DiRT Rally - Codemasters' early access PC rally game

Apparently it’s free to play this weekend on Steam.

Wow, first the Humble Bundle, and now this. They’re really doing the full court press I guess. Sell as much of DiRT Rally as possible before E3 and the major push for DiRT 4 comes around.

This has become a publisher MO for a lot of games with either upcoming expansions or sequels. It’s even bled over into the console world a little bit. I think it’s a welcome marketing idea. The next question would revolved around whether sales of the sequel/expansion are affected in the positive?

Those procedurally generated stages in DiRT 4 are looking mighty fine. Can’t believe we still have another week to wait…

That was an incredible drive but, wow, the procedural tracks are looking really good. It’s a perfect fit because rally driving’s all about the co-driver’s instructions and your ability to react to them rather than your memory of the course. At least, that’s how I see it. Feels kind of wrong to not have to listen to your co-driver because you know the course inside out, so the procedural element totally bucks that. Edit: It makes the rally driving purer.

I guess we should call it a roguelike game now! [crowd groans]

I do wish this had been a feature of DiRT Rally, which I haven’t even finished.

Wow, that was interesting to watch. After so many hours of DiRT Rally, it was weird to see all these “micro” moment-to-moment places that looked so familiar, but strung together in an unfamiliar course.

After watching the whole 9+ minute course though, it also felt like it had a lot less personality than the hand-built Wales courses in DiRT Rally. There were no sections, for example, where the river is running along in a valley on your right or left through any of the sections. And no “pit section” type place where you are going through a little circle and then water hazards on both sides. And no section where you’re clearly climbing or dropping down a hill like the one that follows the “pit section” I was talking about. But they have done a great job of remixing the other areas of Wales track together.

I miss the pace notes from DiRT Rally—recording a guy reading them live in a sim chair while someone was driving him over the course gave them real authenticity.

Hopefully they’ll still do that for the non-dynamic courses in the game. They will have those, right? The procedural tracks aren’t the only option, I thought?

I’m pretty sure I read that they’re all procedurally generated, but the career mode uses a bunch that the devs handpicked as being interesting/whatever.

While I do agree that they’ve lost some personality as a result, having essentially infinite stages to race on should result in a better rally experience (as @geggis said).

DiRT Rally, while awesome (it was my GOTY when it came out), became almost a hot lap sim after racing the same stages over and over.

It also sounds as though the physics have been improved. Porkhammer (the guy driving in the video) was a regular at the top of the DiRT Rally leaderboards and feels the cars have a lot more weight now so they don’t bounce around as much due to minor undulations.

Until they support VR I’ll stick with Dirt Rally.

What I really want from this or any sim-style game is to be able to jump into the equivalent of a “season” of racing whenever I get online. Constantly running points paying seasons of competition. Procedurally generated tracks would work better in that format but so would set designs. You’d have more need to succeed at each event because it would result in a season ending goal paying more XP/money if you do well.

There is no happy medium for this in most racing games. It’s either you have single race events that you can get wiped out of in the first corner or you have to get into some community setting with serious people (often far more serious than even me… and I love racing…) to be able to compete in a longer term season-like setting.

I am sure this can be done. I hope someone figures it out some day.

The random tracks may suit me more because I am bad at memorizing tracks. If no one can memorize the tracks then maybe I’ll be on even footing!

We had some pretty good DiRT Rally leagues running on QT3 last year (or the year before?). It doesn’t have any continuation between seasons but it can be fun if you find a rival at a similar level who you can battle with as the season unfolds.

Out of interest, how many folks here will be picking this up day 1?

In! Although it is going to be a step down to play without VR. :(

-Tom

I’m probably in. We’ll see how poor I’m feeling at that particular time. Also, I really wish sometimes that I was playing a Windows 10 or Xbox One version of the game. I’d love to be going for achievements. Steamies just don’t have the same draw for me. And by “not the same”, I mean none at all. I don’t know why. I just can’t get myself to care.

But I don’t want to miss out on all the fun camaraderie I had with you guys in DiRT Rally on PC. Ideally they would release a Play Anywhere version that’s on both Windows 10 and Xbox. Best of both worlds!

A guy can dream.

So guys, speaking of Dirt Rally, I finally got around to downloading it after having got it through the previous monthly Humble Bundle. Tried playing a couple of isolated events today just using an Xbox 360 controller. Hmm. I think I may be forced to try to find Windows 10 drivers for my old ACTLabs ForceRS racing wheel/pedals, because the controller really isn’t cutting it.
What wheels are you guys using?

Also, Dirt 4 related, I watched a bit of a stream the other day and it sounded like David Tenant’s voice in the tutorial–anyone else hear that or know the skinny?

I’m in day 1, loved Dirt Rally. I was solidly in the 2nd tier of players in the QT3 league we had going.

I use a G25 wheel setup

360 controller here.

Almost got you…