What I've been doing with my life is mostly DiRT Rally, as of late. I'd heard a lot of gaming news outlets report it as "the Dark Souls of racing games" and rant and rave about how relentlessly brutal and realistic it is, but, y'know, gaming media generally doesn't actually give a damn about racing games anymore, so they're an awful barometer of it unless they have an in-house specialist on it. Showing people careening off-track and slamming into walls isn't that good an indicator of difficulty when they usually drive so terribly that that's the case for
every game. But I digress. What I think threw people off is that, unlike the majority of the DiRT series before it and much of the other mass-market games out there, DiRT Rally leans much more to the simulation end of things than it does arcade.
It's not that it's merciless, or cruel, or unforgiving. It's that it rips away the safety nets, all in good confidence that you'll be able to withstand the trial by fire and learn from your mistakes. There are assists you can turn on, of course, from stability and traction control to anti-lock brakes, but as with other Codemasters games, you're given a subtle boost in rewards payout for shutting them off. It lets you ease into making realistic parts of racing that you'd usually ignore a part of your muscle memory, at your own pace, from holding the handbrake during the countdown and letting go of it at launch to locking the camera views to the inside of the car. It's very satisfying to gradually gain full control of each part of the vehicle, and can pay off with slightly faster times. Importantly, though, a lot of the stuff that turned many other racing titles to a mocked "easy mode" are completely absent. There's no "rewind" or "flashback" feature. Resetting the car after a crash will cost you time. Damage incurred will have an effect on the car and cannot be rendered purely cosmetic. So on, so forth.
DiRT Rally's one of the few things I can point to as using modern gaming right. It debuted as an Early Access game with a sparse few stages (point-to-point rally courses), and took in feedback while gradually adding the rest of the content. It catered to a niche market, but welcomed anyone else willing to jump in. The one failing of this format is that the tutorials feel like placeholders; they're simply videos, albeit wonderfully descriptive and informative ones (I had no idea that altitude subtly affected engine power due to less air getting through at higher heights!). Still, that allows you to learn at your own pace in-game. Each of the game modes feels wonderfully refined due to this focus. The courses and cars are exactly enough to have variety without anything being unnecessary or extra. Six rally locales of wildly varying climates, three rallycross courses (with seven layouts), and one hillclimb course (Pikes Peak!). Vehicles from various ages that truly feel nothing the same; starting with a 60's Mini Cooper takes some getting used to, and ending up in a 2010's Hyundai briefly for an event felt jarringly
easy in comparison with modern engineering.
I'm probably going on longer than anyone's particularly interested in, but suffice to say, the rally stages are smooth, beautiful, and punishing. The co-driver's pace notes are informative and easy to hear (I was pretty surprised to find out he genuinely is that easy to parse over the radio
in real life), and the HUD briefly shows on-screen illustrations of the severity of each approaching corner to go with it, SEGA Rally style. The framerate is smooth (if you change the anti-aliasing settings to CMAA), and while there's still a little bit of unrealistic balance to the car (it's much harder to tip over than it would be in reality, for fun's sake, and nearly every roll sees you back on your wheels), it feels pretty viscerally realistic. Everywhere from the rolling hills of Wales to the slippery ice of Monte Carlo is gorgeous, even though I get a weird vibe of 90's-esque brightness and color instead of straight-up realism. Personally, I prefer the vibrant color, so it works out.
I will say, though, much as I argue "it's not THAT hard", Rallycross is absolutely demolishing me. I cannot set a good enough time to proceed from the local, lowest-difficulty event no matter what I do. It's a shame, too, since you have to clear two difficulties of local rallycross to reach the FIA World Rallycross Championship, which is an abbreviated version of the actual real-world racing series down to its actual ruleset and a selection of its cars. It may not be particularly playable or fun for me, but it's at least gotten me watching the real championship, which is a treat so far. Having to adhere to the real-world competition rules instead of the rest of the game's fictional rulesets means that there's a few gimmicks stuffed in there I'm not too fond of in a game otherwise free of them, mostly lengthy qualifying and the mandatory Joker Lap (which requires you to take a longer, slower alternate route at least once during the race).
In any case, with new events generated each day and a very wide array of courses and cars, DiRT Rally really hearkens back to the days of Colin McRae Rally in terms of substance, not nostalgia. It's excellent for just booting up for a brief session and getting straight to hurtling down a course as fast as I can, with a remarkable lack of cruft or clutter. It's... if anything, I'd say it's very focused. If you know what you're doing and hit your marks, you'll have an excellent time, and if you don't know what you're doing, it'll teach you exactly what you need to know to make the most of it. Rather than unforgiving, I'd call it uncompromising. It knows the experience it wants to be, and it just wants you to be a part of it.
And when I'm not in the mood for something that requires all of my focus and attention, I've been booting up Lego City Undercover. It's got a few crashes and hitches here and there, but all in all, I am so happy it finally came to systems other than the Wii U. The PC port reportedly suffered plenty of issues upon release, but they seem mostly patched up now. Absolutely top-notch humor and much, much better design than most of the TT Lego games of late and of past. Plus, you know, getting to run around in an off-brand giant lizard costume and fight crime. Can't ask for more than that. Or, well, I certainly can't.