Pole Position for Next-Gen

There are few launch titles better to showcase a new console than a driving game, and Codemasters Cheshire has taken up the mantle with Dirt 5, the latest installment in their mud flinging franchise.

This eyeball-searing entry brings all the verve, dynamism and excitement of an outdoor festival to the racing scene, bringing with it a litany of next-gen features to cement it as the posterchild of the Xbox Series X’s most impressive features – check it all out in our Dirt 5 review.

 

 

Graphics

The reason racing games often the first on the scene is that they skirt closest to the uncanny valley, with those corner-of-your-eye moments when you could swear it’s a Ken Block highlight reel rather than a video game.

Dirt 5’s visuals have an immediate impact, an art style aiming for exaggerated hyper-realism complete with a dayglo user interface, rather than striving towards photo-realistic locales.

That’s not to say the mixture of rally and off-road cars aren’t realistic – they are fully liveried and everything from legends like the Lancia Stratos and Ford RS Cosworth to open-wheeled death traps like the Ariel Atom are on display.

The next-gen difference also arrives in the form of three options for visuals – resolution, image quality, and 120Hz.

 

 

The first offers an uncapped frame rate, with visuals running up to the mythical 4K.

The second naturally aims for a smoother ride but pares back the graphical flourishes in areas, whilst the 120Hz mode finally gives console gamers super-smooth motion at 4K, but really skims off anything but the core experience to deliver blistering responsiveness.

An impressive technical feat, but one which takes the game’s looks firmly into what’s now last-gen territory – an exciting indication of things to come, but it seems a touch too far in this installment.

That’s not to say the game looks bad at any time, the sun-dappled courses look as beautiful as the road courses are brutal, and the track deformation of both mud and ice is impressive, evoking memories of another launch title in the Playstation 3’s Motorstorm.

The locales travelled to are characters in their own right – the winding narrow track snaking through the favelas of Brazil, showered in rain and lit up by lightning, or the frozen wilds of Norway, all are rendered with a loving sheen but an art for the dramatic – making for heart-stopping moments during every race.

 

 

Audio

The graphics may be a little cartoony in Dirt 5, but the sounds are serious.

The throaty roar of your engine is intense (all the better when wearing headphones), and a real sense of audio space enables you to effectively know when – and where – your competitors are bearing down on you.

Each time you trade paint is a visceral experience, and the rev of each car sounds incredibly unique, giving the game an immersive edge.

If Dirt 5’s virtual lanyards and colour scheme evoke the vibe of a four-wheeled festival, then the soundtrack cements it.

Achingly current without veering into cringe, huge acts like The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers and The Killers headline the playlist, with pleasant surprises like Pearl Jam, Floating Points and Chaka Khan’s anthem ‘Like Sugar’ rounding out what might be the most eclectic driving game soundtrack to date.

One issue we did find on the rare occasion was audio dropping out during play, but a quick reset of the Series X and we were back in the party.

 

 

Gameplay

This is where Dirt 5 really comes into its own.

Unabashed, unadulterated fun, with the stuffiness of its contemporaries replaced with an arcade vibe, but sporting serious racing mechanics under the bonnet.

The career mode provides the core of your Dirt journey – a well-crafted selection of courses and cars, the usual tenets of XP and upgrades, and given a novel narrative structure by the greatest actors in the biz – Nolan North and Troy Baker.

Their natural charisma and attitude give the game added swagger, playing racing luminaries and adversaries respectively and spurring you through the campaign with surprising depth.

 

 

This is all for nothing if the driving isn’t great, and thankfully the handling model of these cars is fantastic – different classes of car truly have their own weight, position on the track and you really gain a sense of how to throw them around corners in no time.

The globe-trotting nature of Dirt 5 – from Morocco to Norway and New York – means that there are an array of surfaces to race on, all having their own unique feel.

That sense of the back end getting away from you, to suddenly have the tires bite and streak home to a win is unrivaled, and quickly have you grinning from ear-to-ear.

That feeling is more keenly felt when you opt for the frame rate or 120Hz modes, scaling back the graphics, but materially enhancing the feel of these vehicles as you wrench them around the tracks spraying gravel into the stands.

Race types vary too, from point-to-point and time trials as well as traditional circuit races, but also marking a comeback for Gymkhana.

These crafty courses force you to push your car to the limit, a score-based system rewarding drifts, jumps and clever cornering.

An arena editor named Playgrounds gives almost limitless potential to create your own courses – anything from super-ramps that would scare Evil Knievel to a tight circuit primed for drifting is a few button taps and some concentration away.

 

 

Verdict

Dirt 5 is a pulse-pounding, exhilarating ride, made all the more impressive with the trappings of a next-gen sheen in 120Hz frame rates and incredible audio.

Doing away with the increasingly staid formula of simulation racing games, it’s a breath of fresh – if somewhat dusty – air.

Give it some time, work past the initial set of courses and it opens up into a varied, engaging rally experience that takes some interesting left turns to add flesh to its bones with the career mode.

Even without that, Dirt 5 is a pleasurable playbox of some of the best rally cars to ever grace the tarmac, and leaves one heck of a positive impression.

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