DiRT - Multiplayer Potential Lost

Games
1

So, I’m having a blast with my 360 wheel, and picked up DiRT thinking it would really be cool to drive the dune buggy and truck races online with other people.

OMFG. Multiplayer breaks down to this… you can choose Rally or Hill Climb race type. There is no interaction between players, everybody races alone and times are compared at the end.

I cannot fathom that they wouldn’t have the buggy and pickup truck dirt track racing online. WHAT?! There’s no competition for that sort of thing on Live right now.

Now, I thought at LEAST the cross-rally stuff where there are two cars at once on separate tracks. But, they apparently thought it was easier to just not have any netcode and make it a compared times single player. Bullshit.

One other grief about this is that there’s no “ready up” period where the game waits on players to get ready to race. No, as soon as the host enters the lobby there’s a 60 second countdown and the race starts - even if no other players have even joined yet.

I’m having great fun with this game in single player. I find it pretty tragic that the multi is basically absent. Fuckers.

Any suggestions for other racing games beyond Forza 2 that are hot for friend-invite multi? I was thinking about picking up Test Drive Unlimited, because I really like road courses. Not so interested in burnout or arcadey stuff. If Forza wasn’t all circuit racing and had some point to point it would be hot.

2

Do you still have a capable PC? Get GTR2, RACE '07 or even pull out your old copy of Grand Prix Legends. Sorry to break it to you, but racing on the 360 doesn’t compare.

If you’re desperate to do it on 360, grab MotoGP '06 or '07. It’s not cars, but the bikes are super entertaining if you turn up the simulation.

3

Yeah… I’m also kinda bummed that the 360 wheel doesn’t do force feedback on the PC. MS on their site says “Vista and FF driver coming soon!” for the wireless receiver. Since what, last January? WHEN, bitches! WHEN!?

I’d really rather use the 360 wheel, but I guess I could dig the PC one out.

DirtFactor mod, based on the RFactor engine, is looking pretty hot if a little flat in the graphics.

GTR is coming out for 360 in Q1 or 2 though. I’m all over that.

4

Does anyone here actually know why Dirt’s MP is broken? I cannot figure out why on earth they would basically take away the only thing that makes any MP component work… ya know… the uhmm… actual playing against players you can see…

My only thought is that they were pressed for time and decided that this was the only compromise they could come up with and still call it Multiplayer.

5

Wow, that’s pretty horrible. Codemasters did TOCA as well, and TOCA 3 had really well done free p2p multiplayer even though you had to use a gamespy ID - without a keycheck in sight, no less! Why would they cop out on a console title?