#DIRT RALLY DRIVER#
#DIRT RALLY PS4#

There's an element of endurance to off-road driving that Dirt Rally plays wonderfully to, mistakes being punished with mechanical damage or quite simply the end of your run.

#DIRT RALLY DRIVER#

Given how much Dirt Rally 2.0 puts car and driver through, it's no wonder it can form such a strong bond between the two. I've fallen hard for pretty much every car I've driven in Dirt Rally 2.0. There are the brutish Group B cars that thunder along with the constant threat of violence, the impish and fun Fulvia and Mini or the turbocharged Sierra Cosworth RS500 that dares you to plant your right foot that little bit further.

It all serves to bring out the character of each car - and what characters they are. The specifics of exactly what's changed this time out escape me - attention has been lavished in more than one area - but a new tyre model does seem to have had the biggest impact. VR support isn't in at launch, but is coming later this year - on Oculus and PC, at least. Visually this feels like a big leap over its predecessor - and Codies does a lovely line in moody HDR skies now. The handling in this game, in short, is absolutely sublime. You can feel the weight shift back as you accelerate up a crest, then feel it pile back on again as the car squirrels under downhill braking, and it's all so tangible, so pliable. Take the forward wheel drive Lancia Fulvia around the rain-slicked tarmac of Spain's stages, say, and you can feel the 115 horses under the stubby bonnet slip their way through those front tyres as they spin beyond the edge of adhesion. Take any given car to any given stage and you'll soon understand what makes Dirt Rally 2.0 special. As ever, it's down to a simple matter of taste whether Dirt Rally 2.0 manages to dethrone that all-time great, but for my money there's now no finer off-road sim out there. It's been almost 14 years since Warthog Games' Richard Burns Rally, but it still remains peerless in its simulation of off-road driving, and while Dirt Rally came close its sequel comes closer still. That 2.0 might evoke the much-loved sequel to Codemasters' Colin McRae Rally, but really it's a game bearing the name of another sadly departed British great that this commands comparisons to.

#DIRT RALLY PS4#

Availability: Out February 26th on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, Oculus support coming this summer.This refines and improves that formula in smart, notable ways, for a markedly better game. To call Dirt Rally 2.0 a return to form would be underselling it a little Dirt Rally was arguably Codemasters' first true sim, and in my mind the absolute pinnacle of the racing studio's achievements. After the 2017 detour of Dirt 4, an accessible and noble experiment in procedural track generation that nevertheless felt like it had gone too far in blunting the edges of the sport it simulated, this is a return to deep, satisfying driving with serious bite. A worthy follow-up to a modern classic, Dirt Rally 2.0 offers marked improvements and a driving experience like no other.

Dirt rally