscene played out the on-foot police chase like a Scooby-Doo chase instead of anything serious. The NFS series past this point had some fantastic entries, but after Most Wanted was extremely successful and only accidentally corny, they kinda gave up on being intentionally silly for a good few years, and a bit of fun was lost in that. Most of all, though, I totally love that some songs on the soundtrack with extremely blatantly sexual lyrics were rewritten for the game to be about street racing and police chases, which is so dorky it's somehow perfect. (Plus, Rush was on it somehow, which never happened before or since to my knowledge.)
Also, it took me 15 years to finally notice the police have black-and-white cruisers and American accents no matter where on the planet you're supposedly racing. We're all living in Amerika, Amerika ist wunderbar.