Colin McRae: DiRT review (PlayStation 3)

The death of Colin McRae and his young son a couple of weeks ago in a helicopter accident was a shocking tragedy. McRae's untimely death occurred the same weekend that the PlayStation 3 version of Colin McRae: DiRT was released and it's been difficult to play the game without thinking of that tragic event.

One thing you won't read in this review is a discussion of what kind of tribute this game is to Colin. Whether this is a good or bad game is no reflection on Colin. Nor is it a reflection on Codemasters' views of Colin. In my opinion DiRT is a failure – but that doesn't mean that Codemasters has any guilt to feel towards the former World Rally champion. It's just a game.

Failure

And as I said, a game that I feel fails in what it sets out to do. This shorter review is mainly going to look at the PlayStation 3 game insofar as it differs from the Xbox 360 version released earlier this year – so if you want more detailed thoughts check out the Xbox 360 review I wrote in June.

There's plenty to like about Colin McRae DiRT – the career structure works very well, with a pyramid of events that becomes progressively more difficult yet at the same time offers a chance to learn many different racing disciplines.

Rally Woe

On the whole most of these events work very well. Slipping and sliding around in buggies is a lot of fun – more so I found than similar vehicles in the vastly overrated Motorstorm.

Where the game really falls down is in the rallying itself. Codemasters has made a huge mistake here. The cars fail to handle even as you'd expect in an arcade rally game. The brakes are ridiculously overpowered and the tires enjoy so much grip that there's nothing in the rallying that feels like rallying.

It's obvious why this is the case – Codemasters so wants to be loved in the US. But it's patronising in the extreme to our American cousins to assume that they can't cope with cars that slide around corners.

Where's the Love?

That desperate need for love from the US extends to the truly awful vocal nonsense provided by Travis Pastrana. Everything the man says sets my teeth on edge. The script he reads and the way he reads it feels nothing like rallying, it feels like some lame extreme sport.

Please Codemasters, if there is to be another game in the series, let's get away from this kind of nonsense. Let us have a rally game – arcade handling is fine – that feels like a rally game and sounds like a rally game, not this bastardisation of the sport.

Different Strokes

Enough ranting though. What's so different about this PlayStation 3 version? Anything here to make the wait worthwhile or make this version worth picking up over the Xbox 360 game?

Not really. You have to try pretty hard to spot major differences between the graphics in the game. But there are some differences.

The PlayStation 3 colours seem warmer – but perhaps that's the difference in having my PS3 connected to the HDTV via HDMI compared to the Xbox 360 via VGA.

For frame rate junkies it does appear the PS3 game is slightly smoother, a few trackside details removed from the Xbox 360 version are perhaps the cause of this.

Padding

Yet these differences are very slight and really there's very little to choose between the two console versions of Colin McRae: DiRT. For me the actual choice between these two games comes down to something external to the software.

The Xbox 360 pad is a much better peripheral for racing games. The PlayStation 3's bloody awful analog triggers and lack of vibration mean that if you have both consoles then the Xbox 360 game is still the one to go for.

Colin McRae DiRT does have some entertainment within, pretty much every event away from traditional rallying is fun and well-designed and it's certainly a very pretty game. It's just a shame that the rally handling has been borked to the extent of ruining those events – if only Codemasters had at least given us the option of something a bit more slippy then this might have been one of the best driving games released this year.