Colin McRae: DiRT 2

Muddy marvelous.

Following completion of Race Driver: GRID, Codemasters' race studio immediately set to work making DiRT 2, which is surely a heavy workload by anyone's standards. Which is why it seems all the more astonishing that the BAFTA winning developer has managed to turn around such an accomplished racer in so relatively little time.

Following the tragic passing of rally legend Colin McRae last year, it was uncertain whether the videogame franchise unleashed in 1998 would continue to bear his name. With Colin McRae DiRT 2, Codemasters has wisely decided to retain the moniker and license, dropping in reverential nods to the man himself where appropriate.

More importantly, this is the first McRae title bereft of his direct input, although the influences run deep throughout the whole of the game. From the very moment you set foot into DiRT 2's extreme racing world, you're awarded Colin McRae's No Fear liveried Subaru Impreza he used to win the 2006 X-Games and you can purchase his R4 rally car too - a nice nod to the rally icon.

As an introduction to DiRT 2 it's both a fitting homage and perfect place to begin. So with your very own ride and a map laid out in your private RV trailer, you can pick where you want to race from multiple locations all over the world. Your first race, the Battersea Bash in London is a standard two-lap Rally Cross affair against seven other rivals. You can select the level of difficulty from easy, casual, serious, savage, extreme and hardcore as well as the effect damage has upon your vehicle at the beginning of each race.

DiRT 2's world is one where former BMX and Motocross stars rub shoulders and wheels in frantic competition for the chequered flag; the atmosphere bolstered enormously by constant in-game chatter between your rivals. You input your name and details into the form in your trailer, choosing an audio tag for your name (in our case 'Rich' is a perfect fit) so your racing buddies and other contenders can directly shout at you by name whenever you smash into them during a tussle, which is a lot.

Before each race you can choose whether you'd like the option of tweaking your car's set-up or not, which we'd recommend since it provides an added element of depth and strategy. You can adjust several different parameters of the car's performance depending upon the type of track you're racing on. Loose suspension and a higher ride height is better suited to rough terrain whereas shorter gearshifts mean you'll accelerate faster around winding tracks with fewer straights, for example.

As far as tuning options go, there's less depth than previous McRae titles or indeed a detailed simulation like Gran Turismo or Forza. Still, Codies are to be applauded for coming up with a system that strikes a happy medium between petrolhead obsession and casual car enthusiast.

Several sliders make it simplicity itself to alter the various performance elements of your ride, from the differential to the brake bias; all of the vital stuff is accounted for. While there's little clue as to what sort of track you're preparing for beyond the video footage looping behind the menu, being able to restart the race instantly, free of loading times, makes experimenting with and eventually finding the optimum set-up a process happily free of frustration.

Nonetheless, we're not entirely sure why a simple readout of track statistics before each race couldn't have been included to help inform your decisions when getting your car ready. It would completely remove the need to keep restarting in order to simply test yet another configuration. Past McRae titles have had the foresight to include this feature, but instead you're given a brief comment from one of your race rivals, such as "the track is loose" which means you'll need to adjust your suspension. Otherwise, you're normally left guessing

It's an incredibly minor niggle and as we've already mentioned, its non-inclusion does little to detract from the overall excellence of the game. Utilising a third-generation iteration of the EGO Engine, the driving model is an improvement over the already superlative first DiRT title, letting you throw your car around the tracks with reckless abandon while providing plenty of feedback to make this the closest you can get to driving an actual rallying monster without leaving the comfort of your sofa.

Presentation throughout is uniformly slick too, even if it does err too close to the 'gnarly', Americanised extreme sports style that now seems to characterise the series. Globetrotting from London to Croatia, Baja, Morocco, Japan, China, Malaysia, Utah, and LA means there's plenty of variety in the races. The consistent reward of XP and cash for finishing races also means that there's always more than ample incentive and propulsion to continue racing through the game's 100 events. Levelling up unlocks more races, new liveries and tongue-in-cheek accessories (awesome fuzzy dice, anyone?) to keep you hooked, so there's always something interesting to do and always something new waiting just around the next corner.

DiRT 2 has all the flair and panache we've come to expect from the franchise, building upon an IP that has come to represent the very best in off-road racing. Eight-player online racing provides endless gameplay and all eight of the relevant disciplines are catered for, from point-to-point endurance to time trials, rally and beyond. It is without doubt the most comprehensive and utterly playable off-road racing title we've ever played, the pitch perfect balance between immediate arcade gratification and detailed authenticity making for a matchless rally experience. Colin McRae: DiRT 2 is simply racing at its most unreservedly sublime.

91%

By Richard Walker