Posted in Codemasters, Games, Racing, Rambles

Rambling About Grid(2019)

Well, you knew this was coming, After Grid: Autosport, the Grid series was kinda in hibernation for a bit, as Codemasters was busy with other things, such as Dirt Rally and Dirt 4, as well as the next-gen Formula 1 games. However, in May 2019, Codemasters revealed the new Grid game, going under the name of Grid, though it’s often called Grid 2019 to help it differ from the 1st game, RaceDriver Grid.

I remember liking what I saw of this game and thinking that the graphics were a big step up from Grid: Autosport, which was already a great-looking game. However, my 1st time playing this was on Google Stadia, and needless to say, it was not fun. I did end up getting the Ultimate Edition from a code that I got on Twitter, I don’t remember from who, but I honestly don’t remember much of my 1st time playing this game, so much so, I decided to use a fresh save for this, if anything just to give it a fair chance.

So let’s just dive into this reboot of a somewhat dormant franchise!

So to start off I want to say, that I think this game looks amazing. It feels like Grid Autosport but turned up to 11 in terms of being very “in your face” about all the details, from the dirt on the street circuits to the scratches on the car. It’s honestly a very nice way of doing Hyper-Realistic graphics, as it’s not just done for the sake of having Hyper-Realistic graphics, it’s done with intent and purpose and it’s something you remember about the game. I was playing on low settings, so you’re playing on High settings, boy you must be living your best life right now.

The opening of the game talks about the WSR, or the World Series Racing, coming to an end, and during this, you get introduced to 3 types of cars, Endurance, Touring and Stock, which is new for Grid 2019, or at least new to me. This intro is pretty cool, and it does get me hyped for the new Grid World Series, though unlocking it is a bit of a pain.

So the way this game is structured is similar to Grid Autosport, while there are no longer seasons, you start out in a lower-class car, and work you’re up to the better machinery. Once you get to the highest class of Machinery, you can do a Showdown event, and once you do enough of those, you get to the Grid World series. I feel like this method is a bit tedious, compared to Grid Autosport, where you had checkpoints in a way. You could do the lower series 1st, then go do the relevant Grid series for those cars. However, here you have to do almost everything, and while you can skip certain stages, which you might want to do to save time in places, it still does feel like a grind in terms of the format, as you can’t really drop off and go do a Grid series at any given point, unlike autosport.

In terms of the series you can play in, they have been changed a little bit from Autosport. Touring, Endurance and Tuner return, but now we also have a category based on 2-time F1 Champion Fernando Alonso, Stock Cars, which contain Stock Cars, Stock Trucks and Muscle cars. and the Invitational series, which allows you to drive a selection of cars from different eras.

Touring starts in TC2 cars, which are basically modified hatchbacks, then heading into the Super Tourers, which are basically the cars from the Australian Supercars series, and then heading up into the TC1 Specials, which are older touring cars from the ’60s, formally used in BTCC and ETCC This category was fun and a good intro to the game, but I felt the handling of the cars was kinda weird. Granted, these are some of the slowest cars in the game, not counting the minis so I guess that makes sense. Touring car is all about punting people out of the way, though you can do it in most categories in this game, there’s no strict rule system, but if you an AI too many times(or just hit them really hard, IDK it seems random) you activate the nemesis system, which basically increases their aggression when trying to race you, and in terms of you’re teammate, just flat-out ignoring your commands to push or defend.

Stock Cars I actually had a lot of fun with, as it is not just NASCAR’s here, you get to drive stock trucks, and also Muscle cars. The Muscle Cars are very powerful, but not so nimble and it’s kinda fun to race them around street courses, like San Francisco and Shanghai, where despite all the 90-degree turns, they are still very fun to race! I also was using some stuff I got thanks to the Ultimate Edition, the big thing being, Grid Edition cars.

Grid Edition cars are cars that have a black carbon livery that does look pretty cool, and they give you extra XP which in turn helps you level up, though don’t worry too much about it, the game gives you plenty of chances to earn XP, through making basic moves, setting the fastest lap of the race, etc, and honestly, it just unlocks more liveries for your cars, and different teammates, which I honestly don’t know what they do. I also still can’t weeb up my livery yet, so that kinda sucks. It is kinda weird that the XP aspect is just tied to multiplayer stuff only, but I am talking as this game got a sequel.

Anyways, the trucks and Stock Cars basically race like NASCAR Trucks and NASCAR Xfinity cars, so very heavy and also not really agile at all, but they are fun to just slide around a little bit on tracks like the returning San Fransisco, and Crescent Valley Raceway, a new name for Autosport Speedway from the last game because licencing.

This game looks INSANE at nighttime.

Tuner cars are more focused on modded cars than ever before as you start out in the modified class, then head on to super modified cars, and then world time attack cars, most of which are some sort of modified Japanese hatchback. These are fun and have the most emphasis on Time Attack, a mode where it’s just you against the clock in order to set the fastest time, though I feel the traffic is worse here than it was in autosport, as it gets in the way more often than not. However, the cars are really fun, it’s what happens when you take a normal car then add a bunch of turbos to it, it’s very fun honestly.

GT was actually the category I had the most fun with, which is a big change from Autosport, that’s for sure. You start out in Group 2 cars, which are basically GT 4 cars used in lower spec series, then work your way up into Group 1 cars, which are GT 3 cars, and then into Prototype, which involves you driving the recently defunct DPi class of cars. Here Codemasters had a partnership with IMSA, the Premier American endurance racing series, so all the cars are licenced and have their official branding on them. These are all a lot of fun to drive, they feel very smooth and honestly just work on all the tracks in this game. I really enjoyed driving the Group 1 Dodge Viper GT3-R, in particular.

The track variety in this game is also pretty neat, as there’s a mix of street circuits around cities, like Shanghai in China and Havana in Cuba, to well-known real-life circuits in Silverstone and Sydney Motorsport Park, to even some togue style circuits in Okutama if you want to get you’re Initial D style drift on. However, there’s also no time trial mode which is a little odd. Instead, you’re time is calculated by your best laps in a race which is… kinda odd.

Fernando Alonso’s category is primarily made up of classes of cars that the 2 time F1 champion has driven, though there are some Super Touring races here, it’s mainly made up of the F1000 cars, which are kinda like mini F1 cars, and GT cars, as this was when Alonso was really diving into the Endurance racing scene. I appreciate the F1000 cars, but what kinda sucks is that outside of the R26, Alonso’s 2006 championship-winning car, it’s the only open-wheel car in the game, which is a bummer, given that I enjoyed open-wheel and its invitational events so much in Grid Autosport.

Invitational is basically what I would call the guest driver category, you get to drive a bunch of classic cars around different tracks, and while you don’t get to keep them, that’s fine to me because there’s a lot of history here, and it’s pretty fun to go through it all.

I should stress now, I think Grid is a good game for sure, the in-car gameplay is great, the game is stunning to look at, and there’s a lot of good visual direction here, as races usually start with a view of the track and run through the Grid, and end with fireworks going off in a similar way to how Rallycross races end. However, I feel the structure of the game has to go through everything before you battle Ravenwest, the top team because of course they are, is a bit annoying for me personally. However it’s only one of 2 Grid titles available in digital stores now, and it’s under £20 normally, so if you wanted to pick it up, I would not blame you at all. You can pick it up for PS4, Xbox One and Steam.

So yea, the racers are done. for now anyways. It’s been really fun playing these games, and of course, I’ll get to Dirt 5 and Grid Legends eventually, but I think I need a small break from writing about them.

Before I go I just wanted to say, I’m a part of the Rapid Reviews team now! I just reviewed Block Em, an indie game that could use some work honestly, but has a solid enough base. Check it out here, and while you’re at it, check out the podcast my co-writers, Pete and Kiley do for Rapid Reviews, they just interviewed the developer of Horace, Paul Helman, and join them on Twitch every Sunday at 7:30PM UK time/11:30AM Pacsifc/2:30 PM eastern.

Taking a small break, but the next time we meet will probably be trying out June’s selection of Steam Next Fest demos. But for now, thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time.

Posted in Codemasters, Games, Racing, Rambles

Rambling about DIRT 4

So I figured I should probably do this while I’m actually playing the game a bunch, and having a lot of fun while doing so. Dirt Rally is highly regarded as one of the best Rally games of all time, and one of the best racing games of all time. I do think it’s also very hard if you don’t have a wheel, but I won’t deny that probably is some fun to be had if you just want to pick up the game casually. Dirt 4 was then released in 2017 with a similar format to Dirt Rally. The game was recently de-listed from Storefronts alongside a bunch of other, in what seems a move due to the EA/Codemasters buyout, but you can probably find keys or a copy for cheap on Ebay.

But still, this was a game that I was really curious about after playing Dirt Rally? So was it at least good? Let’s find out.

Artwork by Yitsune

So starting off, I will just say, this game is a LOT more beginner friendly than Dirt Rally. 1st of all, it has 2 different handling models, Gamer and Simulation. I chose a gamer because I don’t have a wheel. There are also a lot of tutorials that tell you what certain things do, like the handbrake, which is useful for getting around tight corners.

Progression in this game works like so: you run a race team, and you have to get to the top of 3 different disciplines of off-road racing, Rally, which involves you driving cars on either gravel, snow or the tightest roads known to man, Rallycross, my personal favourite, which involves you driving on tracks with both asphalt and gravel against other competitor’s, and Landrush, which is kinda dirt track racing but with bigger tracks.

You own a team, but you can choose to drive events for other teams, where repairs during the event are free, but they do take up time, which if you go over 30 mins for, you get a penalty. Of course, if you are driving for yourself, you pay for the repairs, which can be costly, but the prize money balances out when you do well. Cars for each discipline can be customized if you’re racing for your own team, with sponsors and car colours, but I still can’t weeb up my ride! Gonna keep saying it till I can do it in one of these games!

Cars for each discipline are bought from the dealership or the classifieds, and the cars range from classics like the Mini Cooper and Audi Quattro to more modern machines like the VW Polo and the Ford Focus RS RX, to more specialised machines like the Crosskarts and Stadium Trucks. There’s something for everyone in this game, but the question you’re probably wondering is how do they work?

Rally is the same discipline as it is in Dirt Rally, where you race on open roads on Gravel, asphalt, and Snow. There are 5 locations, Australia, the USA and Wales all use varying types of Gravel, Sweden brings the inevitable snow psychics and the horrors that come with snow psychics in any game, and Spain brings some familiarity with just straight-up asphalt roads, though you may run into some cobblestones on the way when you run into some towns.

The way that stages work is that they are randomly generated, and if you are using the Freeplay mode, you can actually choose the length and complexity of the stage, but I will say the random generator very clearly doesn’t have enough stuff in it, as corners and certain sequences tend to repeat during stages, but I’ll be honest I’m having too much fun in this game to care because the handling of the cars is amazing with a controller.

I said when I looked at Dirt Rally, that the cars were fine-tuned for steering wheels, but here, they feel a lot better to handle with a controller and it’s awesome to just drive these things, and I’m happy about that because it makes the game a lot more fun. I haven’t reached the top category in rally yet, but cars like the Subaru Impreza, the Mini Cooper and the Mitsubishi Lancer are really fun to drive around these challenging courses, where corners are often blind, speeds are high, and bravery is needed in spades.

The feeling of racing these cars around these circuits is a lot better to me, and it’s something that I hope it added to the new WRC game that Codemasters is apparently making, which if that plays like Dirt Rally, I’ll probably just skip it because I don’t have the money or space for a wheel to play games like that! I’ll leave that to the sim racing pros like Jimmy Broadbent.

Weather can also play a big factor in rally, as you race no matter how bad things get sometimes. There was fog on one of the stages I played, and it’s hard to race when you can’t see s**t, but you have to do it in rally. I guess Rally is the only motorsport that can stick it to Mother Nature sometimes. I’ll also just say now that Historic Rally is the same thing but in older cars, they try to sell you on it being different, but it’s really not.

Landrush, I like said before, is basically dirt track racing on bigger tracks in buggies, and later, super trucks. I honestly haven’t gone back to it since I played it for the career mode, and it feels like it’s a nice mini add-on to what is already in the game, but not a selling point. It’s better than Hillclimb in Dirt Rally, and that’s kinda all I have to say about it.

As for Rallycross, man I love it, but there were just a few small steps away from hitting a home run with this mode. The gameplay of the rallycross cars themselves are perfect, I love how every car from the 1600s to Supercars feels, they are fun to drive with my controller, and the racing with the ai is pretty close, and involves a lot of beating and banging as it should. The tracks feel very nice to drive on and very different to each other, from the undulating gravel of Hell in Norway, to the very fast-flowing circuit of Lohéac in France. But there also comes the problem with this mode, there are only five tracks to choose from, and 3 of them are carryovers from Dirt Rally. The 2 new ones are Lohéac in France and Montalegre in Portugal. I appreciate that since Lohéac is really cool, I love the Joker Lap Merge on it, but if you don’t enjoy Rallycross I can see why it would be repetitive.

Another disappointing thing is that there are no Audi’s in this game at all, so you can’t even play as Robin Larsson, Topi Heikkinen, and the World Champion at the time this game came out, Mattias Ekström. I get that licences are hard, but MAN, that sucks. Still, I do find a lot of fun in Rallycross, it’s probably the mode I’ve put the most time into, but I just feel like they could have done a little more honestly.

There are also some joyride challenges that kinda serve as a Gymkhana mode, as these usually involve you smashing through blocks or setting the fastest time you can through abandoned buildings, crates and ramps. Pretty fun overall honestly, even if I haven’t personally spent much time on it.

Dirt 4 is a great game that’s lacking in certain aspects, and honestly, in terms of rally and rallycross, it might be the best product out there on the market for casual gamers, or people who don’t want to deal with sim racing setups in order to play a form of motorsport they like. I know that this game is harder to find, especially since they have taken this game off digital stores, and why did they take this game off digital stores, but if you can find a copy or a key, it’s worth a shot. You can get it on the PS4, Xbox 360 and Steam,

Man, it’s been a while since I wrote about a racing game. These games are why I invented the rambling format in the 1st place, to write about these without the pressure of having to 100% them, which is always a plus.

Next time, I’ll be talking about my new favourite character in Genshin Impact, Deyha. I predict that blog post will be me simping for a fictional women quite a bit. We’ll see.

But for now, thanks for reading, and I will see you next time.

Posted in Games, Racing

Hotshot Racing: Review

For Murrey Walker 1923-2021. Thank you for being the voice of F1.

Hello! So it’s time to go racing! But this time we are racing a very different kinda of games than we have is the past. This is an arcade racer, something I’ve been looking to get a proper taste of for a long time, cause while MarioKart is fun. it also feels luck based. While Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing does a good job in this department, I’ve also been a big fan of classic arcade style racers, which seem to be coming back in the for of games such as Art of Rally, and the upcoming Victory Heat Rally. But I want to look at another project which I hear people enjoy, and were following for a while, but I only heard of about a month before release. So does this fill the arcade racer void in a way I want? As always Spoilers are abounding(though, with a game like this, not that it matters…) and I’m playing the PC version of the game.

So, there isn’t really a story here, so let’s go into the different modes that are in this game.

There’s Grand Prix, which of course is the mode where you race on 4 race tracks, and earn points to win the cup at end and an ending cutscene for your selected character. Single Race consists of 3 modes, a normal race mode which is just a standard race, cops and robbers, which consist of the back 4 cars trying turn the 4 leading cars into cops which is pretty fun, and Drive or Explode, a mode where you try and drive the car without taking too much damage. I have to say all of these modes are fun on their own, but the mode that I played the most was just the single race mode, as it feels addictive on it’s own. Of course, there is a time trial mode to go through if you need to prove yourself against the rest of the world, as well as online, but I couldn’t find a game on the servers sadly.

The handling of the car itself is very good, though good luck if you use a wheel, because the car is made like an old school arcade racer, meaning that drifting while braking in inevitable. Though that’s not a bad thing as the courses on that are really tight and really wide at the same time, meaning if you want to do well, you have to get your drift on, which is very easy to do thankfully, and with the speed these care are regularly going at, you hit turns hard, so make sure to time your drift right, if you wanna get 1st place.

However. the thing I was most excited about was the cars that represented in this game.

The cars range from all types,granterd they aren’t named their actually names, because of course, copyright. There’s road cars like the SRT Viper and Bugattis to Hard Core racing machines, such as F1 and LMP1/DPi machines. It’s nice to see endurance cars in a low poly style, it’s not something that I see often. There’s also cars like the Ford Thunderbird, Aston Martin DB cars, I could go on and on, but it’s nice too see such a wide range of cars in this game.

Overall, this game is AWESOME! I love the feel of driving in it, the endings at the end of each grand prix mode are cool, The tracks are amazing to drive on. It looks great, sounds great… I can drive a low poly SRT Viper. I do hope that the game gets some more DLC, as it does feel a bit barebones atm, but outside of that, it’s an awesome game, and I hope you guys try it out.

MAN, THAT WAS FUN. A bit of a shorter one this time round, but hey, it’s good to have those to read sometimes. Just like it’s good to listen to a long podcast sometimes. I was one again with Kiley and Pete from Rapid Reviews Radio, where we talk about Hogwarts Legacy, and what happen with it’s lead designer. Also, because the video has come out saying why he retired, I want formally apologize if I jumped the gun on anything in the podcast.

It was really fun! But I think that’s it for now. Thanks for reading, and I will see you guys next time.

Posted in Codemasters, Games, Racing, Rambles

Rambling about GRID:Autosport

Racing games are cool! And last week, I spoke about Codemasters’ Rally offering, and game that I thought was a bit too hard for beginners. This time however, I wanted to talk about what was one of, if not the last 7th gen(PS3/360) offering, and what it entails! There’s a lot of different types of racing here’s so let’s take another virtual tour around Europe… and in this case the world.

So GRID:Autosport has 5 different styles of racing: Touring, Endurance, Openwheel, Tuner and Street. You race in these 5 categories and once you reach certain levels in all 5 style, you get to race in the GRID Series. I got up to the Grid Grand Slam for this article.

I will start by saying Codemasters knew how to get most of the PS3/360 at this point because THIS LOOKS LIKE A EARLY PS4 GAME. Seriously, it’s insane how good a lot of cars look in this game. While I didn’t play Race Driver: Grid, I know from playing Grid 2, it had the problem of too much bloom because 7th Gen. This is thankfully not much of an issue here, as everything feels very clean, crisp, and most importantly, visible. The music… well there isn’t much, that’s why I didn’t mention it in Dirt:Rally, it’s only the menus, and even I usually turn music off in a racing game to listen to my own music, or a podcast. It’s how racing games are meant to be play in my opinion. I do wish there were bunch of licence songs to listen to while in race, and again, please let make weeb cars in your future games. I know F1 2020 has a livery editor, but IDK if I can put images in there.

So lets start with the gameplay and I’ll get the styles I didn’t like out of the way first. Compared to all of the other starter cars, the lowest level of Endurance cars are extremely fast and a bit harder to handle. While the same argument can be put across for something such as OpenWheel, there it feels better because you know there all the cars are different. Here, in everything else, you start in Road cars, and build your way up to race in the super fast cars. So it kinda feels a bit harder to start out in Endurance. Also everything is at night, and it kinda feels weird, since the game doesn’t have a day to night cycle, and races don’t usually last longer than 10 min, so it kinda feels unnecessary, especially with lack of visibility and all other styles taking place at daytime .

​The drift challenges in tuner are super hard in my opinion. Then again I hate drifting challenges in games, so I won’t talk about it because that would make me stupidly mad.

Touring cars are basically stock cars for all the Americans out there, but unlike NASCAR, we race on race tracks and street circuits instead of ovals. It’s honestly really fun, as these feel like stock cars with the volume turned up, and not being forced to turn a hard left.

Before you can race, you have to qualify, and there are 3 extra championships points for qualify first here, which can make all the difference here, because there are 2 races to do! This also goes for OpenWheel as well, just with out the 3 points in Qualifying and the reverse grid that happens in the 2nd race. It’s honestly fun to race around circuits such as Brands Hatch and Istanbul Park in these cars. That’s all I can say about it sadly, as I don’t really watch BTCC, WTCC or DTM, so all my knowledge is an outsider’s knowledge, so I can’t really say anything about tactics.

Tuner has 2 types of races, the drift challenges as I talked about earlier, and time trials/races. These revolve around you taking muscle and what in game are called “Jam” cars, and driving them around the track as fast as you can. I personally find the muscle cars, such as the Dodge Charger to be a bit unstable due to the amount of power in them, but the Jam cars, such as the Nissan Sliva are pretty fun to use, and the variety of cars in the Jam category is astounding. Oh I should mention how the career mode works.

So basically, once pick a style of racing, you get a choice to go to a team, where the difference are the amount of XP you earn, and how much you be able to set up your car. You have a rival to beat, but most of the time, you will want to try and beat Ravenwest Motorsport, so focus on them. I will say that this does affect the replay of the career mode quite a bit as I just feel like I need to beat RavenWest… and yea my job is done. I mean we have a lot of IRL brands here, such as Intel and Monster Energy, so why not try to make them top contenders as well?

Street racing here is mostly focused on the city, as you race places such as Barcelona and Dubai, where the surface is constantly changing, and the width of the roads can change at a moments notice. This is honest my 2nd favorate style because racing all all the different surfaces is really fun, especially when you feel it through the controller.

But now, let’s get to OpenWheel.

Open-Wheel is the racing style basted on Formula 1 or Indycar if you are American, and it’s the best type of racing this game has to offer in my opinion. The race feels really fast as you go around tracks like Istanbul Park, Brands Hatch and Yas Marina circuit. It also helps that the cars feel better to control with a controller! This goes for all of them, even the Endurance class. We need more sim style games that feel good to play with a controller on PC!

Overall, I can recommend this game, especially given that the new GRID game is still getting DLC, and will probably be getting a updated version later on. I think that game, as is, is really fun, even the parts that I don’t like that much here is probably just me complaining a bit too much admittedly, as they have their followings! Play this. please. You can get this on PS3,360, Steam and Humble Bundle.

So, that was fun! Let me know if I should look at more racing games here, preferably ones that let me weeb up my car. Got a good few ideas on content, so stay tuned!

But for now, thanks for reading and I will see you guys next time.

Written by Nana Marfo
Grid:Autosport(C)Codemasters

Posted in Codemasters, Games, Racing, Rambles

Rambling about DIRT:Rally

Oh wow, it’s another one of these! The world is still kinda shit, and for me on top of home issues, is kinda soul draining. However! We always have video games, and for me while anime games are my preferred choice, racing games would be a solid 2nd on the list for me. I find that because they usually have a story that doesn’t really involve a plot, they are very easy to pick up, play for a bit, leave for a few months while real takes over, and start playing again, which makes them a prime candate for me to just write a few sentences on! And I’ve been playing a lot of DIRT:Rally by Codemasters, so let me talk about it!

Let me start off by saying Codemasters really knows how to make games look good. The graphics on  the car are astounding, the detail in the environments are amazing, and on my new laptop with a GTX 1650 and 10th Gen i5 processor, it runs at a constant 60fps, which is insane, However, please make my own livery in the next game, I want to drive a Mini or 1600cc car that has weeb s**t on it. 

Anyways​, Dirt: Rally has 3 modes, Rally, Hillclimb and Rallycross. Rally is the signature mode, as the DIRT series is derived from the Colln McRae Rally series, and man is it hard! This is admittedly somewhat due to game being very heavy on the simulation side of things, so if your like me and use a controller, watch out!

There’s also a lot of differences between this and a regular street race. If I was playing something like Grid: Autosport, the street racing there involves me being on screen with a bunch of other cars, and the roads are wide enough to accommodate side by side racing. Here, it’s like a bike time trial, where everything is narrow, the road furniture constantly changes, and you’re on your own against the clock.

Another thing that really hinders the experience for me is the handling, which to be honesty, is pretty fine tuned for steering wheels, and it feels like I need to play with ABS on just to stop locking up or stop the car in general. Also not helping is when I’m on a snow stage and having to deal with ice physics. ICE PHYSICS. IN A RACING GAME. Yes I know this is an off road game, but still I’m not use to this. 

However, once you get used to it, it’s fun to race. I just think that the game has a lot of mechanic that you need to get use to, hell there is co driver yelling instructions at you for road furniture, what the road furniture is, what kind of turn the next turn is, it’s too much for me to get use to at one time.

Hillclimb is something I honestly only put time into for this post, but to sum it up, it’s like Rally, but with super modified cars and no co driver, so it’s a little more traditional, but damn, do the cars there feel even more unstable at high speed with a controller.

But now on to the mode that I actually know the most about! Rallycross has only been around as a world championship since 2014, and this is the first official game for it. It’s a bit lacklustre with tracks, as, there are only 3 with their variations. Lidden Hill in the UK, Hell in Norway, where it always seems to rain, and Hojles in Sweden. How did you guys miss the Estering? Or Loheac? Or Hockenheimring? I guess all of these and more are in Dirt 4, and GOD DAMN IT. 

Anyway, Rallycross is mix of both touring car and rally surfaces, so you have to be versatile. The races work this way: Qualifying is split into 4 heats and 4 groups of 4 drivers, and the fastest 12 from their combined finishing positions go into the semi final. The ones in Group A start on the first row, B on the second one and C on the 3rd one. The top 3 from each Semi-Final go into the final.

I honestly enjoy this mode the most because I feel as if I have control of the cars here, though the Supercars are still very slidey and I hate them for that, but the 1600 are alright and the classic mini is a joy to drive in. It also helps that the racing keeps me on my toes with the Joker Lap. This is a lap that all care have to take which is slower, and I find that this keeps things interesting, take it too early, and your stuck at the back, take it too late, and you just lost the place you were in. It’s quite interesting.

Dirt Rally seems to take a lot of learning of in my opinion, which is not great for beginners in my opinion. If Dirt Rally 2.0 is better at this I would recommenced it to everyone, but the game requires you to sit down a learn it constantly for it’s rally mode, which isn’t great for a racing game in my opinion, you should be able to from the get go to some extant be able sit-down, play the game for a bit and get on with your day, which I feel like it’s better accomplished in Rallycross mode. For that I would have say, get this if you are a sim racing fan, it’s obviously made for that crowd. Besides that, I would say look for other alternatives.

I’m really sorry that I haven’t written much in the past few months, really trying to get out of this hole I seem to be in, but Damn I can’t get out of it atm. Got a few plans though so please look forward to them!

But for now, take care and I will see you guys next time!

Written by Nana Marfo
Good Smile Car image taken from Good Smile Racing’s Twitter

Dirt Rally(C)Codemasters