Did you ever play Dirt 5? I know a lot of people were disappointed in it because they were expecting either "Dirt 2: 2" or a new Motorstorm given the pedigree of the team on it but I know a few people really dug it as a modern take on Sega Rally? Given the Sega comparisons, do you have any thoughts on it?
I played about an hour of Dirt 5 when I had the free trial of Stadia Pro. Since then, I realized I actually own Dirt 5 on Steam, and I think I may even have gotten it on PS4 through PS+.
I dunno if I'd call it a modern take on Sega Rally. It just seems like another Dirt game, though I get this weird vibe from Codemasters where it feels like their more recent output... I dunno.
Like, to me, Codemasters invented a lot of extremely smart things for racing games. Like, to my knowledge, they were the ones who introduced rewinds in to racing games with that very first Grid game in 2008. And for a hot minute, rewinds became, like, a cornerstone of accessibility in the racing genre!
But then you get to Dirt 5, and it doesn't have rewinds. Neither do either of the Dirt Rally games. They pioneered that system and decided they didn't want it anymore. They're just going to let Forza and whoever else have that, I guess. It's backwards.
And what I've played and what I've seen of Dirt 5 just feels a little odd in other ways, given their past games. The visuals don't feel as polished, the way the camera frames the action is a little weird (it makes the cars feel strangely small) and just in general it feels like Codemasters is losing their touch.
Because I've played the crap out of plenty of Codemasters racing games in my day. I put like 35 hours in to Dirt 2, probably like 20 hours in to Dirt 3, 10 hours in to Grid 2, probably at least 15 hours in to the Grid reboot, etc.
And I feel like they've been chasing certain ideas that never quite land, and I don't know if they know how to land them. It feels like they're always trying to find ways to weave narrative in to their games without it being overbearing, and I think that's what people liked the most about Dirt 2. Racers would banter during the race, and they were voiced by the real people. Combined with the race tour motif and it felt really cool.
And then they... ditched that for Dirt 3, instead shuttling you off to some cardboard race team with zero personality. It's extra annoying in Grid 2, where they lay it on super thick about how cool racing is and how cool the event sponsor is and how cool you are and they kind of never shut up in the worst ways possible. You're supposed to be this cool racing up-and-coming legend but the game has to pull you aside and be like "what you want to do here is drive faster than the other cars and win what is called a 'race', which is a type of competition that typically involves driving vehicles" in an unskippable cutscene.
In that regard, I think Dirt 5 is kind of smart because instead of telling a story they just kind of frame their "narrative" as two guys hosting a sports podcast that plays over montages of race footage. That's a fun idea, but I find myself not caring in the same way I don't care about real sports podcasts. There's a bit too much radio DJ smarm.
All that weirdness aside, the core gameplay still seems to be fine. When my Stadia Pro trial ran out, I started installing it on my PS4 before realizing I didn't have enough HDD space for it. Was going to install it here on the PC but I forgot about it until now.
I just don't get the Sega Rally comparisons. I mean, sure, Dirt 5 is a casual-ish rally game, but you gotta have more than that.