Dirt 4 racing game is the new standard in rally racing
Dirt 4 sets a new standard in rally racing — and its well-considered career mode and endless stages inject it with tremendous stamina. Most racing games have that problem where players memorize courses, and Dirt 4 is focused on the rally which should be using unique tracks every time. IGN gave the game a 9.2/10, saying the racing game is “accessible yet tough and grimy yet gorgeous”, where BuyGames consider Dirt 4 “one of the best rally racing games ever”.
Dirt 4 ps4 and xbox one video games features several game modes, one of it is obviously the career mode. This mode is a trudge through faceless events and half-hearted team management that feels like it’s been lifted from one of Milestone’s lesser WRC games, and the front-end is either functional or plain frustrating. Most of the time I found it functional, but sometime it hurts…
The career mode in extensive in this xbox one and ps4 racing game: you race across the four race types: Rally where you drive with a co-driver telling you about every turn and how to take them, Land Rush where you’re in a truck or buggy and go full-throttle on closed dirt courses, RallyCross puts you in a rally car and has you driving in short, closed courses with mixed surfaces, and Historic Rally putting you in the seat of a classic rally car from the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s and dealing with the technical limitations of the day.
The game also offers competitive events that bring various new challenges daily, weekly and monthly to take part in. Freeplay allows players to create custom championship events and share tracks made via the “Your Stage” feature with friends while Joyride simply allows time trial races.
With a properly meaty career mode, literally endless racing thanks to its procedurally generated stages, and the best sound and visuals Codemasters has ever mustered, Dirt 4 has redefined what we should expect from modern rally games. Perhaps the only downside at the moment is a mild lack of tracks and content, though future DLC will add to the game’s rallying and rallycross stages, first by revisiting Monte Carlo, Sweden and Germany from the first Dirt Rally.
There are a few added niceties like the Historic mode which give a short sense of the flavour of that era’s rallying, but it’s disappointing to find your beloved Lancia Stratos setting out from a starting point emblazoned with Monster Energy sponsorship and an audience dressed in modern clothes, especially when the cars themselves look absolutely authentic. With four different disciplines to test your driving skills against — Rally, Landrush, Rally Cross and Heritage Rally — there’s dirt tracks aplenty, hairpin turns in abundance, and over 50 meticulously recreated cars; and Dirt 4 manages this wealth of content easily, giving players a fun career mode to tackle it all through.
If online racing is your thing, you can race against other players head to head in Rallycross (padded out by bots if there’s not enough humans), or scamper through rally stages and compare times afterwards. In some racing games there’s a mental disconnect between what’s happening on screen and what you’re doing, but Dirt Rally 2.0 manages to make you feel like you’re genuinely in the seat of a rally car, hurtling down a gravel track in the rain.
From the comprehensive career mode to the fun of Rallycross and Joyride, Dirt 4 is one of Codemasters’ best. By bringing together the beloved simulation driving model of DiRT Rally and the more arcade driving of DiRT 3, Codemasters basically built two games. The official licence of the FIA World Rallycross World Championship is retained, new tracks have been added plus a feeder series so you can work your way up to the supercars raced by the likes of Solberg.
