Racing in ‘Dirt 4’ is filthy, face-scorching fun

Imagine navigating a narrow, winding dirt path at face-melting speeds into a forest obscured by shadow, with little to no knowledge of what’s up ahead – whether it’s a hairpin turn or a muddy rut deep enough to make your car flip over.

That, in a nutshell, is rally racing – a sport for speed freaks who don’t flinch at the thought of risk, pain, and possibly even life-changing injury.

Thankfully, Codemasters offers a safer alternative; with “Dirt 4,” you can rally all you want without threat of a tree piercing your windshield and impaling your head. Real-life danger aside, the interactive medium reproduces the thrill, chaos, and utter madness of the experience as best as it can, the result being one of the finest racing games in recent times.




Pleasure or pain

Codemasters is to be commended for making “Dirt 4” accessible to many types of gamers. Right off the bat, you’re given two driving physics modes: Gamer and Simulation.

Gamer is for those among us who prioritize fun over realism. As the more arcade-like of the two modes, it’s faster to pick up and easier to master. Your car is more responsive, making difficult maneuvers – such as executing those extremely tight turns – more manageable. It’s also more forgiving, so that a miscalculation will have your car careening off the path instead of performing aerial gymnastics. It still won’t hesitate to give you a kick in the groin for blatant stupidity, though.

Simulation is for the hardcore racing fan. Here, your car feels less cooperative, at times giving you the impression that the wheel’s having a wrestling match with you. Even small errors can prove costly, so you’ll need to anticipate when exactly to accelerate, brake, turn, or swerve. Precision is a must; the slightest collision with anything at the edge of the path – from railings, to low walls, to trees – could end in disaster. You’ll feel the effects of weather conditions such as rain and snow more acutely, too. The mode’s commitment to authenticity makes it more difficult, yes, but the sense of accomplishment after overcoming the most intense of challenges will leave you euphoric.

Whichever mode you choose, you can always go to Options and lower or raise the difficulty to your liking by making tweaks to the various driving assists, such as the anti-lock braking system, traction control, and transmission type. This way, there’s a playstyle for everyone.

Good news for newcomers; “Dirt 4” boasts comprehensive, easy-to-follow tutorials, accessible through the Dirt Academy. This will train you in specific techniques and disciplines, ranging from the basics to the most advanced.


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Off to the races

“Dirt 4” comes with a surplus of modes. Chief among them is Career, which gives you access to four main events: Rally, Land Rush, Rallycross, and Historic Rally.

Rally is easily the best of the bunch. As described in this review’s opening paragraphs, rally racing tasks you with speeding along slender, meandering paths from point A to point B. These are public roads closed off to regular traffic, with surface types including asphalt, gravel, sand, and compacted snow. As you compete with fellow racers around the world, tracks will take you through open grasslands, scorching deserts, and wintry forests. A few will even have you careening into towns.

While the co-driver sitting in the car beside you always warns you of what lies ahead, hearing about and experiencing the next obstacle firsthand are two entirely different things. Not to mention said co-driver occasionally blunders through their lines, and sometimes fails to mention that one small detail that could save your car from doing a somersault.

Because you’re never quite sure of what comes next along your path, rallying is very much about reacting to every obstacle as it comes at you at breakneck speed – while you’re driving at breakneck speed, bordering on losing control of your vehicle. To complicate things further, you’re at the mercy of diverse random elements, from crashed cars to heavy fog that drastically reduces visibility. The uncertainty each track promises is enough to fill you with dread.

Historic Rally deviates from Rally in that you drive classic rally cars. These handle quite differently from modern racers, giving you a new challenge to master.

Land Rush has you driving powerful trucks, buggies, and those ridiculously slippery crosskarts, which are almost impossible to control. You’ll be pitted against other drivers, whom you’ll be jostling against in sandy, looping courses replete with sharp corners and steep slopes. While the racing is topnotch, and sailing into the air after tearing up a crest is breathtaking, the lack of course variety is a letdown.

Rallycross has you racing against 7 other rally cars in officially licensed tracks, which are far more diverse than those offered in Land Rush.

And when you’ve sampled what each main event has to offer, you can try out Freeplay – the mode responsible for “Dirt 4’s” amazing replayability. By manipulating length and complexity sliders, then choosing the time of day, weather condition, and country, you can procedurally generate an infinite number of unique Rally or Historic Rally tracks. This way, you can create your own racing championships.

Land Rush and Rallycross are also available in Freeplay. Sadly, there’s no way to customize track designs; you can only modify the time of day and weather condition.




More than racing

Thanks to other modes, “Dirt 4” is also a light simulation of the management of a racing team. You can hire a staff consisting of a PR agent, a co-driver, a chief engineer, engineers, and spotters for Land Rush and Rallycross events. Each specialist provides benefits; for example, engineers can repair various parts of your car, while the PR agent can negotiate better deals with sponsors.

Sponsors will pay you to put their logos on your car. But you’ll need to impress them, too. Before every race, each sponsor sets a target for you to meet. Should you succeed, your relationship with them improves, which in turn raises the bonus cash you’re awarded at the race’s conclusion.

You can develop facilities, each of which also supplies a number of advantages. For instance, you can enhance your sponsor support, permitting you to acquire more sponsors. R&D ensures your team builds top end vehicle parts, allowing you to improve the performance of your cars. Expanding your garage allows you to buy more vehicles.

Yes, “Dirt 4” features over fifty purchasable vehicles.

“Dirt 4” also boasts the community-centric Competitive Mode, which offers Daily, Weekly, and Monthly challenges; and Multiplayer PvP, which is spread across the four main event types.

Get dirty

When it comes to racing games, “Dirt 4” is up there with the greatest. With dangerous tracks and fantastic vehicles, the racing demands everything from exemplary skill to total concentration, and will have you running a gamut of emotions including excitement, panic, elation, and terror. As if the wealth of content didn’t add more depth to an already stellar package, the game also boasts incredible replay value thanks to Freeplay. All in all, “Dirt 4” is an amazing recreation of man and machine’s struggle against the elements as exemplified by rally racing. — TJD, GMA News


Rating – 9/10
Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows