jonboy1066
4th May 2007, 11:12 AM
Yesterday I was one of the lucky people who were invited to Codemasters HQ for a guided tour and a first play of DIRT.
It was an action packed day and in my view well worth the 350 mile drive from Hastings to Leamington Spa and back to take part.
Firstly thank you RFT of Codies for inviting us along it was great to meet other gamers and share some views about this and other games.
We started by Rich and Sam of Codemasters giving us a guided tour of the Codies HQ which gave us a few sneak peeks of what goes on behind the scenes, and while we were there two gameplay videos came in hot off the press that RFT hadn't even seen yet so we were treated to a first view of the latest game play vids.
The rest of you should be able to see them in a couple of weeks and trust me they're fantastic.
While we were there we caught sight of a few posters which contained some pretty exciting images of a (I assume) certain game coming in '08 but I'd better not say too much as I'll probably never be invited to a forum day again and RFT would probably hunt me down like a dog for spilling too many beans.
Then it was on to the game. We went into the conference room and there was a race seat setup with an XBox 360 and the new force feedback wheel. While RFT did some technical stuff to get the other 360 running we took it in turns to have a go in the seat.
Monkey was first up and did a Buggie race, they looked pretty difficult but as always Monkey got on top of them pretty quick and they looked awesome.
Gaz was next but I can't remember what he did, safe to say it was very good though as he came away smiling.
Then me, I raced a Subaru around a super special type crossover stage in Canberra Australia the car handled brilliantly and there was just enough room between the barriers to get a good slide on.
By now the second 360 was setup so we all swapped from console to console trying out different stuff. I wittnessed & Played; Rally Cross, Fwd Rally, 4WD Rally, Rally Raid, RWD rally & Hill Climb @ Pikes Peak. All of which looked stunning, handled fabulously and sounded great.
Glitches:
As far as I could see Dirt was pretty solid and almost glitch free, the only bug we noticed was when RFT was Rallying in a FWD Fiat Punto and he damaged the rear of the car, the boot lid flapped in the breeze as you'd expect but the glass panel in the boot appeared to still be stuck to the car and was independant from the metal frame it should have been connected to. RFT was the first to spot it so I'm sure it'll be fixed before release and to be honest you'll only notice it if you use the chase cam which most people don't anyway.
Visuals
The visuals were simply fantastic, the damage modeling was phenomenal and extremely accurate, the way glass broke into tiny pieces was amazing and there were loads of simple touches that made this game very impressive, if you lose your bonnet you can see the engine rocking on it's mounts under the stresses of acceleration & decelleration, if you can see the susspension then you'll see it working in incredible detail. The track furniture has improved greatly as well, tyre barriers actually deform when hit and if you bury the car deep enough into the tyre barrier you see each individual tyre move as the wall collapses around you.
Handling
The cars handle pretty well and I'd say they were somewhere between Sim and Pro Sim on ToCA Race Driver 3 in terms of difficulty of getting to grips with and you have three levels of dificulty AM-PROAM-&-PRO as far as I can gather these modes just affected the level of damage sustained to the car rather than the way it handled. The rally purists among you will probably slate the game for this handling but it was challenging enough without being too easy and was very user friendly.
The Online mode
As far as the online mode goes I've always been in the "dissapointed that there's no online head to head" camp and I still feel that way, but this is the game we've got and nothing will change that. The 100 player lobby function wasn't tested by us to the max but we did get 11 in a room at one point and it has to be seen to be appreciated, you get a choice of abpout 8 or 10 different types of race that will be up next and all the players in the lobby get to vote what they want to do next, whichever series gets the most votes becomes the next race. And away you go. Although you don't see your opponents cars you are all running at the same time so your sector times are live and your race position is constantly updated as the stage progresses and it does get pretty addictive just trying to gain one more position.
We raced with:
Kenworth Freightliner Trucks with massive wings
Audi Quattro's
Subaru Imprezzas
Lancia Stratos' (The Old Ones)
Renault Clios
And the Big one at the end was a full Pikes Peak hill climb in the legendary Peugeot 405 Pikes peak car.
Don't write off this online mode it's a lot of fun.
Online chat
Basically there is none, but realistically how could you have open comms in a room of 100?
What you do get is a text chat room in the lobby, this is a room where you can send pre determined text messages to everyone else. You select the mood of the message you want to send by using the left analouge stick, moods such as "Frustrated" "Angry" "Brag" "Goodbye" and then use the left stick again to choose the pre determined sentence you want to send such as; "Trees are my nemesis" "Who Voted for this rubbish?" "Travis Who?" and "Toilet Break"
It's a fun feature but I reckon it won't be long before it wears a bit thin and stops being funny.
If you do want Voice chat I suppose there'd be nothing to stop you setting up a conference chat on Yahoo messenger or using Ventrillo comms as there'll be no issues with lag what with you racing on track alone there'd be no harm in having the PC on and chatting that way while you race on your console.
Overall Impressions:
This is gonna be an awesome game and in my opinion the best off road racing game ever, with the new Neon engine being a great base to get Race Driver One going and any other Codies Next gen racing game that could be around in the future. Putting Codemasters at the forefront in next gen racing games.
Would I Buy it?
Not as easy a question as it sounds.
If I already had a PS3 or an XBox 360 then DIRT would be at the very top of my wish list of games, I'd even go so far as to queue up on release night to get my copy as soon as humanly possible.
But I don't have a PS3 or an XBox360 and this lack of multiplayer head to head racing has clinched it for me. I have been waiting for a game to come out that would give me a good enough excuse to buy a PS3 and DIRT very nearly did it, but not quite. I guess I'll be hanging on a little while longer before I venture into Next gen gaming but one things for sure I'm pretty confident that with what we've seen today it's going to be well worth the wait for Race Driver One
Jonboy's rating 8.5/10
A great effort and a fantastic game but I just don't have the time to play it or the money to get into the next gen, but if you're already a proud owner of a Decent PC, PS3 or a 360 then this is a must buy game.
It was an action packed day and in my view well worth the 350 mile drive from Hastings to Leamington Spa and back to take part.
Firstly thank you RFT of Codies for inviting us along it was great to meet other gamers and share some views about this and other games.
We started by Rich and Sam of Codemasters giving us a guided tour of the Codies HQ which gave us a few sneak peeks of what goes on behind the scenes, and while we were there two gameplay videos came in hot off the press that RFT hadn't even seen yet so we were treated to a first view of the latest game play vids.
The rest of you should be able to see them in a couple of weeks and trust me they're fantastic.
While we were there we caught sight of a few posters which contained some pretty exciting images of a (I assume) certain game coming in '08 but I'd better not say too much as I'll probably never be invited to a forum day again and RFT would probably hunt me down like a dog for spilling too many beans.
Then it was on to the game. We went into the conference room and there was a race seat setup with an XBox 360 and the new force feedback wheel. While RFT did some technical stuff to get the other 360 running we took it in turns to have a go in the seat.
Monkey was first up and did a Buggie race, they looked pretty difficult but as always Monkey got on top of them pretty quick and they looked awesome.
Gaz was next but I can't remember what he did, safe to say it was very good though as he came away smiling.
Then me, I raced a Subaru around a super special type crossover stage in Canberra Australia the car handled brilliantly and there was just enough room between the barriers to get a good slide on.
By now the second 360 was setup so we all swapped from console to console trying out different stuff. I wittnessed & Played; Rally Cross, Fwd Rally, 4WD Rally, Rally Raid, RWD rally & Hill Climb @ Pikes Peak. All of which looked stunning, handled fabulously and sounded great.
Glitches:
As far as I could see Dirt was pretty solid and almost glitch free, the only bug we noticed was when RFT was Rallying in a FWD Fiat Punto and he damaged the rear of the car, the boot lid flapped in the breeze as you'd expect but the glass panel in the boot appeared to still be stuck to the car and was independant from the metal frame it should have been connected to. RFT was the first to spot it so I'm sure it'll be fixed before release and to be honest you'll only notice it if you use the chase cam which most people don't anyway.
Visuals
The visuals were simply fantastic, the damage modeling was phenomenal and extremely accurate, the way glass broke into tiny pieces was amazing and there were loads of simple touches that made this game very impressive, if you lose your bonnet you can see the engine rocking on it's mounts under the stresses of acceleration & decelleration, if you can see the susspension then you'll see it working in incredible detail. The track furniture has improved greatly as well, tyre barriers actually deform when hit and if you bury the car deep enough into the tyre barrier you see each individual tyre move as the wall collapses around you.
Handling
The cars handle pretty well and I'd say they were somewhere between Sim and Pro Sim on ToCA Race Driver 3 in terms of difficulty of getting to grips with and you have three levels of dificulty AM-PROAM-&-PRO as far as I can gather these modes just affected the level of damage sustained to the car rather than the way it handled. The rally purists among you will probably slate the game for this handling but it was challenging enough without being too easy and was very user friendly.
The Online mode
As far as the online mode goes I've always been in the "dissapointed that there's no online head to head" camp and I still feel that way, but this is the game we've got and nothing will change that. The 100 player lobby function wasn't tested by us to the max but we did get 11 in a room at one point and it has to be seen to be appreciated, you get a choice of abpout 8 or 10 different types of race that will be up next and all the players in the lobby get to vote what they want to do next, whichever series gets the most votes becomes the next race. And away you go. Although you don't see your opponents cars you are all running at the same time so your sector times are live and your race position is constantly updated as the stage progresses and it does get pretty addictive just trying to gain one more position.
We raced with:
Kenworth Freightliner Trucks with massive wings
Audi Quattro's
Subaru Imprezzas
Lancia Stratos' (The Old Ones)
Renault Clios
And the Big one at the end was a full Pikes Peak hill climb in the legendary Peugeot 405 Pikes peak car.
Don't write off this online mode it's a lot of fun.
Online chat
Basically there is none, but realistically how could you have open comms in a room of 100?
What you do get is a text chat room in the lobby, this is a room where you can send pre determined text messages to everyone else. You select the mood of the message you want to send by using the left analouge stick, moods such as "Frustrated" "Angry" "Brag" "Goodbye" and then use the left stick again to choose the pre determined sentence you want to send such as; "Trees are my nemesis" "Who Voted for this rubbish?" "Travis Who?" and "Toilet Break"
It's a fun feature but I reckon it won't be long before it wears a bit thin and stops being funny.
If you do want Voice chat I suppose there'd be nothing to stop you setting up a conference chat on Yahoo messenger or using Ventrillo comms as there'll be no issues with lag what with you racing on track alone there'd be no harm in having the PC on and chatting that way while you race on your console.
Overall Impressions:
This is gonna be an awesome game and in my opinion the best off road racing game ever, with the new Neon engine being a great base to get Race Driver One going and any other Codies Next gen racing game that could be around in the future. Putting Codemasters at the forefront in next gen racing games.
Would I Buy it?
Not as easy a question as it sounds.
If I already had a PS3 or an XBox 360 then DIRT would be at the very top of my wish list of games, I'd even go so far as to queue up on release night to get my copy as soon as humanly possible.
But I don't have a PS3 or an XBox360 and this lack of multiplayer head to head racing has clinched it for me. I have been waiting for a game to come out that would give me a good enough excuse to buy a PS3 and DIRT very nearly did it, but not quite. I guess I'll be hanging on a little while longer before I venture into Next gen gaming but one things for sure I'm pretty confident that with what we've seen today it's going to be well worth the wait for Race Driver One
Jonboy's rating 8.5/10
A great effort and a fantastic game but I just don't have the time to play it or the money to get into the next gen, but if you're already a proud owner of a Decent PC, PS3 or a 360 then this is a must buy game.