Game:

DiRT 4 (2017)

Category:

Review

Duration: 12:15

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If 2015’s Dirt Rally was Codemasters flipping over the couch cushions and finding the key to something special, Dirt 4 is the studio prying open the barn door and rediscovering the whole car. 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.The most amazing part of Dirt 4 is its new custom stage creator, which Codemasters has dubbed ‘Your Stage’. It’s an incredibly simple tool to use. There are just two sliders – one for length and one for complexity. That’s it. The process is instant and easy, and time-of-day and weather can be adjusted for any stage you create. Stages can be up to 12-or-so kilometres long and the off-track respawn limits have been pushed right out so when you crash, you can crash big.The Your Stage tool supports five countries in Dirt 4 – Australia, the United States, Wales, Sweden, and Spain – which each offer very different terrain and demand different things from us behind the wheel. Australia is gravel-based, with a mix of wider areas with uncluttered verges and tighter zones that twist through the bush. It’s quick and it can be a bit forgiving, provided you have the space to make an error. Spain is quite different; it’s a tarmac-based affair lined with curbs, railings, and high stone and rock walls. It’s quick too, because there’s a lot more grip, but there’s a bit less margin for error here. I’ve clattered down more than a few Spanish hillsides blazing into bends at maximum attack.You can’t raise or lower bits of your custom tracks yourself, nor can you push and pull certain sections around to customise the end product, but the impact of having a unique stage curated for every career event (and a bottomless supply of them at your fingertips outside of the career mode) cannot be understated. You can also save the ones you like most and share them with friends. Brilliant stuff.Most impressive of all, there’s nothing about Your Stage courses that makes it obvious they’ve been built by an algorithm rather than a bunch of humans. Segments are seamlessly blended together. Trackside detail is varied and the game’s pace notes – provided by Welshman Nicky Grist and Canadian Jen Horsey – are always accurate.Five environments is probably the bare minimum Codemasters needed (the traits Dirt Rally’s Finland, Monaco, and Germany would have brought to this game are missed) but we’ve definitely gained more than we’ve lost here. No more cheeky reverse stages or repetitive shared track sections, and no more belting up and down the exact same stages for months on end; Your Stage is a gamechanger for rally games.Until now, Codemasters’ Ego engine games have always looked a little muted. Not Dirt 4. The lighting is the best that’s ever come out of Codemasters, from the way it plays off the different paint types and car surfaces to the way low sun lights up thic
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Source: http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/06/06/dirt-4-review

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