DiRT 4 review: As engaging as DiRT Rally but without the punishing difficulty

Last year, UK studio Codemasters blew my nomex racing socks off with DiRT Rally. The achievement was all the more notable because—while I tend to stick almost exclusively to racing games—I haven't really enjoyed off-road or rally games very much in the past. Now, Paul Coleman and his team at Codemasters have a new game for us that builds on the success of DiRT Rally, but it should entice a far wider audience. Enter DiRT 4, available starting June 6 on Playstation 4, Xbox One, and Steam.

While we praised DiRT Rally for its fantastic simulation, describing it as "punishingly difficult" is not unfair. The game was also rather specialized, sticking very much to the discipline of rallying, with a little wheel-to-wheel rallycross thrown in for good measure. DiRT Rally was also a departure from the DiRT franchise, which had always been more accessible and aimed beyond just rallying's infamous "bobble-hatted" fans.

Point-to-point rallies are still on the menu in DiRT 4, with plenty of routes through the forests and over the hills of Wales, Michigan, Spain, Sweden, and Australia. But there's plenty more to race, like the Landrush events, where you race against other cars on short dirt tracks in the deserts of the US and Mexico. Rallycross is back as well, complete with an official license from the FIA's World Rallycross Championship and five rallycross tracks. There's also a driving school (the DirtFish Rally School in Washington state), where you can practice your craft and learn advanced car control, and finally a section called "Joyride," where the aim is to complete stunts and challenges.

Underlying the game are the same physics that impressed us so much in DiRT Rally. But Coleman's team didn't just copy that stuff over to the new game. "The key areas that have seen improvements are our aerodynamics, the way we model chassis geometry, and our tire and surface modeling," Coleman told Ars. The rallycross tire in particular is much improved, thanks to working closely with Cooper Tires (who supply the rubber used in the FIA World Rallycross Championship). "They gave us as much data as they could, which was hugely important as they use a crossply tire, and that behaves very differently to the radial tires used in most other forms of motorsport," Coleman explained.

Revised difficulty curve

As mentioned in the introduction, DiRT 4 is meant to appeal to a much wider swath of gamers than DiRT Rally. Elsewhere on the site, we've discussed how sim racers can sometimes conflate a very difficult game with a very faithful simulation, and while DiRT Rally was both of those, it was evidently obvious to Codemasters that the follow-up needed more mass appeal. This will be music to the ears of people like my colleague Mark Walton.

To that end, you can pick from two different handling modes: "Gamer" and "Simulation." And within those modes are plenty of driver aids and assists you can choose—not just traction control and stability control, but also assisted braking. And gear changes run the gamut from completely manual with an H-pattern gearbox and clutch (assuming you have the right peripheral) all the way through to automatic gear changes.

The accessibility continues with Career mode. You start off in some of the slowest, least-powerful vehicles, and the targets you're given by your team are realistic ones—drive sensibly (i.e., not just flat out) and, even if you don't finish on the podium, you'll still meet the goals and progress to the next challenge. At first, you'll race for other teams, which supply the necessary cars and take a (hefty) cut of your winnings. But once you've started amassing some credits, it's time to start buying cars and running a team for yourself. That means things like hiring engineers, planning R&D for upgrades, and satisfying sponsors.

One thing that's missing from DiRT 4 is VR support. While Coleman says the team learned a lot developing VR for DiRT Rally, getting the latest game ready in time for its launch was an all-consuming effort. "I can’t make any promises as to whether we will be supporting VR in DiRT 4, but we learned a whole lot by supporting it in DiRT Rally, and we are confident that, if the decision gets made, we will be able to give players an incredible VR experience one again," he told us.

But is it fun?

Happily, the answer with DiRT 4 is a resounding "yes!" Take the rally school, for example. While you need to start off here to begin with, it's not like the fiendishly difficult driving tests of Gran Turismo; rather, rally school is a place where you can practice your skills without pressure. The fiendishly difficult bits are found in the Joyride section instead. The handling retains the immersivity that we adored about DiRT Rally, particularly when you use a steering wheel, although the force feedback in 4 does feel much lighter than that game. (We found a similar issue with Forza Horizon 3 vs. Forza Motorsport 6, but, in this case, the difference doesn't detract from the game.)

DiRT 4 should keep you engaged for some time, thanks to the game's new "Your Stage" system that lets you generate novel routes in the five different rally locations. This, Coleman told us, is meant to solve an age-old problem with rallying games. "The issue has always been that, once you have driven a stage, it becomes familiar. Drive it again and you rely less on your co-driver. Keep driving it and eventually you don’t need to listen to the co-driver at all, and it becomes a Time Trial. We wanted to ensure that we held onto that basic principle of what it is to go rallying for as long as possible."

The car selection is also spot-on; Group B monsters include the Metro 6R4 we drove in May, old-timers like the original Mini, current-spec World Rally and World Rallycross machines (along with the less powerful machines used in the lower ranks), wild off-road machines, and plenty of other iconic cars like the Subaru Impreza WRX, Ford Escort Cosworth, and Lancia Delta Integrale. (The last of those is Coleman's personal favorite, thanks to a family connection.)

Perhaps it's surprising how much I ended up enjoying DiRT 4. After all, Forza Horizon 3 was the last "accessible" spin-off of a racing game I truly loved (Forza Motorsport 6), and I never gelled with that game at all. Perhaps I'm drawn to the closed—as opposed to open—world of this new game, or maybe I like "DiRT 4" because less of the hardcore sim got lost in translation. Either way, if you like your racing to be as sideways as possible, you'll want to try DiRT 4.

The good:

• Engaging gameplay for all skill levels
• Plenty of cars from which to choose
• A good mix of point-to-point rallies and wheel-to-wheel racing in Rallycross and Landrush

The bad:

• No VR support
• Could do with a bit more force-feedback

The ugly:

• Having to drive through the forest stage in Michigan at 20mph because the fog is so bad you literally can't see the next corner

Verdict: Put off by DiRT Rally because it was too hard? This is the game for you. (Fans of DiRT Rally will also have fun.)

Listing image by Codemasters