I was pretty sad when I heard Colin McRae had died. I mean, the guy’s a rally legend. I remember playing the games with his name on when I was little. Mainly because my Dad was trying to convince himself that he was still a gamer, but then again he’s always amazed by the fact that when someone uses a sniper rifle on a game, it comes up with a scope. Anyway, I digress. I wondered what would happen to the series with McRae no longer around. Well, DiRT 2 happened.

I have to say, I wasn’t exactly overwhelmed by the first DiRT game, but another Codemasters racing game, GRID, is probably my favourite racing game ever. Thankfully, it seems that the developer can read my mind, and have pushed DiRT 2 firmly in a GRID-like direction. Then again, I never played DiRT apart from the demo, so it might have always been like that. You start off with nothing much but a dream and a free car, and you progress by winning races in different styles to get experience and cash, and finally enter the X Games in the hopes of winning.

This is pure arcade racing, so tuning and the such is left alone, unless you really want to do it. For everyone else, you pick a car based on stats (although really you want to work on the principle of “the faster, the better”) and blast along dirt roads at high speed, drifting round corners and smashing the crap out of your opponents. Damage is optional, but it’s always fun to have on and watch bits of your car fly off when you collide with a wall at over 100mph. The cars handle wonderfully, as long as your driving them properly, so it’s pretty easy to get the tracks without crashing too much. Should you damage your vehicle too much you can make use of Flashbacks, which allow you to rewind time and re-do a corner, or pick up the pieces of your car that are littering the track.

DiRT 2 is a beautiful game. It’s almost always sunny, so everything’s bright and sparkly, and the cars always look fantastically pristine at the start of a race. Mud splashes up realistically all over your car in some stages, sand on others, and as previously stated the damage is pretty awesome. There aren’t a huge amount of tracks to race on, but each of the countries has a different feel to them, and all the tracks are well thought out and good looking.

In terms of sound, you’ve got loud roaring engines and crowd cheering that sounds very good. Glass smashes and metal crunches when you collide, adding to the experience of destroying your car. (Just a side note: I seem to be talking about damage a lot. Clearly I wasn’t playing this game properly). The real life rally drivers make a decent effort to keep things fun and interesting, but their lines seem to repeat just a little too often for my liking. The co-drivers on the Rally stages, however, are very useful and well voiced.

I just have one minor niggle with this game… the amount of Colin McRae fandom. Alright, it’s his name on the box, but was it really necessary? Surely people were buying this game based on the fact it’s in the DiRT series, not because they love Colin so much. All the real drivers keep bigging him up throughout the game, and there’s even a special Colin McRae race with it’s own achievement called “For Colin”, which on completion presents you a video of Colin driving along, and some quotes of his. Then a driver comes on the radio saying, “He was a legend man. I’m gonna miss him.” It made me feel a little awkward while playing the game, like I wasn’t playing a game, more a dedication to Colin McRae. But hey, it doesn’t affect the game that much.

Overall, DiRT 2 is a very impressive, very fun arcade racer. My complaints are pretty minor, and don’t particularly affect gameplay that much, but I had to nitpick somewhere. If you’re a fan of fast-paced racers, or you really liked DiRT, buy this right now. And if you’re not… well, give it a shot. You might be surprised.

Score: 9/10