Before I purchased Dirt Rally 2.0, I didn't know what I wanted, other than a taste of nostalgia for old PC rally games that I played as a child, growing up. Drive from point A to point B as quickly as possible, with as little damage as possible, and at all costs, fundamentally, survive.
Scrolling through the reviews on the game, one caught my eye "This is the Dark Souls of racing games." Now, I know what that means. Complex, nuanced gameplay; driven on by your prior actions.
If you fail to execute a first action correctly, (let's call it turn 1), then you're going to be in trouble for turn 2, all the way through to that chequered flag at the end of a stage. This is what torture, pain and misery means.
You can experience this torture pain and misery in a number of different flavours, with the game supporting ordinary rally, with stages, opportunities for maintaining your car, and aggregated times (just like the real thing) - or; if you prefer, a more exciting, fast paced rally-cross format; which is like motocross, but for cars.
You can do this using a flat screen, a curved screen, or even do it in VR, which gives you the highest level of immersion. The VR experience is pretty decent compared to F1 22; which I feel went backwards compared to this game, which... ironically; came out some 2 years before hand.
The crux of the matter is that this game is not a drive down your favourite back road. It is a harrowing experience, thundering down narrow, treelined, twisty excuses for roads. Each tree is a potential grave marker; and each corner is a spin or a flip waiting to happen.
Dirt Rally 2.0 demands (and commands) your absolute and undivided attention at all times in order to tame the monstrous creations that pass for racing vehicles in the game.
There's a full cast of stuff from Ford, Subaru, Peugeot and other classic rally brands, along with the all than more welcome stack of historical rally cars.
There's also some interesting bugs, particularly on the start of most stages, where your co-driver will start to provide you with navigational instructions before you've even got the green light to go, sometimes before the camera even moves into the cabin of the vehicle.
That's a jarring element; but one that is appropriately forgivable, given the hundreds of instructions that you'll calmly be read as you navigate through stages.
Dirt Rally 2.0 is a game for those that want to drive on Dirt in a simulated manner, and be stuck to the edge of their seat almost constantly. It is not something that evokes the fun memories of tearing around crudely rendered race tracks with cars eager to steer in.
It is a game with a dose of reality, understeer, oversteer, and nothing separating you from death beyond a meagre tin can, four patches of rubber, and a circular control wheel and two pedals.
Rally is a seriously dangerous sport, and Dirt Rally 2.0 does an incredible job of translating this danger into a video game. I just wish it were more, and less "Dark Souls".
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