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When Colin McRae passed away in a tragic accident, people wondered what would happen to the DiRT franchise.  Would another rally driver step in to claim the endorsement, or might Codemasters drop the game for a few years, to let time pass.  Thankfully for gamers, neither option happened, as DiRT 2 has come to the PC, and with it, comes a superb rally racing title that pushes all the technical boundaries.

DiRT 2 is all about taking the gamer and immersing them into the sport of rally racing.  As soon as you pop the disc in to play, you never come across a start menu until you finish your first race.  You enter your name and nationality, pick a nickname, and you are on the track.  There is even a mini tribute to Colin McRae, as you are given his car to race in your first race.  You maneuver from your trailer to outside your trailer to go through different aspects of DiRT 2.  Walk outside to look at your vehicles, or check the latest news on all the racers.  Maybe you move inside, and select a multiplayer race, or select another circuit in your career.  It is a slick way to present the sport.  Even other drivers will call you to give you props on a race, or pick you up after a bad run.

Of course, all of this presentation means absolutely nothing if the game that it surrounds does not back up the goods.  Thankfully, DiRT 2 delivers a phenomenal racing experience from the green light till the time you exit the race at the end.  Your map presents you with several different countries and racing types, with more countries unlocking as you progress through your career.  You can choose from standard rally cross events, to timed rally events, and then the big trucks and buggies that race in Raid races.  Each has its own flavor, keeping a driver on their toes so they can never fall into a rhythm.

The physics of DiRT 2 never fall too far from its arcade styled roots, allowing the player to have a lot of fun with the different courses.  At first, I was a little off of my game, but after a few races, I was able to pick up the mechanics of the game, allowing me to pull of solid drift turns, and collecting the 1^st place banner multiple times.  Sometimes the driving feels a little floaty, but this only came into play when I was shifting between track surfaces.  You should feel a difference under the car, but the change never felt quite right.  This is a small issue in an otherwise fine driving experience.

Driver AI is always a difficult item when designing a racing title.  Push too hard and the drivers will never seem to miss a turn, or a passing moment.  Design them too loose, and they end up becoming pushovers that never provide a challenge.  Codemasters has found an interesting point in the middle for their computer drivers.  I played through a race three times following the same driver through all three races.  In the first race, they took a jump too fast and flipped their vehicle, ending their chances with terminal damage to their vehicle.  In another they took a pretty good line, and ended up 2^nd in the race.  The last race, they were slamming into other drivers, and took more shortcuts than in the previous race.  It is always nice when we see a race title that does not use hard coded routes.  It also makes you feel like you have a legitimate chance with each race.

Visually, DiRT 2 is a stunning looking game on the PC.  Originally scheduled for a July 2009 release, the title was delayed to allow for DirectX 11 effects to be brought into the mix.  This delay ended up turning DiRT 2 into a showpiece title on the PC.  While the video and snapshots from this title are from a NVIDIA card using DirectX10, I tried the title on a DirectX11 ATI enabled rig, and it just gets better, with the engine pushing the limits of a solid video card.  Running at 1920×1200, with all details turned on, DiRT 2 is a spectacle to both watch and play.  At no time, did I ever experience a single hiccup with frame rate, with the game routinely running between 35-70 frames per second.

DiRT 2 also features some great sound, both with the vehicles and with the chatter from the other drivers.  Many rally drivers came into the booth to record a ton of dialog for DiRT 2, so you never feel alone on the racetracks.  Bump a driver and they might complain about your aggressive behavior.  Complete a clean pass and they will chime in about your smooth driving skills.  Even better is that each voice has recording a ton of nicknames, so it was a nice touch when I would pass someone and they would say, “That was an awesome pass, Joe”.  I think any player will find a nickname that is close to their own name.  Cars also have their own personality with their sound.  Jump into a Dodge RAM truck and listen to its throaty rumble, but move to a Subaru WRX and you get a whining buzz from an engine that is tuned to go fast.  While I am not certain, I would feel confident in saying that Codemasters went out and recorded all the different car engine sounds, just adding another element of realism to DiRT 2.

Another feature that passed over from DiRT 2’s cousin GRID is the flashback system.  Now the rage in most race games, the flashback system allows someone to stop the game after a crash and run the instant replay back about 5-10 seconds and with the press of a button you can go back into the race.  No more, do you have to restart after a fatal mistake.  The number of flashbacks will change based on the difficulty level that you select.  This is a bit frustrating, as other titles have started to allow unlimited use of the flashback system, and a system like that would allow me to race at higher difficulties, pushing my skills.  Hopefully DiRT 3 will rethink the flashback system, allowing players to experiment with a harder challenge without punishing them for doing so.

DiRT 2 has a full-featured multiplayer component that uses the Games for Windows LIVE service.  Races are kept at no more than eight drivers, and the multiplayer is surprisingly fluid.  The service makes sure to choose the host with the most bandwidth, so it is rare to see lag, or poor performance.  The community could use some etiquette lessons, as a lot of races start off as a demolition derby; taking would be champs out right at the start.  If this is an issue for you, make sure to stick with the pro circuit, which puts you in timed competitions, so you are on the track by yourself for the most part.

Up to this point, things were going great with DiRT 2, and then one day, I came to capture more video for my review, and I got the dreaded “Autosave file is corrupt”.  After some research, it appears that this is an issue with DiRT 2 on the PC, with numerous people commenting in the official forums about the save issue.  Eventually I did find a way to recover my data, but only after two hours of searching.  It was a pain in the ass, and poor programming on Codemasters part.  I was able to reproduce the error more than once, and it always came down to the same file causing the corruption.  Multiple users have reported this, and Codemasters response is to blame it on a hard drive not being a perfect device for file storage.  Really?  That response just left me face palming, as it was such an utter cop-out.  I mean the issue does not happen to PS3 and 360 users, and both of those save their data to hard drives.  It was a terrible blight on an otherwise fantastic experience.  Make sure to save you profile manually before you exit the game to avoid this unfortunate issue.

For PC gamers, Codemasters has created another excellent racing experience with DiRT 2.  Whether on the track, or just milling about in-between races, you always feel like you are in the thick of the rally racing circuit.  Spectacular visuals and great, personalized voice work just boost the production values up several notches.  Only a terrible save glitch keeps DiRT 2 from entering the top tier of ratings.  DiRT 2 gets 4.5 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.
Check out DiRT 2 and other PC reviews at Test Freaks.