Thursday, October 15, 2009

Colin McRae Dirt 2




Dirt 2 is a game developed by Codemasters. This game studio was founded in 1985. In the early days of gaming they produced action/puzzle games and simulation games at a low retail price. These days however, they are launching games at full price. And one of these games is Colin McRae Dirt 2. Colin McRae Dirt 2 was released for PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PSP and will be released on PC later on.

In Dirt 2 you're behind the wheel of a rally car or a buggy or a trophy truck. At the start of the game you have to fill in your name and you have to choose your nickname. Your nickname is what the NPC drivers are going to call you. And then, your career takes off.

In the Dirt Tour, or ‘career’, you can pick various locations to race in, although you start the tour with only one location, London. After selecting the location you can choose what event you’re going to race. At first you only have a few options to choose from, but after a while you'll have more options. The normal race options are:
-Rally cross; in this mode you'll race against 7 other drivers on a circuit.
-Rally; in this mode, you'll have to set the best time on a single sprint to the finish. This is the only race type where you have a navigator on the passenger's seat who is giving you the directions by radio.
-Trailblazers; this type is similar to Rally only in this mode you have a car, focused mostly on speed and less on drivability.
-Land Rush; in this mode you compete with 7 opponents in trophy trucks, buggies and stock cars. This type however is pure jumping, falling, sliding and, if you ran out of luck, crashing.
-Raid; you have to drive in trophy trucks, buggies and stockcars and sprint to the finish in an open field.
Now they have put 3 special race options in the game:
-Domination; you compete with 7 opponents and try to achieve the best time at certain parts of the track.
-Last Man Standing; this is self-explanatory, you compete with 7 other drivers and when the timer expires the slowest driver is eliminated.
-Gate Crasher; the goal of this event is to crash the gates on a track. When you crash a gate you’ll get extra time on a timer that’s displayed at the top-center of the screen. The goal is to get the biggest amount of time.

And there are 3 levels of events, the first (rookie) races, the Pro Division and the All-Stars Division. At the first races, you get a small amount of cash and little experience points.
To get into the Pro-Division you will have to upgrade your cars with a pro-pack. In this championship, you usually get 2 races per event. The cash and experience points reward is bigger. And last but not least, the All-Stars Division. Again you will have to upgrade your cars with a pack, the All-Stars pack. In this championship an event can last 8 laps long or 3 races. And as expected, the cash and experience points reward is bigger.

There are also events called Throwdowns, X-games and world tours. In Throwdowns, you compete one-on-one with a player who has challenged you for a race. You can’t only win experience points with these races but get the players as a friend as well, because in some events you need a teammember.
For the championships a certain level is required to enter them. There are 3 championships and at the end of the final one you'll receive a car.

World Tours are events that give you a tour around the world. Here you drive 5 races in Rally, Rally cross, Trailblazer, Raid and Land Rush.

To unlock each race you will have to level up or race in tournaments (world tour).
At the end of every race, you'll receive experience points and with those points you can level up. When you get to level 15 you get the ‘Getting a Reputation’ trophy and at level 30, you receive the ‘As Good As It Get’s’ trophy.

But don’t think that you can drive every car in the game as soon as the game starts. First you will have to win races and receives some cash, thousands of dollars. Different levels of difficulty and final position determine how much you get at the end of an event. Difficulte levels determine the amount of flashbacks you get, which are used to rewind the game and fix your mistake, this can't be used in multiplayer. Some cars are given to you when you finish a World Tour or a championship. There are 8 different locations where you can race. But don’t think that you’ll be racing the circuit over and over again on 1 location, because every location has more than 1 circuit. You will be driving from the jungle to the desert, from an enclosed circuit to an open circuit. And every circuit requires a different driving style. My most annoying circuit has to be the Malaysia Land Rush circuit. To make a long story short you crash, jump, fall and slide in this circuit from hell.

The AI in this game is good. It's careful in hitting others. Also when you hit another driver, they start talking to you and also when you have the lead. And the AI isn’t that challenging in the first two levels. When you're in the All-Stars division the AI shows some true skills.

Let’s talk about the cars now. The vehicles in this game are awesome. There’s a high level of detail, so you can even see a scratch in the paintwork when you hit something. And you can customize every vehicle with liveries, horns, dashboard toys and subtle things like an air freshener. Every vehicle handles differently. Some have an enormous acceleration, but low top speed and others have it balanced at a lower level. At the beginning of each game you can choose whether you want to tune your car or not. In the tuning option, you can choose a different gear set, low or high suspension etcetera.

A cool feature in this game is that your car can sustain damage during the race. For example, if you crash your car too hard into a guiding rail, it could cause a tire to be permanently locked in the left or right position (until the next race of course). You can also blow up your engine. Besides those damages to the car’s performance, the appearance of your car can totally change. For example, you’ll start with a car with a body kit, but in the first turn (especially online) you can lose your entire kit, meaning that you’ll be driving a stripped car.

The multiplayer features 2 different tours, the Jam and Dirt Tour. The Dirt Tour is similar to the singleplayer Dirt Tour but in this mode you can choose between 3 sets of races, Rally, Trailblazers and Raid; Rallycross and Land Rush; and the special races. You'll get fame points for your final position and when your team wins. The fame points are similar to the experience points, you use them to gain a higher level of fame. At a fame reputation of 30 you'll receive the ‘Notorious’ trophy. If you receive this trophy and a friend of yours, who also owns the game, gets a notification at the startscreen, which features a newspaper with the latest accomplishments of your friends, the message says that the one who got the trophy should get a life.

On Jam Tour however, people can choose their own map, can tune their cars and decide the rules of the race. But for this Tour, you'll receive 0 fame points, since Jam Tour is unranked.

Glitches in this game are almost non-existing. There is only one tiny glitch that’s very annoying. When you throw an opponent out of the track in Last Man Standing, in the singleplayer, the player doesn’t get eliminated. And even stranger is the fact that your victim wins the match even when you finished first.

I really enjoyed this game, so I would recommend this game for a purchase. Have some apple pie :D. The reason why this game is called Colin McRae is because this game and Dirt 1, are a tribute to the greatest rally-driver, Colin McRae, who recently passed away.



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