After thoroughly disappointing fans by porting the mobile version of Colin McRae Rally to PC — which led some to believe that the original Colin McRae games were getting re-made (they weren’t) — Codemasters has regained a little goodwill with the competency of DiRT Rally.
The game’s been in Early Access for the majority of the year and Nathan was quietly impressed. As of this morning, it’s now fully launched on PC — but that’s not the only news.
The game’s local publisher, Bandai Namco, has announced that Codemasters will be pushing DiRT Rally onto PS4 and Xbox One from April 7 next year. Spending 8 months in Steam’s Early Access program has done the game a world of good, and it’s maintained that initial public approval with a strong 92% user rating from over 5,600 user reviews.
That’s more than double the amount of user reviews posted for DiRT 3: Complete Edition, and more than three times the reviews posted for DiRT Showdown. It’s also the highest user rating for Codemasters Racing Studio game on Steam (albeit by one percent; DiRT 3, especially post-Games for Windows Live, is still very, very good).
DiRT Rally won’t come cheap if you’re after a rally racer this Christmas, though. It’s currently going for $58.52 on Steam, and that’s with a 15% discount. The most recent update, however, has added the snow and icy tracks of Sweden’s Varmland, with the update free to all current owners.
I put an absurd amount of hours into the first two DiRT games but issues with GFWL prevented me from going as deep on DiRT 3 as I would have liked. What about you? Much love for DiRT?
Comments
7 responses to “DiRT Rally Leaves Early Access, Hits Consoles Next April”
Rally is pretty great. Definitely towards challenging sim end of the spectrum.
I found it to be the second best rally sim I’ve played, just a step behind Richard Burns Rally.
yaassssssss! I’ve been waiting for this news since Early Access on Steam.
Also Dirt was amazing, Dirt 2 started to drift towards a Tony Hawk’ish style and had little traditional rally tracks to my disappointment and then Dirt 3 onwards was just awful. the Gymkhana focus really killed the franchise for me Personally. when I heard about Dirt Rally my hopes were high and I was not disappointed with what i played in Early Access.
I LOVED Dirt 3! Full arcade racer but it was great one! Getting a good run on the gymkhana events was really satisfying.
DiRT 3 was the first one that I picked up. I enjoyed it until the Gymkhana stuff started getting shoved down my throat then stopped playing.
A return to form for Codies and the grueling rally game. First turn out in the Mini was like waking from a kinda-bad dream of mediocre extreme sports titles onto a long, narrow and winding road of edge of the seat rallying.
Looks great, plays well and actually portrays rally in the right way. Without all the bullshit.
So, another wheel is needed to replace the G27 I sold a couple of years back…
Coming from Dirt 3 this was an adjustment. Will have to update it now it’s out proper.
Played Dirt 2 on PS3 to 100% a few years back only to find that there was no prize for getting there! Really tainted my Dirt 3 experience.