Dirt - Completed

First off, please take a moment to remember Colin McRae a great racer who tragically lost his life in a helicopter accident September 17th 2007. His name appeared on many of games including Dirt (in Europe). Though I am not sure of his contribution to the games with his name, I would like to think his contribution was what made them enjoyable.

Rally racing is not very big in the US, but my father is a junkie so I have spent many afternoons watching or listening to rally races. To race I am sure it can be exhilarating, but the games lacked longevity and drive. The premise of rally racing is not a bunch of cars on a track, but a single car on a course racing the clock. This lacks a certain amount of excitement that say F1 would have with passing and crashes. Being as all your trying to do is go as fast a possible with out flying off the track can get quite boring over time.

Dirt changes all that, with a great mixture of different types of racing. You get to run events with everything from semi truck hill climbs to dune buggies. This gave me the drive to keep playing and see what was next. In the beginning you run shorter tracks with single racers per event. Since it is only certain sectors on bigger tracks each time you raced for the first 50 times the tracks seemed new. Towards the end when racing tracks like the full 12 miles of Pikes Peak hill climb you have raced there enough that you know the track, but it’s not quite repetitive.

The game is beautiful graphically and like most 360 games, the controls are spot on. If you’re a racing fan I really think this is a must have for 360 owners. I finished it in 7 hours and 44 minutes, some of that time was spent practicing tracks and was not all pure racing. There are 46 cars to buy and race, but unlike other racing games they come fully prepped for racing. You do not have to spend two hours trying to pimp a Honda civic to be competitive. Finally the achievements like BioShock are littered through the game and can be easily obtained with just playing.

I easily give this 9 out of 10, as I said before a must have for 360 racing fans.