It’s only $2 for each car. Since I don’t want the Season 1 DLC, I was thinking of buying one of these two. I never did try the Citroen C4 in the first game, I think it was in the same category as another car that I bought, since I had at least one car from each category. You make a great case for the Skoda though.
There. Bought. Now I can participate in the daily UpTo 2000cc category.
The Citroen C4 would have been in the 2000s category back in DiRT Rally; which had the Ford Focus 2001, Subaru Impreza 2001 and Ford Focus 2007 included as well. Plus, hey, if you are going to buy a car you might as well get one that hasn’t ever been in the Colin McRae or DiRT series before, as is the case for the Skoda Fabia WRC if I remember correctly.
New Zealand and the Skoda Fabia WRC is like a match made in heaven so far. It drives superbly around both the tight, twisty low speed stages and the more open, flowing high speed stages.
Yesterday’s Daily with the under 2000cc category was New England. So I took the Skoda for a spin. Your description that “it has a good habit of knowing what you are trying to do and gracefully going along with it” is perfect for this car. In DiRT Rally The First, the only cars I drove that fit that description were the Lancia Delta S4 (well, only to a degree, since it’s still a Group B monster that can still get out of your control), and the Ford Fiesta.
The Skoda kind of takes that to the next level though, there’s something magical about the handling.
Decided to try comparing the stock Skoda Fabia (WRC) and Citroen C4 around Bondi Forest (Australia) in the Time Trial mode. Out of the box the Skoda is definitely the relatively easier of the two to drive fast thanks to how well it drives. Though once I added 10mm of ride height to the stock Citroen C4 setup that helped immensely, since the car at stock height was reacting more sensitively than the Skoda Fabia to the Australian road edges and bumps. Managed to beat my best Skoda Fabia attempt by just over 7 seconds in the Citroen C4 once I made that simple change to the stock setup.
I’ll enjoy my time in the #4 spot on the global combined PC+Console leaderboards while it lasts, since the infamous fast guys haven’t yet set times for this stage using the Upto 2000cc class.
Also, obligatory screenshot since this game manages to look really good at times with the dust particle effects and such. Though apparently the replay interface decided to ruin it slightly by reappearing just as I hit F12, hah.
Oh yeah, a couple of downsides to the Skoda that I forgot to mention: One is the view, the dashboard comes up really high. Out of all the cars I’ve driven in these games, this car has the most restrictive view. It’s not as obvious in this screenshot because I took it while looking around before the race started, but once you get going, the horizon is coming at you just slight above the windshield wiper.
And secondly, the ride height on the Skoda must be really low by default. Any time you go over just a little hump on one of the tires, it’s like the whole car almost capsizes. Good god, get a hold of yourself skoda! It’s just a pothole, don’t pretend like you’re going to flip over.
Yesterday I did pretty poorly on the Dailies. Out of the 3 Dailies available to me, I had terminal damage on 2 of them, so I got “DNF”. The game is pretty generous with it’s payouts though, you get about $30k on those even with DNFs, so it’s possible to fix your car and not lose money for racing. So they thought of the scenario of “what if someone just sucks all the time”. Which is nice.
The lack of being able to see the road in a Skoda is driving me crazy. It’s just too stressful to drive blind half the time. More than any of the other cars, you have to rely on your co-drivers. Your car also dips downward because of bumps, so you get little glimpses of the road ahead even in areas where you can’t see ahead, so those glimpses kind of guide you.
But it’s just too stressful. I’m laying off the Skoda I think. I don’t need this kind of stress from this game.
From the co-driver in the above screenshot, and the little symbols, I know there’s a 3 Left and then a 6 right, but it’s so much better in other cars where you can see the turn coming.
Also, if you click on the screenshot to make it bigger, you can kind of see the road coming towards me to the left of the windshield wiper. That’s how you have to drive most of the time is to look in that little area right above the wiper or to the left of it.
That’s one where I’d sit a little lower in my chair, recenter TrackIR, then straighten up so I can look out over the hood.
As this seems to be the only ‘current’ rally-related gaming thread, I thought I’d highlight this video which recently popped up in my youtube feed. Surprising how well RBR has captured the look and feel of Rally Portugal.
Yeah, version 6 of NGP for Richard Burns Rally looks pretty promising. Crazy how dedicated people are to pushing the boundaries of that game still; NGP v6 adds simulation of stuff like brake temperatures. The Rally Portugal stages manage to look pretty good too for the age of RBR, some of the better looking stages visually.
Just four days now until Monte Carlo returns, looking forwards to seeing what kind of tire choices there are and how surface degradation has been implemented with the combination of tarmac, ice and snow. Plus the hopeful return of more weather conditions besides just rain, such as snow showers. Until then I’ve been tackling some more Time Trials in the 4WD Upto 2000cc class, New England has some pretty scenic spots for taking screenshots.
@Rock8man Is that with the seat height jacked up to maximum? Adjusting the seat position (camera) in the cockpit camera can help a bit with that if you haven’t messed around with it already. Probably also a couple of car setup changes that could be done to help improve the viewing angle a bit as well.
Why aren’t you playing from an external view then? Is there any incentive to use the cockpit view? Or are you just challenging yourself?
-Tom
Two part answer.
First, I do prefer first person views, not for being more challenging, but just being the perspective I’m used to. 3rd person perspective usually have me crashing into stuff more because I’m so used to turning when the camera gets close to the turn, not when the car gets close. So any 3rd person racing game is always really tough for me.
Secondly, I do have the option turned to lock the view to inside the car. This makes it convenient to just switch between the two inside-the-car views in the game, while I’m driving, and not have to go through the external views when I’m pressing the change camera buttons.
However, you’re right, I should turn that option off for this particular car, since the internal view sucks. I should find an external view that’s still first person, like a hood cam or something. I’m just lazy and didn’t want to turn it off just for this one car, and then turn it back on for other cars. It’s easier just to avoid this car and drive the others. On the other hand, I didn’t know you could adjust your seat height. So thank you to @Malkael for the heads up on that. I’ll go look up the key binding for that tonight.
And maybe I’ll stop being lazy and turn off the option to restrict camera views to inside the car and look for a more suitable first person camera outside the car.
“Where exactly is my car pointing” is a key question in rally games, and it’s easier to answer from the in-car view (or the hood camera external view, which is more or less the same thing).
At some point I need to go into the graphics options and dig around. Any time the game has huge crowds, my frame just goes to hell. Most of the time the game hovers around 45fps for me, and that plays great. But any time I get near huge crowds, as in lots of in-game fake people who stand around, the frame goes into the 20s, and it doesn’t just slow the frame rate, the whole game seems to slow down. I think my CPU is the bottleneck, not my graphics card, since my CPU is from 2009. I think there’s something about those fake people that’s really CPU-intensive.
I hope they have the option to have less people in the crowds. There’s only a few occasions in the game that have it. The Argentina track is the worst. So many goddamn people. Go home! And then there’s a few spots in New England and the other tracks that have people too.
Update:
@tomchick: I turned on External Cameras. The first person cameras outside the cars are quite thrilling, but they do feel less immersive, and as @Fishbreath said, it’s a little tougher to know exactly where I am with my wheels as compared to when I’m inside the car. Plus the hood cam is centered right in the middle of the car, so even though it’s a left hand drive car, as god intended, the camera’s not on the left side, which will take some getting used to.
@Malkael, I went into controller mapping and found Seat Adjustment UP and assigned it to the only button not taken on the controller. (Left on the d-pad). I thought about looking up Seat Adjustment Down, but then thought, nah, I’ll never need that.
I was able to raise the seat in the Skoda so that it felt very nice!
Then I raised the seat in the Golf GTI, and it became way too high! I was mostly looking through a low ceiling now, most of my view blocked by the ceiling of the car! Oh no! I paused the game, went into options and found the keyboard bindings:
Seat Adjustment Up is Numpad 5
Seat Adjustment Down is Numpad 2
Just FYI, in case one of you ever needs to do it, pretty easy to remember.
Also, I looked in the Graphics options, and there’s a setting for crowds. Hallelujah! I turned it down from ultra to None. Now there are no crowds. The game runs smooth like butter now in comparison. I’m sometimes getting in the 70s fps on Argentina now instead of 20s! Every other setting is still on Ultra.
Yeah, when it comes to optimising performance turning Crowds down to Low was one of the first things I did. Still get a decent framerate whilst still having the visual spectacle of roadside spectators out on stage. Ground Cover can be another good one to adjust down since it lowers the amount of grass and other trackside flora that can absolutely litter some stages on High or Ultra, makes those sneakily hidden rocks a little easier to spot occasionally too.
Also, good to hear that the seat adjustment controls managed to make things better for you. Makes some of the cars in the game a lot better to drive from the internal cockpit camera.
Yesterday morning I did the three daily challenges. So yesterday afternoon when I had the chance to play, I did two of the weekly challenges, and last night I briefly started the Weekly AI challenge.
I’m starting to wonder on the H1 FWD category if there’s a much better car than the Lancia Fulvia. Even on the runs where I made almost no mistakes and had no accidents or resets, I’d be about 30 seconds behind the leader on the short courses, and 60 seconds behind on the long courses. Which just really confounds me. Where are they getting 30 whole seconds of improvements from? That’s a massive amount of time in a 4.5 minute race.
I wish you could see the top of the leaderboard. Instead when I select “Go to Top” on the leaderboard, it takes me to like position 2000, and refuses to go any higher. So i can’t even see what the top leaderboard people use for their cars. I wish I could see what they drove, and a replay of how they did it. The game is seriously lacking in social features like that. Project Gotham Racing 2 did that in 2003, for god’s sake. You could check out the leaderboard and watch anyone’s race.
One of the weekly challenges was a Group A race. For that I bought a Lancia Delta Integrale. Just like in the first DiRT Rally, I’m constantly amazed at how much momentum this car has, and how it always feels underpowered. Arrrrgh, just go, you’re pointing in the right direction, just put power to the wheels so you can can stop sliding to the left.
Now that I’ve made my choice, I’ll try to stick with it until it’s fully upgraded, obviously. Then I’ll try the 1995 Subaru next in that category. From DiRT Rally, I remember that car being kind of funky to drive too. Heavier than the Integrale, but better somehow.
Monte Carlo has arrived, and for anyone who didn’t pick up the Deluxe Edition but wants some “new” locations the pricing for individual locations seems pretty fair at the moment. Well worth the price of admission I would say, this is more than just a mere visual upgrade of the original DiRT Rally’s Monte Carlo. Tackle the snow, slush and ice at speed at your peril, even on the Winter tire choice, because they really nailed the trouble the real life WRC drivers have with grip levels in Monte Carlo when facing those conditions.
@Rock8man, there are some crazy fast drivers out there in the community that even I have trouble getting within 15 seconds of. That said, certain locations (e.g. Argentina) definitely favour the Mini Cooper over the Lancia Fulvia. Also, since the community events use your Career\My Team cars it really pays to upgrade the engine performance and such. The performance difference between a car with an unupgraded engine package and a fully upgraded engine package is kind of nutty.
The Lancia Delta Integrale (Group A), whilst often the fastest car in the class performance wise, is one of the toughest for handling for most people. If I remember correctly, based on the stock setup, it has a tendency and preference to understeer through corners. So you need to accommodate for that in your driving style or make some setup changes to lessen the understeer, such as shifting the brake bias back to induce car rotation\oversteer.
I should clarify that the reason I was comparing the Lancia Fulvia and not the other cars I own is because the Fulvia is the only car that’s fully upgraded that I can still actively drive in the Daily/Weekly/Monthly challenges. All the other cars (other than the Alpine, which is busy in a championship, and the Porsche, which I don’t know how to drive) are still on their way to being upgraded. So the Fulvia is really the only car in which I can compare my time to other people’s so far.
Edit: I was just about to log in for my daily challenge, but there’s a 7.9 GB update to the game? Wow. That must be Monte Carlo. Damn. I wonder how it’s going to be presented in the game. I know I can’t play the D+ challenges in the game, those are reserved only for Season owners. I wonder if I’ll be able to play the Monte Carlos tracks even without owning the seasons. Maybe they’ll integrate them into the Career/Championships?
Really enjoying this at the moment and improving steadily. However I won’t declare this one beaten until I have managed to run over the guy at the end!
