I am really annoyed with Codemasters and this game right now. About three weeks ago Racenet went down and all the leagues disappeared. This isn’t the first time and usually you just wait and they come back once the issue has been resolved.
Sure enough, the leagues reappeared a few days later but despite the claim that they’re “Fixed”… they’re not. If you run a casual league, (like me), that allows for rally restarts then you’re in for a bit of disappointment, because attempting to restart your run results in an error contacting Racenet and a failed restart.
I’ve tried to get Codemasters to look at this by posting on their official forums, posting on the Steam community hub, using PMs to contact the alleged tech guru on the CM forums, tweeting CM directly and their DirtGame account and even tried to add their tech guy as a Steam friend, (a request he understandably ignored).
Thus far response has been exactly zero and it’s really taken the steam, (haha), out of the league.
I’m excited for Dirt 4, but it’s going to be difficult to sell everyone else on it when their freshest memory is CM apparently completely abandoning Dirt Rally.
It’s really the Oculus version. It does however play nice with Revive. The visuals were nice. It was neat to look over to the left and see your co-driver staring at his clipboard. I did turn down some of the graphics options to keep a high frame rate. This didn’t really harm gameplay and the turns and the road were pretty easy to read. Like many VR cockpit games it places your point of view right above a “body”. I played using a 360 controller. Controls were pretty responsive. The only real issue that I had (aside from a lack of racing skills) was that navigating some of the menus was a bit of a pain. I ended up taking off the headset until ready to race.
Wow, that blows. They were so good about that stuff through Early Access and after release. I figured they’d take good care of their infrastructure and customers for a long time. This is disappointing to hear. This is the behavior I’d expect from EA.
EDIT: Actually EA would just kill the Racenet servers, which might actually be better than this death by neglect.
I wrote to their customer service in England directly and got a response. The response was just “we’ll pass it onto our support and racenet teams” but it did pull out parts of my description of the problem, so it wasn’t just a canned mail.
Whether anything gets done or not remains to be seen, but at least there are still humans working at Codemasters.
Good. Because you know that being in the Humble Monthly bundle meant that they now have an influx of a new set of players. Now would be a terrible time for leagues and Racenet to have issues.
From CM : “We have this fixed and tested internally. We’ll be updating the server tomorrow morning. Again, apologies for the drama. Should have you up and running again soon. :)”
Just this thread getting a post and rising to the top gives me a hit of dopamine, that’s how much I love this game.
A few weeks ago, I tried going back to it and doing a daily mission. Ouch. I can report this: Your DiRT Rally skills will atrophy if you’ve been away for a few months.
A month ago when I booted up Dirt Rally for the first time in way too long my immediate thoughts were “why the hell haven’t I been playing more Dirt Rally?” and “Oh god, what happened to my already moderate ability to not drive off a cliff?”
It came back fairly quickly though and this time it didn’t take anywhere near as long to get used to RWD again. I remember in the early access period when I moved from the Mini to the Kadett it was like a survival horror game.
I got this in the Humble Monthly and it is excellent. I’ve only fallen off one cliff so far and it was a mild landing in some trees. It represents this type of racing really well. I reviewed a lot of racing games for CGS+/CGM some years ago and rallying was among them. This is clearly among the best.
I really like how the dirt feels and the sounds are dead on with regard to the racket from all the junk you’re clearing away on the gravel/dirt roads. I also love how the sensation of speed ramps up when you get on the pavement. You can instantly feel the difference which gives you pause approaching those hairpins at speed.
Looking forward to playing more. I know in Dirt 4 they’ve talked about making it more accessible. I’m pretty happy with this and think it’s accessible enough tbh, though I do appreciate their interest in making RallyCross a bigger thing.
In a way, I think the game was better balanced for newcomers in the Early Access days. The harder courses like Finland were not in the game yet, so we could get our feet wet on the harder cars on the (relatively) easier courses.
Just to be contrary, I’d argue that Finland is one of the easier courses in the game because the surface is consistent and it’s fairly rare to get any corner that’s sharper than a 3.
But… but… a lot of the “fours” and “fives” corners that wouldn’t even cause a lift on other tracks are a problem in Finland because of what they follow…
“Right five, one-hundred, caution crest, jump maybe into right four…”
The corner isn’t the problem. The problem is your corner approach is in midair. There isn’t a lot of traction in midair.
Plus you can finish a perfectly clean run in Finland and then still have to spend 30 minutes putting your suspension back together for the next stage.
This will be the true test of the Dirt 4 ‘My Stage’ feature.
Can it procedurally generate high speed jumps into blind corners that even Mother Nature (wearing her Scandinavian cap) would eyeball and think “doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable”.
If the Finland texture set includes broken springs and assorted metal panels randomly strewn along the roadside, I’ll feel right at home…
Finland does look deceptively simple compared to other courses. It was quite the shock to run it the first time, after having already mastered the other courses.
Why is this simple-looking course kicking my ass?
Finland and Sweden are the two places that I never conquered/overcame/triumphed over.
I ran Finland today in the Ford Sierra. It was fun, but on replays I noticed that the driver and co-driver’s blood groups are painted on the car. You know, just in case.
