DiRT: Colin McRae Off-Road

  • Thread starter DuckRacer
  • 138 comments
  • 7,858 views
IGN
DIRT: Colin McRae Off-Road Preview
The rally king takes his first next-gen starting position and he looks set to bring home another trophy.
by Chris Roper
March 21, 2007 - 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.

Visually, DIRT is a very impressive title. The game looks just as good in motion as it does in the screenshots, which is saying a lot. Clouds of dust kick up as cars race forward with a fantastic lighting model that creeps naturally across the bodies of the cars. Individual blades of grass can be picked out far into the distance - we didn't notice any sort of draw-in here, resulting in a natural and very smooth landscape to speed past.

The physics system, which Codemasters has always excelled at implementing, utilizes soft body physics so that car part can bend and distort in realtime for completely dynamic damage modeling. Axles can bend, resulting in wheels that rotate in an awkward manner, and doors, roofs and whatever else can become disturbingly mangled if you happen to run off the track.

One of the subtle and yet extremely cool things that we noticed during the demo was the camera work. If you race in the overhead view, the camera will bob and shake as you take jumps and slide around corners. It's still certainly tight enough that no ounce of control or accuracy looks to be lost, but its small and subtle movements help make the game look a little more TV-like in its presentation. Should you prefer to race from a first-person perspective, along with standard rooftop and bumper views, a full in-helmet view is present that allows you to get a view of the wheel, dashboard and such.

DIRT: Colin McRae Off-Road is scheduled for release this June on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. We'll have more on the game very shortly, including some hands-on impressions, so stay tuned.
Click to expand...

Nice!

dirtyscreens20070320025sf4.jpg

dirtyscreens20070320025ai3.jpg

dirtyscreens20070320025rt2.jpg

dirtyscreens20070320025mx2.jpg

dirtyscreens20070320025dr4.jpg
 
If it could really look like that it would be freaking awesome. I'm waiting to see if the graphics stay great like that. Hopefully they look as good as if not better than the shots on the previous page by release time.
 
That opening part is Pikes Peak in all its wonderful glory! It looks like it will be a must have for rally fans.
 
I will buy "Dirt" no matter what for the 360. I am just waiting for some "in game footage". I dont judge a game by CGI trailers. I want to see the real thing. Already almost got screwed on Motorstorm. That game looks nothing like the CGI trailers. I have a feeling Dirt is doing the same thing. Very misleading CGI trailers.

I wanted to clearify what I meant about CGI or Pre-rendered trailers vs what we actually get.

Motorstorm turned out NOTHING like the original CGI and pre-render trailers.

Motorstorm comparison Pre-render vs actual in game footage(12megs).

I just hope the same thing doesnt happen with Dirt.
 
I will buy "Dirt" no matter what for the 360. I am just waiting for some "in game footage". I dont judge a game by CGI trailers. I want to see the real thing. Already almost got screwed on Motorstorm. That game looks nothing like the CGI trailers. I have a feeling Dirt is doing the same thing. Very misleading CGI trailers.
 
CGI trailers are never true representations of a game. Those trailers are always the wish list of what games could and will look like in the future. Consider some of the CGI trailers of 10 years ago. Real time graphics are now achievable at that same CGI level.

I agree though, I would wait for some real time footage as well.
 
Apparently the 360 wheel works great with the game. Still holding out on buying one until I know for sure there is no alternative for FFB on the 360 for this and Forza 2....
 
Finally here is a trailer that shows actual "In game" footage.

Colin McRae: Dirt Gameplay trailer

Instant streaming version

Now I am extremely excited about this game. Instantly reminded me of Rallisport Challenge 2 and that was my favorite rally game ever made. Looks like a pretty good variety of vehicles too. I just cant wait to get this now!! Between Dirt and Forza 2 I should be set for the year for driving games. :D :D :D
 
From the amount of interest this game has here, only about 4 months away from release, you'd almost think it doesn't exist. DiRT is going to be the first 100% all-PS3 sim, unlike F1 CE which was partly based on PS2 code, so it should be dropping a few more jaws than it is.

GameTrailers has two HD promo videos for you to start drooling over.

Cheers,

MasterGT
 
Pako
CGI trailers are never true representations of a game. ...

I agree though, I would wait for some real time footage as well.
Click to expand...
All DiRT media released so far have come from the XBox 360 version because, apparently, it is the easiest for Codemasters to get.

What you see now is what we'll get, according to Codemasters.

Cheers,

MasterGT
 
Wow, looks absolutely amazing.

I assume there will be multiplayer online and split screen (that was a mistake with Motorstorm).
 
Well, I watched the in-game trailer, and I'm not impressed. For all I know, it could've been a bad capture or compression or something, since it looks like an upscaled Xbox game, but still...
 

Latest Posts

Back