And yet, they all drive pretty much the same.
Dirt 5 offers a wide range of off-roaders, from rock crawlers to pre runners and the legendary Killer B rally cars. Vehicle physics could be partly to blame. Since wheel support was added after the launch, perhaps it was an afterthought. Perhaps it’s the vehicle physics or the lack of in-depth wheel tuning, but the steering comes through as a lazy afterthought. Make no mistake – Dirt 5 is far from being a sim racer and I never expected it to be close, but zipping around the courses using a wheel feels borderline lifeless. That’s where things start going off the rails for me, because I couldn’t understand why Codemasters would even launch a sequel without wheel support. We held our reviews until steering wheel support was added as an early update. ⠀ DiRT Rally 2.0 Review: All That And Then Some It’s a tough balance to get right, but we think Codemasters has put its best foot forward with this title.
I also enjoy the fact that the game picks the most popular tracks and places them front and center for you to enjoy.Īll things considered, Dirt 5 offers something for everyone in the sim racing genre – everything from a plug-and-play experience for the casual gamer, to a leaderboard slasher for the seasoned sim racer. As such, the Playground mode that allows users to create racecourses themselves is one of the high points of this game throughout the review period I found myself spending the majority of my time climbing the leaderboard on my favorite user-created stages. No matter though, because this game is clearly marketed away from the hardcore echelon of sim racers that tend to take things a bit too seriously. Therefore, after the excellent initial experience on a gamepad, the force-feedback was rather disappointing – which took me by surprise after how successful Dirt Rally 2.0 proved to be in the realism department. Maybe it's just my inner tarmac specialist, but we sim racers have a knack for getting spoiled when it comes to vehicle dynamics in video games. However, contrary to the belief that Eric Johnson would sprout out of my monitor and shred his best Cliffs of Dover while I sent a Baja Trophy Truck into outer Earth orbit, things weren’t as action-packed as I originally hoped.
I’ll be honest, I was super excited for Dirt 5 after watching the pre-release trailer it showed off hardcore music, big jumps, new vehicles, and dynamic racecourses.
Smith sampled Dirt 5 on the Xbox One X with a Logitech G920 wheel combo, while Crisara hopped on the PC version armed with a Thrustmaster TS-PC rig. So does it live up to the hype? contributing writers Christopher Smith and Matthew Crisara take a deep dive into all aspects of the game to answer that question. Along with quickly debugging issues, they also delivered a steady flow of new content – adding wheel support, new vehicles, and a collection of Christmas content for the holiday season.
However, aside from the lack of wheel support and intermittent game crashes after launch, the developers at Codemasters didn’t just give in. Dirt 5 launched in November of 2020 and had what we’ll call a bit of a shaky start.