Dirt 5... Meh

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Kasey Chang
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Dirt 5... Meh

Post by Kasey Chang »

I am trying Dirt 5, which I got from Humble Bundle a couple of months back. So far, I'm NOT impressed. I am about an hour and a half in.

While the graphics is good, and racing action frantic, this is basically "Gravel" launched by their competitors albeit with a UI that's reminiscent of the most recent version of GRID. The campaign is about the same thing: take a car a race a bunch of other cars on either point to point courses or circuits. Some have branches just to divide the herd up a little, but the idea is still to beat everyone else. You get up to 3 "stamps" per event, and according to the game, there are 325 375 stamps to collect (guess there are a few events with bonus stamps?) that's over 100 125 events INSERT "not counting DLCs". Again, this is almost identical to Gravel.

Instead of FMV, Dirt 5 got the two podcasters from Donut Media (James and Nolan) to voice the event descriptions and interleave some comedy. And apparently, there is an "ace challenge" where I get to race a prior champion in what this game calls a "throwdown" (which is also in Gravel), but that's later.

The events are obviously all offroad, and I am really not understanding what's the difference between a rally raid vs a stampede vs a powercross vs whatever crazy event type they came up with. The settings are a bit exotic this time. Courses in China, Greece, Norway, and so on.

Cars... there are plenty, from the small offroaders like Ariel Nomad to Baja spec VW Tuareg to raid trucks like X-Raid Ford Raptor to rally classics to modern rally cars, there is something for everyone. There are at least 4 choices in each class, and there are like a dozen classes. Add that to dozens of tracks, forward or reverse, different weather conditions, different event types, and I can see how they got 100+ events... Same idea as in the GRID game... everything from Formula lite to GT to stock car to drift championship and so on, and plenty of tracks.

What you don't get is a teammate, or rivalry with another racing team (in GRID, everybody hates Ravenwest), or the nemesis system but given this is offroad, rubbing is inevitable.

To balance the car slightly, some cars are given a score multiplier of 1.1 or 1.2 for their slight lack of performance.

What's "special" here is the ability to customize your "race card" as well as truly customize the livery on the vehicle. As you play, you unlock more patterns, color combos, designs, stickers, and more that you can combine to truly make your vehicle unique. It doesn't affect performance while racing, though Codemasters did acknowledge the joke by naming an achievement +10 HRSPRS (which is also a Donut joke) for saving your customized livery. But then, GRID has all this as well.

You accumulate winnings in currency "D", which can be used to purchase further unlockings of patterns and whatnot, and to purchase vehicles for your garage (which you can then apply new liveries to). You also get XP for winning, which is used to unlock additional items as mentioned above. And finally, the "stamps" aforementioned are used to unlock events.

There doesn't seem to be much of a damage model, and during racing there is moderate rubber-banding. If you managed to flip yourself or got turned around you'll fall to 12th place and probably lose the event, as most events are only 2 to 3 laps, at least early on. Don't see a "flashback" feature.

The different vehicles do handle differently, but I'm not quite convinced of the collision physics model. I don't see any tuning though, but then I didn't really look.

So far, this feels quite a bit of departure from Dirt 4, and I am not sure this is a good thing. This is basically the offroad version of GRID. While I understand they don't want to cannibalize Dirt Rally series, or even their upcoming WRC series, somehow, this just doesn't feel like a continuation from Dirt 4.
Last edited by Kasey Chang on Thu Sep 09, 2021 3:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Dirt 5... Meh

Post by jztemple2 »

Glad I took a pass on this. Sounds less than appealing to me. Thanks for taking the bullet to put some time in it :wub:
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Re: Dirt 5... Meh

Post by Isgrimnur »

Kasey Chang wrote: Wed Sep 01, 2021 9:51 pm I am trying Dirt 5, which I got from Humble Bundle a couple of months back.
I should take a look at mine. Looks like I haven't touched one since January.
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Re: Dirt 5... Meh

Post by Kasey Chang »

This game reminds me far more of "Dirt: Showdown" than Dirt 4.

For those who remember, Dirt Showdown is the one where you can race figure-8 or sumo destruction derby where you need to knock people off the raised platforms.

EDIT: Play 31 out of 125 events so far. Well, skipped a couple too. (I hate Gymkhana) There are a couple events that are unwinnable against AI unless you buy the best cars. I don't recall if there's a difficulty setting, probably just the amount of assists.

There are complexities that I am not certain are necessary, such as the ability to swap out sponsors so you can achieve max sponsor level for extra pay and bonus, by fulfilling certain events during the race, like pass X cars in Y seconds, make a X meter jump, trade paint with Y cars, etc.
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Re: Dirt 5... Meh

Post by Kasey Chang »

Finished chapter 3, which I think is about 2/3rd. I think the game said 125 races (375 max stars) in the main game, not counting DLCs. I'm pretty sure I finished like 70-90 races.
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Re: Dirt 5... Meh

Post by Kasey Chang »

According to the game I finished 96 (out of 125) events. With the skipped Gymkhana events (I hate Gymkhana) I should be over 100 events. So this is getting close to the end. And things are getting hard, where even my best driving doesn't always win, nor using the best car. I got like 4th or 7th. And the throwdowns are getting downright brutal.
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Re: Dirt 5... Meh

Post by Kasey Chang »

I turned difficulty down to "easy" and finished the game. There's no in-between from easy to medium, and that's a bit of a letdown. Medium somehow is a bit hard for me, but then, I'm playing on a gamepad.

Not feeling the need to buy the DLCs, not at $24. May buy all DLCs for $10.
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Re: Dirt 5... Meh

Post by Rumpy »

I got it on PS+ I think last month, and it's a weird game. In the past, all the event names were descriptive for what kind of event they'd be, so you'd know what kind of race to expect. Here though, it's all over the map and quite random. None of the event names make any sense in respect to the past entries in the series. My favourite Dirt game would have to be Dirt 3, and I was hoping it'd have been more of a return to that type of amped up style, as I was rather frustrated with Dirt 4's attempt, which IMO was a little too serious. What's strange though is that in an attempt to give this game personality, it feels strangely lacking in it. And as for the throwdowns, it says that you're supposed to receive unique items, but I never know what I'm getting for winning them other than the usual stuff.
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