Dirt 5 Review (Steam)

Dirt 5 ReviewDIRT 5 is the boldest off-road racing experience created by Codemasters. Blaze a trail on routes across the world, covering gravel, ice, snow, and sand, with a roster of cars ranging from rally icons to trucks, to GT heroes.

Pros:

  • Awesome graphics.
  • 51128mb download size.
  • Steam achievements.
  • Full controller support.
  • Racing gameplay.
  • Graphics-fullscreen, image quality, final resolution, render resolution, geometry quality, tessellation quality, shadow quality, volumetric quality, cloud quality, procedural quality, and global illumination quality. Has an automatic option if you are unsure.
  • Initial setup of the country flag and race number.
  • Can skip cutscenes.
  • Opening race.
  • Splitscreen support.
  • Four modes-career, online, arcade, and playground.
  • Six driving views.
  • Full damage model, doors can fall off, bonnets go flying, etc.
  • Unlock liveries by rank.
  • A more festival/arcade feel and atmosphere to it all in every way.
  • Every vehicle has a rating for performance and handling with S being the best.
  • Each race you earn Exp, rep, and cash.
  • Each race has 3 events you finish for bonus rewards, these can be things like Drift 3 times or hit every car. You can pay to rereoll these beforehand if you don’t like the choice.
  • A career is a case of going through a series of events that are split into chapters where you can choose which ones to do.
  • Multiple car disciplines and race types.
  • Full weather effects that do impact the race.
  • Driving aids-presets or custom-transmission, anti lock brakes, traction control, stability management, auto brake, and tricksteer.
  • Photo mode-shutter speed, auto focus, aperture, focus distance, camera roll, the field of view, vehicle tracking, time of day, lens effect strength, exposure compensation, toggle spotlight, control spotlight, move to the camera, spotlight intensity, light color R/G/B, screen filter, filter intensity, advanced filter, frame, and frame intensity.
  • Decent loading times.
  • Arcade driving but simulation handling.
  • Can rebind controls for the controller.
  • Hud opacity slider.
  • Arcade-time trial or free play.
  • Playground-full track/event creator with many tools. You can create/load/discover other creations. You choose from 3 base arenas, then one of three modes-gate crashers, gymkhana and smash attack, and then car.
  • Throwdowns-you earns entry from doing certain actions, you win unique awards instead of stamps for the career mode.
  • Garage-car customisation for livery, wheel color, decal editor, and sponsor editor. You can also buy cars in the garage.
  • Profile card customization-card, lanyard, nickname, sticker, and effect.
  • Online leaderboards.
  • Race fly overs before the start.
  • Sponsors-who you earn rep for, they have set goals they need from you and you get unique rewards from them you can unlock and change sponsors whenever but you get a rep loss, staying with a sponsor will grant a loyalty bonus.
  • Stamps-earn them from races and these are used to unlock future events.
  • Weather and time of day will change when racing.
  • Ten locations USA Roosevelt island, USA Arizona, South Africa, Nepal, Norway, Morocco, Italy, Greece, China, and Brazil.
  • Ten vehicle classes- Rally GT, Super Lite, X cross raid, Pre runners, Formula off road, unlimited, modern rally, classic rally, 80s rally, and 90s rally.
  • Four weather types- Clear, heavy rain, heavy snow, and dynamic.
  • Grid size-2-12 people.
  • Five Ai difficulties- very easy, easy, medium, hard, and very hard.
  • Earn EXP, rep, and cash from arcade races.

Dirt 5 Review

Cons:

  • The mouse cursor stays on the screen when using a controller.
  • No benchmark test.
  • Graphics settings are no set out in the conventional way or wording.
  • No music control both changing songs in a game or adjusting what songs play.
  • You unlock skins and the like for cars you may not even have or drive.
  • Performance issues on built up areas or when a big crash happens.
  • Ragdoll physics can go crazy
  • They try to shoehorn in a radio station with colorful commentators but it fails as you just don’t care and it serves no real purpose.
  • The radio will repeat itself.

Dirt 5 Review

  • 9/10
    Graphics - 9/10
  • 8/10
    Sound - 8/10
  • 9/10
    Accessibility - 9/10
  • 9/10
    Length - 9/10
  • 9/10
    Fun Factor - 9/10
8.8/10

Summary

Dirt 5 could be the definitive arcade racer. It cuts out all the tweaking and modifications to the vehicles and lets you just spray a car how you want and jump straight in! You sign with a sponsor for unique rewards, a player level will unlock new cars and customisation options for your car and player card. The game itself is so accessible and fun, it takes a whole host of genres and car generations and manages to make a big fun event out of it. Career mode is a Web of events that unlock as you earn stamps, with this Web design you can pick and choose what events to do. Each race will have 3 optional tasks to do in the race, you can re-roll these with cash but they give extra rewards. The damage model is high with a lot of destruction allowed to happen but I never managed to make the car undrivable. The soundtrack and color scheme are as banging as the rest of the game with a strong handling model you come to expect from Codemasters, the dynamic weather mechanic means races can change on a fine and make it look and play so uniquely. Overall I found this to just be a whole lot of fun and I really like how you can just jump in and race, in short, this is a prime example of arcade racing and Codemasters smash it.

Jim Smale

Gaming since the Atari 2600, I enjoy the weirdness in games counting Densha De Go and RC De Go as my favourite titles of all time. I prefer gaming of old where buying games from a shop was a thing, Being social in person was a thing. Join me as I attempt to adapt to this new digital age!