DiRT 4

Accessible yet tough and grimy yet gorgeous, Dirt 4 sets a new standard in rally racing – and its well-considered career mode and endless stages inject it with tremendous stamina. Absolutely stonking brilliant.

Dirt 4 manages what very few racing games do. It’s driving is challenging yet accessible, and it pairs this with an almost endless amount of content. The career mode is robust, and the stages are varied and beautifully designed, but the ability to create your own unique tracks using Your Stage is what sets Codemasters’ game apart from every other rally game that has come before.

If Dirt Rally's punishing difficulty alienated longtime series fans in any way, this commitment to accessibility should help to bring them back, and the near-infinite possibilities of Your Stage should keep them playing. Dirt 4 is a shining example of Codemasters at their brilliant best.

DiRT 4 works no matter whether you’re looking a hard, realistic experience, or if you just want to enjoy a good racing game. Codemasters has options for both types of players, and this game becomes a must-have for racing fans.

DiRT 4 does a remarkable job of creating a sense of speed.

DiRT 4 relies heavily on its own procedural editor, and it shows in the long run, when you start to recognize and react to the different building blocks. Nonetheless, it's a pretty fine racing game, one that is extremely fun and addictive.

Worth buying for its superb rally sim alone. But the returning racing modes are bland, frustrating and unsatisfying.

I have had this game for a while now. Initially, after a first few hours of playing, I didn't find it much fun and as I was playing with a game-pad and the car seemed difficult to control on the simulation mode. So I stopped playing it for a while and even thought about selling it. Few weeks later I decided to go back to it – this time I googled for the best gamepad settings and tried again. That made all the difference. The more hours I put to this game, the more I realize how well made it is. Now I love most things about it. So first, the praise for the game: - It is really thrilling to play. I love the weather effects and how different cars handle differently on different surfaces wet, dry and snowy. I love the weight shifting in this game. I love how going downhill on a wet tarmac with rain showers with minimal visibility gets me to the edge of the seat. I love the sense of really tight competition in rally cross and landrush events, where a mistake in one corner during the six lap race can cost you a position. - I love the randomly-generated stages, as they really make you listen more to the notes and less on relying on the memory of the track. In previous dirt titles I always ended up knowing the roads and being able to achieve better and better track times without even paying attention to the co-driver. - I also love the mini-events during the rally stages, like jumping and almost hitting a drone in the air, helicopter spinning up dust on the road that limits the visibility, kangaroos crossing the road on the last moment, co-driver stuttering during random moments. - I like the way how the career mode gives you a sense of accomplishment. You can upgrade the headquarters step by step, upgrade the parts on the car so they last longer, hire staff on different skill levels. I like the livery customisation of the team. - The soundtrack in this game is amazing. I literally love most of the songs in this game and have saved them to my music playlist. - The graphics are rather good in this game, for example driving on a wet tarmac or asphalt, the puddles and the reflections from the road are amazing. During cloudy weather, the colours in the game look kind of bleached, but this is also the case in real life. There were some problems with visibility in the forest roads in Wales (screen really dark and hard to see), but after adjusting the gamma settings, that got fixed. Lastly the criticism: - With the random generated stages sometimes, some curves repeat twice during the same stage. This doesn’t happen often though and doesn’t disturb me that much, but that’s a thing that could get sorted out. - Codemasters seem to have given up on the game, there hasn’t been any new content in a while, even though before the release they were talking about different plans what to add to the game later. As the people who have played dirt rally before are bringing down the opinions about this game (as I see a lot of content like the rallycross events are the same), it seems like this game does not sell so well as it was expected. That is a pity. So my recommendation – if you are even a little bit interested about this game, go for it. But give the game some time. Mess with the controller settings and the visual settings. Mess with the difficulty settings. Find the thing that works for you and the game will be a lot of fun. In the simulation mode, you need to put in some effort to be good - with a tired head and concentration problems, no good result will come out of it. But if you are tired or just want to play the game to relax, there is always the option to switch to the gamer mode (which is too easy for my liking), but might be fun for someone who does not like to be challenged that much.

Another great looking rally sim but too many **** prevent if from being as exciting or fun as the earlier incarnations.

Featuring excellent gameplay on challenging tracks, DIRT 4 also offers a nice variety of different rallying categories. Nevertheless, in the area that counts the most, timed stages, DIRT 4 offers too little variety in terms of events, with stages in only 5 different countries. To make matters worse, stages within the same countries all look the same.. In short, it’s decent rally game, but with not enough content.

Keep Dirt Rally, Dirt 4 is trash. The graphics are even worse with bland textures with poor arcade physics, it's seriously junk. It's not like Dirt 3. It's indescribable. Any other review is lying.

First impressions - 8 or 9 out of 10. But playing for a few hours, you quickly realise that the handling is way too easy, there's no way in hell a rally car grips that well, especially under braking. The thing seems glued to the track, even on slippery surfaces, even with "simulation" mode on. Then, you experience deja vu, and you swear you just went through that combination of corners 30 seconds ago. This feeling repeats itself and becomes more frequent, until you can basically predict 3/4 of the course, even though it is 'randomly seeded'. They did enough to pull the wool over reviewers eyes but there is no longevity in this game whatsoever. Stick to Dirt Rally which has lovingly hand crafted courses with some real variety. All the dirt 4 courses feel identical.