Dirt: How I Learned to Love the Rally

I’m not a racing kind of guy. I like shooting people. In the face! And other places. But
I discovered something important back in 2011, when looking for ways of procrastinating before
my exams. Dirt 2 was just the thing I needed. It taught me that, just because FPSes are
my favourite genre, it doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t play other ones as well. Indeed,
as a shoot-people-in-the-face connoisseur I have grown familiar with each year’s progress
in that genre. I knew what to expect, with any advances gradually drip-fed to me a little
bit with each new title. What turned out to be far more exciting, in
fact, was to hop into a genre that I hadn’t played for a decade. Sure, I might not enjoy
driving as much as SHOOTING SOMEONE IN THE FACE, but a decades’ worth of advances proves
to be more important. It was a real quantum leap for me!
Having grown up with Colin Mcrae Rally for the Playstation ONE, the jump to Dirt 2 was
quite big. Of course the graphics looked a lot better. But what was more impressive was
the amount of polish that has been lavished on the racing genre since the PS1. They bothered
to decorate the menu! Everything flowed together to keep me entertained! Hell, I think the
first time I booted it up it immediately dropped me in a race. Screw menus and option screens,
clearly this generation doesn’t have the attention span to wade through THAT! Of course,
I immediately returned to the graphics settings before commencing my first race.
I won’t bore you with the details. But it was just… nice to have the limitations of
PS1 racing games suddenly thrown out of the window. And to see a load of new additions
that made me think ‘why didn’t I think of that?! During my time with Dirt I enjoyed
being a dick to AI drivers. I rewound time every time I messed up, rather than having
to endure a slow and humiliating defeat from a momentary blunder. I enjoyed Rally and being
a dick to other drivers both in front and behind me! I spent hours seeing how many cars
I could write off from the race. That was 6 years ago. Attempting to relive
the nostalgia, I played through Dirt 3 the other week and it was pretty much identical,
which is why all the footage you see here is from this one. You won’t know the difference.
So like I said: try the racing genre even if you don’t think you like racing. You
might be surprised! For me it was about being a God. About rewinding
if I made any mistake so the end replay shows the perfect lap, round after round. AI drivers
must watch me overtake and be all like ‘GG hacker’. Eat my dust, AI players!
And that’s when I discovered Dirt: Rally. Rally rally rally. Now, Dirt 2 and 3 had built
me up to feeling that I was kind of a big deal. After all, I had managed to beat a toboggan
down a hill in Dirt 3! With the power of time-travel should I make a mistake, I was invincible!
What could Dirt Rally dare throw at me that I couldn’t handle?!
Here’s a recreation of my first race. Yup. I was heart-broken to discover that I
was even worse at driving in this game than I am in real life! I literally GOOGLED ‘Why
can’t I drive in Dirt Rally’. Turns out that it’s all realistic and stuff which
means you skid uncontrollably around every corner and occasionally on the straight bits
as well. And that there’s no time travel. Oh dear. Didn’t help that I was using a
rear-wheel drive car; the mini’s a much better bet. But I didn’t discover this for
a long time because I’m so noob. I was so disappointed. The opportunities for
mischief were gone. Anything fun had been stripped out and replaced with ‘really hard
and unforgiving’. Which is all well and good… but Dirt 2 and 3 had trained me to
be a perfectionist! The moment I spun out I’d ragequit the game. What a waste of money
this game had been! That is, until I let my girlfriend try it.
It gave me endless fun to LAUGH at her ineptness around every corner. She failed and spun out
for a good 10 minutes, barely hobbling across the finish line in her beaten up wreck of
a car. And that was the moment that I learned to
love this game. Because despite all this, despite failing every corner (at least once),
despite smashing her vehicle into oblivion, despite needing new pants for the codriver…
she STILL came ahead of 2 of the other drivers! And admittedly ahead of me too cos I’d ragequit
on the first corner. Oh Dirt. I thought you had lost your humour
and fun. But no! You devious beast, you made it more savage by creating a game as hard
as balls but with AI more inept than ever! Whereas in the older games, a slight mistake
would doom you to last place cos every AI operated at exactly the same skill level,
the times are so spread out in Dirt Rally that they range from ‘very good’ to ‘literally
worse than your girlfriend on her first attempt’. And this is where the appeal lies in Dirt
Rally! It’s about starting out at the bottom, and slowly edging your way up the leaderboards
with every race. Second place isn’t a huge failure. It’s actually a success, since
if you do this every time you’ll probably win since the guy who came first will probably
lower his average by driving off the cliff in the next race.
The courses are long and gruelling. I found myself going into a sort of trance, 100% focused
on the screen and co-driver instructions whilst hammering away at my keyboard like a madman
just to NOT ROYALLY MUCK UP every corner. I think this is the first game where I’ve
had to use the hand-brake. In fact I think it’s the only kind of brake I use now! This
isn’t a game of perfection: this is a game of avoiding grizzly failure. Of botching a
corner and still being relieved because it could have been worse. And I love it. And
to top every race off, at the end you can smugly scroll through the times, laughing
at the wrecks and lost doors that all of these pro drivers managed to pull off around the
corners that you adequately traversed. But failure potentially awaits anyone around
every corner. And your co-driver knows it. What is normally a voice of authority and
confidence in other games has been reduced to a nervous wreck for this one. He shyly
blurts out directions, knowing full well that his life can end at any moment. And probably
will with me at the helm. He urgently blurts ‘don’t cut!’ to which I’m usually
all like ‘Why not? Ohhhhh… THAT’S why.’ The poor guy. I still don’t consider myself
a driving enthusiast. But the Dirt series has reintroduced me to the genre. And like
a silver on his first competitive match of CS:GO, I might still suck, but it doesn’t
matter. It’s the prospect of the climb. It’s that journey of discovery that awaits
me! And one day perhaps I’ll even be back in first place again.
Rally rally rally.

Dirt: How I Learned to Love the Rally

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