Rock, Paper, Shotgun

British wheel-game experts Codemasters specifically delayed the PC release of Dirt 2 so that they could inject DirectX 11 tech into the sinewy torso of their offroad racing sequel. Is that a good thing? We’ve got literally no idea, but we’re willing to venture a “probably, if you have a brand new graphics card, and happen to like racing games”, and then offer this new DirectX 11 trailer for your consideration. Can you see the eleveness? Also, there is some mocking.
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Beneath the grimy click are ten million videos of DiRT 2 doing its thing. The one you probably want to watch is an interview with Codemasters’ veteran and Chief Game Designer Matthew Horsman talking about why the game has benefited from the work the team did on GRID. He chats a bit about the one hundred events the game contains, and explains why multiplayer enables players to have a lot more freedom in the kind of game they play, particularly with mixing up car and track types – allowing you to race buggies around the spectacular Battersea power station Rallycross track, or traditional rally cars around the deserts of California on the game’s wide open “raid” stages. Oh, and it’s all a bit pretty, too. Go and judge with your eyes.

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I don’t know how many of you saw Ken Block showing off on Top Gear the other week, but it strikes me that his crazy rally action course was pretty much what Codies are aiming for with Dirt 2. The two recent trailers back up that idea, with a Utah dirt-track sequence, and a look at one of the over-the-top rallycross events, in this case a course built around Battersea power station. I had a play on one of these super-urban tracks the other week – having just played a very traditional Croatian backwoods rallytrack previously – and it was looking incredibly snazzy, and definitely a big step up from the original game – something that wasn’t totally clear on the woodland track.
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