![]() ![]() Land Rush, stadium races in super trucks, is straightforward, quick, and aggressive racing which comes as a welcome respite from the constant improv that is a stage rally. ![]() Once you've completed a few Rally events, the other disciplines start to open up. Pushing to the top tier of a discipline without the funding to do so can leave you driving slower than you'd like so you don't wear down your weakest parts too fast. Poor planning, cheap car parts, and a crash or two can drain your bank account and earn you a penalty for exceeding the 30 minute repair allotment. If you don't invest enough in R&D your car will break down faster and be more likely to give you trouble over the course of a stage and require more time and money spent on repairs. Picking your livery is satisfying and courting sponsors and staff is simple enough for it to be a welcome break from driving, not a tedious chore. Where the career mode really shines is once you've gotten enough money to buy your own car and start your own team. With that sorted out, it was time to start my career of flinging expensive machines off of cliffs and into trees, given that Rally is the only discipline that's unlocked to start. That said, a car biased towards oversteer is significantly faster than one biased towards understeer, so just mess with the tuning until it's set up to match your skill level and driving style. Dirt 4's physics are more accurate, even if they are less cinematic and even if Codemasters did go just a little too far in adding grip. This isn't to say that oversteer can't be faster in rally – it often is, especially on tighter corners – but much of the time you want to minimize your slip angle so that all of your power is working to send you forwards. Rally deals in improvisation, so a big part of success is mitigating accidental oversteer without loosing too much speed. Yes, when you watch the supercuts of Sebastien Loeb driving like an automotive deity, it's all of big drifts and huge rooster tails, but this is the exception to the rule. Dirt Rally rewarded oversteer more than the real world does. ![]() A few minutes in the tuning menu can make your cars a lot more tail happy, but it's still not quite as crazy as Dirt Rally was. The stock setup on most of the cars is fairly neutral, which can lead to some understeer on heavy braking, and has garnered a lot of complaints online. I diligently spent a long time working on and conquering these lessons, and I felt ready to both tackle the game and ready to take another shot at avoiding ditches in that Fiesta. While I understand that, for the most part, video game tutorials need to cater to a rather small attention span and just get the player into the action, I wish there had at least been an option for a bit more detail on some of the lessons. The information was presented clearly, even if I did find it a bit lacking in detail. After completing that stage and meeting its ditches, a choice of difficulties is presented, and the lowest one was generously titled “Racer.” As tempting as all the cool modes and features I'd read about were, I opted for the prudent and still enticing rally school option, which takes place at a virtual reconstruction of the Dirtfish Rally School in Washington. At least Ken Block wasn't watching this time. I was offered the choice of “Game” or “Simulation”, I picked “Simulation”, and it plopped me in the virtual seat of a WRX STi at the beginning of a stage. “Close enough”, I thought when I got this assignment, so I set up my sim gear and got to racing.ĭirt 4, like many modern games, figures out where you stand by throwing you right into the game to start. ![]() I swore to do better next time, but next time never came. Once I got it out of the ditch and en route again I made it down another half of the stage before reacquainting myself with the ditch. In fact, I drove that Fiesta I mentioned a moment ago about 100 meters onto a rally stage, with Tim O'Neil and Ken Block on board, before I valiantly steered it into a ditch. I'm pretty quick on tarmac.ĭirt 4 isn't about tarmac, so I knew it would be a learning experience. As an automotive journalist I've sat behind the wheels of everything from the aggressively unremarkable Dodge Dart to brilliant machines like the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series, the Subaru WRX STi, the Audi R8 V10, a rally-prepped Ford Fiesta, and even a pair of formula cars. This is my first time contributing to RPS, so I'm going to start out with a little (pertinent) information: I've driven a lot of cars. ![]()
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