DiRT (new Colin McRae)

That’s what I was thinking. Downloading…

seems more arcadey than previous games

I play CMR 2004 and 2005 on a reglar basis (do you?) and I can absolutely, positively state that this IS NOT true.

It’s no RBR, but it’s a big step up in physics fidelity from the CMR of days past.

I don’t actually, just going off memory.

Curious to see what you think of the graphics, fuzzyslug.

Ooooh! That’s intuitive.

I just finished downloading the PC version. A true Rally stage is substituted for the Hill Climb stage that’s in the 360 demo, complete with co-driver. Further, the PC demo is slightly more fully featured than the 360 demo. You can change your driver’s name/nationality, change the HUD, and replays work.

Is the PC version playable with a dual analog stick gamepad or do you absolutely have to have a wheel (or suffer awful digital keyboard) ?

I love and played the mud out of Colin McRae Rally 1 and 2 (the rest, not as much), but the driving model of those games (and Codemaster contemporaries like TOCA) was physics lite. The biggest complaint that grouchy simmers had was that the cars seemed to pivot around a point in the middle; there was no feeling of four tires beneath you, each trying to grip the surface, nor of any weight transfer. Load up an Australian or Finnish stage with a big ‘yump’ in the middle and watch as your car drops like an elevator. It’s like no rally footage you’ve ever seen.

The best rallying physics bar none. And unlike, say, GPL, the cars handled as you’d expect a car to handle, which made things easier for the less hardcore. Great game, and it ended up becoming a nice tribute to the late Richard Burns.

I think you’re probably better off with a decent gamepad than a wheel. The previous CMRs had okay wheel support and horrible FFB effects, and, although I wasn’t really able to try this one since it barely ran on my system, the little bit I did with my G25 indicated that it hasn’t improved… at least not very much.

I agree with all the RBR praise, especially it being hard but realistic. My brother isn’t really into driving games, but is into rally and cars in general, and he really likes RBR. It’s not like the NASCAR sims or something where the car is so far removed from a street car that even when simulated properly, it doesn’t feel anything like anything you’d have driven in real life.

Not to get too far off topic, but rFactor has a little bit of rally stuff available for it, and it’s actually pretty decent. Not RBR good, but it’s better than any other rally game, IMO, as far as the driving goes. Unfortunately, there is a serious lack of proper rally stages right now.

Just played the 360 demo, was pretty fun not sure if I will buy it though. The dune buggy stage was the most fun.

I was all prepared to actually have a go at this before coming into this thread and mocking the latest iteration for being crap compared to RBR.

It turns out that anyone with a slightly lagging behind video card is going to miss out, Radeon 9800 Pro’s aren’t supported :(

Yeah, DiRT is pretty rough on systems. Even with a Core 2 Duo 3.2 GHz, Radeon X1900XTX, I get the following @ 1024x768 using the subaru road course:

high ~30fps
med ~40fps
low ~60fps

The high settings are a little rough, since it dips down to 20fps at times.

So you can imagine what this is like on lesser systems… not good!

I hope they improve perf in the final. On my Racing rig, which is a Pentium 4 3.2 GHz with a X1950 Pro, the buggies are unplayable (~15fps) even on all “low” and 800x600. :(

Looked great on the 360, seemed to run fairly well too. Better than any of the NFS games which all seem framey to me on the 360. Any idea what settings it’s runing at on the 360 compared to the PC?

I really like the 2nd in car view. I was driving on the 2nd track and managed to rip my door off, which looked pretty cool from the in car view.

Yeah, I love that view too Forgeforsaken. You can even use the right thumbstick to look around when you’re in that view. So when I broke off the mirror on the left, and door on the right, I could look around and take in the scenery in the seconds before a critical turn was coming up.

Runs great on the 360 and looks great as well. I need to get used to the handling and the AI has no compulsions about spinning you in corners. Not sure if this is a buy but I will certainly rent it.

So I was playing the 360 demo version. The game seems decent, but it feels really arcadey to me. Off the line, you hit 100km/h in under a second. I don’t think rally cars can do that, no matter how low they are geared. Especially since the car does three gear shifts in that time.

Disappointing. I only play racing games on consoles, and I haven’t yet found a really great rally game.

100km/h is only what, like 30mph? totally possible.

I refuse to accept standards based on anything other than imperial measurement.

100km/h is 60mph.

Quick calculation in the calculator: 100kph / 1.6 k per mile = 62.5 mph. If Charles is right that it’s only one second, then that really is pretty unreasonable.

My personal in-your-head kilometer to mile conversion:

Take half, then add 10% of the original value.

So (100/2)+10 = ~60mph

Bows head in shame. I don’t really want to play driving games on the PC anymore, but I did notice that this game is on the Xbox Backward Compatibility list. But there’s no new or used version available for sale at Amazon. Any idea if the Xbox version is available online somewhere in the US? The only Ebay hit I got on it was from someone in Australia.

Oh, and wonderpug: Thanks for the mental conversion rule, that’s really easy to remember.