GTPlanet League: Codemasters Classic Championship - Round 04

@GOTMAXPOWER took a commanding victory in the C2, over a minute clear of @peniu who narrowly beats @SharkyOB to 2nd place.
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That result puts @SharkyOB back on top of the championship standings, 10 points clear of @Dreadmed with @Tool1312 in P3.
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Round 7
Colin McRae: Dirt 2 - 2009
cover.jpg


Car
Subaru Impreza WRC 2008

Location
Croatia

Krašić
Mali Lipovec
Kostanjevac
Grdanjci
Zagorska Sela

2 years after the release of the first game titled 'Dirt', came the 2nd. It was the first game released after Colin's passing and the final game to carry his name in the title.

The first Dirt title had hinted at the series going in a different direction, bringing in other off road disciplines in the form of hill climbs and rally cross events. Dirt 2 took this even further, with the traditional rally discipline the games are known for, taking even more of a back seat, with only a handful of locations being designed for rally, and a handful of proper rally cars. The game expanded other off road racing areas, with rallycross, baja, rally raid, trophy trucks and a host of other race types within them such as landrush, trailblazer and gatecrasher events.

The core mode of the game is the Dirt Tour, travelling the world in your RV, taking in the multitude of different events, with the ultimate goal of becoming the X-Games champion in each region. Coming up against many familiar names, Ken Block, Travis Pastrana, Dave Mirra, Tanner Foust, and current FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem. Once this was achieved, the Colin McRae challenge would unlock, taking place over the 3 rally locations in the Escort Mk2 as you take on significant figures in Colin's life, including father Jimmy McRae, brother Alistair McRae, David Coulthard, Dario Franchitti, Ari Vatanen and Valentino Rossi.

The game play was much more action oriented than the previous games which had more a focus on immersing you in the rally world. Dirt 2 had big crowds, fireworks, blocks to smash and felt a world away from the Colin McRae Rally series, the handling was much more rooted in the arcade side of things with powerful brakes and easy to hold slides. The game was immensely fun to play and was very well received by critics and players. Though once again, die hard rally fans were left a little disappointed. But, the game still delivered an overall fun experience that have seen it cemented as one of the greats in the series.

With an overall lack of rally content, the choices for this round were actually pretty easy. Croatia was one of the 3 rally locations, alongside China and Malaysia, and also features in EAWRC. It was a curious addition at the time, none of the rally locations would have been the first ones into your mind when thinking of rally, but they were mostly fun, with detailed, but short, stages. The cover car is the Subaru Impreza World Rally Car from 2008 onwards, another car which features in EAWRC and therefore an easy partner to Croatia.
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It's funny how I never noticed how descriptive the DiRT 2 pace notes were until now. Probably because when I was playing it back in the 360 days my eyes were glued to the map.
 
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MagpieRacer
Did you send it to MagpieRacer or magpieracer48? I haven't seen it come up yet. If you send it to magpieracer48 on RaceNet I'll get it.

When I switched from Xbox to PS5 I had issues switching the linked account 😅.
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Cant seem to join the league still? Think magpieracer48 needs to accept My request so I can join cause that one seems to be owner of the club 🤔
 
DarthNoose
Cant seem to join the league still? Think magpieracer48 needs to accept My request so I can join cause that one seems to be owner of the club 🤔
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Yeah I've just now accepted your request so you should be able to join now.
 
I thought I'd do some stages before the rally ends so I've done the first 2. Will do the next 2 tomorrow and finish off Sunday. It's a bit warm atm so I'm doing short stints due the heat that comes out of the top of the Xbox lol.
Did a stupid mistake in stage 1. I was just coming up to a left hairpin later in the stage and the subwoofer from my soundbar dropped out and it put me off cos it went really tinny. My own fault for not concentrating lol.
 
The 2008 Subaru sounds really nice especially on overrun, I've not really driven it much, I'll have to use it more often
 
I won't. Didn't like the car at all in this game and could barely keep it under control.
 
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I got too excited with getting access to the rally this evening and it took me 4 stages before I realized I was in the wrong car 😳
Looked at the leaderboard and was like wow everyone else is in the 2008 Impreza 😂

I really don’t favor tarmac rallies but was trying to be a trooper.
Will stop before stage 5 and will wait until the next rally to follow the rules ✌️
 
Welp, looks like it's going to be a recovery rally for me. It's going to be a bit of a fragmented weekend for me and I thought I had about 20 minutes free before a race I was going to watch started, so I figured I'd squeeze in the first leg and then finish up tomorrow or something... As I'm waiting for the countdown, I hear they were lining up for the start, so I felt like I needed to hurry and I made a complete mess of stage 1 and got some damage.

Since I already missed the start of the race, I jumped into stage 2 and tried not to let the stage 1 disaster get to me and push me into more mistakes because I'm driving frustrated (like I usually do), and dialed it back a bit. Definitely a lot of spots where I hesitated/lifted that I should have stayed flat, but no real mistakes and a reasonable time.

Fortunately I could repair almost all the damage at the service area, but I think the hole is too deep for me to salvage much from this one.
 
Tool1312
Oops, is that the long run down to the finish line? There's a corner that tightens up that I had a bit of a tank slapper as well. I got away with it just
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It was the final proper corner of the stage so probably the same where you had the moment, I slid a bit wide and caught a fence which took both tyres off, luckily it was the last stage of the loop because I only had 1 spare and only had that last straight to drag it down. I missed an hairpin earlier in the stage and slid down a hill which was a lucky 30s penalty, usually it would be a unrecoverable vehicle/DNF.

I don't know how you lot all have the confidence to push so hard on these asphalt rallies, I'm terrified every turn!
 
GOTMAXPOWER
It was the final proper corner of the stage so probably the same where you had the moment, I slid a bit wide and caught a fence which took both tyres off, luckily it was the last stage of the loop because I only had 1 spare and only had that last straight to drag it down. I missed an hairpin earlier in the stage and slid down a hill which was a lucky 30s penalty, usually it would be a unrecoverable vehicle/DNF.

I don't know how you lot all have the confidence to push so hard on these asphalt rallies, I'm terrified every turn!
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Love how you say you don't know how people push, yet you set 2nd quickest times in 3 out of the 5 stages lol
 
Tool1312
Love how you say you don't know how people push, yet you set 2nd quickest times in 3 out of the 5 stages lol
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lol, I was driving over the limit all rally which is probably why I crashed on both of the other 2 stages 😅
 
UKMikey
He already said it's the Ford Focus RS WRC 2008 in that post you got me to read.
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I drove the Touareg more on Dirt 3, can I use that for the next round instead? 🥺

Dirt 1-3 were my favourite of all the Codemasters rally games, some of the most fun arcade games I've ever played, the more realistic stuff they've done since has been great but the party vibes of that era are unmatched.
 
GOTMAXPOWER
I drove the Touareg more on Dirt 3, can I use that for the next round instead? 🥺

Dirt 1-3 were my favourite of all the Codemasters rally games, some of the most fun arcade games I've ever played, the more realistic stuff they've done since has been great but the party vibes of that era are unmatched.
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I remember being a bit disappointed with DiRT: Showdown. It wasn't the lack of a cockpit view (I never use that mode anyway) but it didn't feel as complete a game as the trilogy. Still pretty fun to play.
 
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