As someone who has played the majority of games from the DiRT franchise (DiRT 3, DiRT Rally, DiRT 4, DiRT Rally 2.0) and having played this game for 100+ hours (for me, that's a lot), I think this game is a worthy successor to its predecessor, DiRT Rally 2.0. It's certainly a better successor to DR2.0 compared to how bad the new Forza Motorsport is compared to its predecessor. (WALL OF TEXT WARNING, scroll to bottom for TL;DR) For one, this game offers SO many more cars compared to the previous game. While the WRC license means it has all of the newer hybrid cars, there are plenty of older cars they've added as well. Seeing these new cars made this game much more interesting to me at least who was used to seeing lots of reappearing cars in other DiRT games. I was excited to see the S2000 cars (Peugeot 207, Abarth Grande Punto) return from DiRT 3; that was a very pleasant surprise! Cars: 8/10 None of those cars would matter if the game's physics were bad, though. For starters, this game seems quite a bit easier to learn than the previous DiRT Rally games. It has a "Rally School" campaign which teaches you the basics of rallying which I could see being quite useful to newer players; I remember that DiRT 4 had a similar thing. While I didn't play it, I could tell that it covered all of the important bits a newbie should learn. Not all of the cars feel as good as they should be, but they are at least good enough. Noob friendliness: 7/10 Secondly, the force feedback of this game has been DRASTICALLY improved upon since DiRT Rally 2.0. I play the game on a Moza R5 direct-drive wheelbase and the difference between the two games is very noticeable. In the previous game, the force feedback (FFB for short) was okay; however, this game blows it out of the water. When doing a very rutty and bumpy stage in Kenya, I can feel all the ruts and bumps in the road and whether or not my car is positioned in the right spot. While this part is only applicable to wheel users, I still think I should mention it. In addition, the tarmac physics are SO much better than all of the previous games. It seems that Codemasters has finally dialed them in and it shows; the tarmac stages are way nicer to drive on and don't feel as weird as they have in the earlier games. If you are someone who likes doing rally events on paved roads, you'll love this addition. Handling: 8/10 It wouldn't matter if the game handled well if the stages stunk, though, and the game doesn't disappoint in that regard. There are so many new faces here such as Chile, Mexico, Estonia, Portugal, Italy, and Romania, among others. Thankfully, the old regulars are still here, too; Finland, Sweden, Spain, and Monte Carlo are all present. Each of these locations offers something different to the table that I also appreciated having. Not only that, this game has stages that get much longer than the previous games had. I have heard that this is because they switched to Unreal Engine instead of their in-house Ego engine; if anything, this is one reason to appreciate the engine switch. Locations: 9/10 Speaking of engine switch, how is the game's optimization? This one is a bit of a mixed bag, unfortunately. I run a PC with a Ryzen 7 5800x, 16 GB of ram, and a RX 6700 XT, and I have my PC connected to a 4K TV. For those unfamiliar with PCs, I have a decent one comparable to a PS5 or Xbox Series X in performance. With the game at high settings with epic anti-aliasing, I was getting about 40-45 FPS. This is nowhere near as good as DiRT Rally 2.0, but there is some good news. When I turned FSR to Quality, though, the game reached 60-65 FPS which felt much better. Thankfully, the FSR implementation is very good and I found that the game still looked very good and sharp with my only complaints coming from the motion artifacting. However, I cannot recommend this game if you don't have a fairly decent computer. I have tried running it on a laptop with an i7-9750h and 1650 and the performance was quite a bit worse; I had to run the game at pretty low settings with FSR at 1080p and it hovered around 35-40 FPS. I also own a Steam Deck and the game used to run around the same at 800p (that is, before anti-cheat broke it); not great but still playable if you get used to it. If you're not sure how well it will run on your PC, I'd suggest buying the game and testing it out on your hardware; if it doesn't run well, refund it and buy DiRT Rally 2.0. Overall, I think that the optimization is nowhere near as good as it was in the previous games; however, it is much better than some of the nightmares we have seen recently with performance (looking at you, Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown). This is also something that can be improved upon in the future. Optimization: 5/10 Progression in this game is also quite good. I like the fact that you run your own team and choose what events you show up to; it gives a much better sense of progression compared to the previous games. This was a pleasant surprise. It also feels like this game has a good bit of longevity to it; I have played it for 109 hours as of this review and I don't feel like I've finished it. Progression: 7/10 To sum up this very lengthy review, I seriously think this is one of the best rally games I have played. + Plenty of cars + Somewhat easy to learn + Great handling and FFB + Lots of good locations and stages + Good progression + Game looks decent on higher settings + Menu music is nice + Doesn't cost $70 USD + Doesn't require EA Launcher - Game performance is a mixed bag (could be worse tho) - Looks worse at lower settings compared to older games - Some cars don't handle as well as they did - Has way overkill kernel-level anti-cheat which broke Steam Deck compatibility :( The last thing I should touch upon is the recent controversy regarding the anti-cheat added to this game. I think it won't take away from the game experience and people are getting WAY too angry about it. Yes, it is way overkill. Yes, it absolutely stinks. Yes, it breaks Linux compatibility. There is one thing people aren't thinking of, though: Does it take away from the driving experience in any meaningful way if you run Windows? In my experience, it doesn't, and I think the game is still really good. That's why I'm not ranting about it; I am looking at the game based on what it is; a very solid rally game. Anti-cheat is an arm's race anyway; if you want less of it, don't cheat!
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