Colin McRae: DiRT

written by greenfrogthing77 on 3/20/07

Colin McRae: DiRT intro video REMIXED by gft77 here

Codemasters' Colin McRae rally franchise has generally been considered the preeminent off-road racing series for years now. Release after release, Codemasters has raised its own bar and incorporated fantastic controls with showcase visuals. Now the developer/publisher is taking the franchise to the next-gen starting line with DIRT: Colin McRae Off-Road for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC.

Built entirely from the ground-up, DIRT is a completely next-generation take on the series and Codemasters has literally rebuilt every bit of the experience from scratch to take full advantage of the systems. From its breathtaking visuals to absolutely massive multiplayer lobbies to even its menu system, the game simply smells like a brand-new car, and an extremely plush one at that.

The first evidence of this is the menu system. Each "window" of the front end, be it the races, option screens or what have you, are represented by floating slats in a full 3D space. Navigating between them moves the camera up and around between the windows. Sure, it's a very small part of the overall experience, but it immediately lets you know that everything from thereon in will be slick.

In order to make the series more US-friendly than ever before, DIRT will include a plethora of US-based locations, vehicles and more. You'll be able to race rally raids, 4x4 events, hill climbs and more, including the entire run of Pike's Peak. Codemasters claims that anything that happens off-road will be represented here in some fashion. One thing along these lines that's new to the series is multi-car racing, and we're not talking ghosts here. You'll actually be able to go toe-to-toe with other vehicles and lock wheels as you fight for dominance over each and every turn.

On a technical level, Codemasters is attempting to push the systems to their limits. Audio is created on-the-fly and is fully dynamic. There are no pre-recorded versions of Doppler or reverb effects here, and the developer has managed to record individual samples for every section of an engine's sound palette. That is, the game doesn't use a single sample and then speed it up or down for higher and lower RPMs, but rather those unique samples are stored in memory for dead-on accuracy to the real thing.

This post was last modified: 03-30-2007 08:52 PM by gft77.

Awesomeness!
That is a toatlly wicked video that you remixed! (Good job useing the edited version of that song too)
Overall, great SPOTLIGHT On and looks to be a fun game!!

That video was awesome, and the graphics are amazing.

thanks i think this game looks really amazing. i've always been a rally fan, i and i think this game will deliver. does anyone remember the Sega Rally games?

Ya, i remember the sega rally games!
Those were great fun!

If this game can bring that kind of fun back to the consoles, then I'm sure it'll be a hit.