DiRT 4

I've loaded into enough rally games to know that the hardest thing Codemasters had to solve with DiRT 4 wasn't the physics engine. It was the question every off-road racer eventually asks: who is this actually for? The answer here is genuinely broad, and that's both the game's biggest strength and the source of its most heated criticism. At the core sit two handling models called Gamer and Simulation, and they feel like different games wearing the same livery. Gamer tightens your stopping distances, softens oversteer and forgives a lot of handbrake abuse, making it a fine entry point if your last rally game was something more arcade-oriented. Simulation, though, is where the real texture lives. Keeping the car on a gravel hairpin requires actual patience, weight transfer reads, and a willingness to listen closely to your co-driver's pace notes. Former WRC co-driver Nicky Grist lends his voice as one of the default co-drivers, which adds genuine atmosphere, and the handling consult from rally drivers Kris Meeke and Petter Solberg shows in how distinct each car class feels, from the wild Group B machines of the 1980s to the more clinical Group R cars from the 2010s. The headline mechanical trick is the Your Stage procedural generator, which assembles rally stages from a pool of corners, crests, hairpins and straights to produce runs that are theoretically infinite and never hand-crafted twice. In practice, long-term players have noted that the building blocks start to feel familiar after many hours, as certain corner combinations recur in recognisable patterns. It is a clever system and it solves the replayability problem meaningfully, but it is not magic. The five global rally locations (Australia, Spain, Michigan, Sweden, Wales) give each stage a distinct surface character, though the visual variety across a single country's events can feel thin. Beyond rally, there are four disciplines in total: Rally, Historic Rally using classic machinery, Rallycross on licensed FIA World RX circuits including Lydden Hill and Holjesbanan, and Landrush with stadium trucks and buggies in California, Nevada and Mexico. The career mode wraps all of this in a team management layer where you hire mechanics, upgrade facilities and manage car condition between stages, with damage carrying over if you cannot fully repair. Now, the bit my Saturday night crew cares about: couch multiplayer. It does not exist. DiRT 4 has no split-screen mode at all, which is a genuine sting given how well Rallycross in particular would suit a room full of people watching the same screen. Online multiplayer covers rally (essentially time-trial comparisons), Rallycross and Landrush with up to eight players, plus a Pro Tour mode that runs randomly generated stages against other players without practice time. The online population on PC is thin enough that finding lobbies takes patience. Joyride, the DirtFish compound freeplay area with board-smashing and time-attack minigames, does offer leaderboard competition that works as a low-friction way to banter with friends asynchronously. Wheel and pedal support is solid, and gamepad players who invest a little time in the control settings find the experience clicks, but do not expect it to feel right out of the box on Simulation without some tuning. For the right player, specifically someone who wants a serious rally workout but is not ready for the unforgiving punishment of DiRT Rally, DiRT 4 occupies a genuinely useful middle ground. It is approachable, it is long, and the procedural stage system means you will not run out of new roads quickly. Just do not buy it to pass the controllers around the room.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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