by Natasa Shepherd

Created on: August 25, 2011

Another year and another Dirt title hits the shelves. Following on the footsteps of the highly popular Dirt 2, Dirt 3 takes the players back to the mud with it’s rally inspired gameplay. Where games like Need For Speed: Shift and Forza offer players the opportunity to hit well designed concrete courses around Europe in their super cars, Dirt takes a the complete opposite approach. Replace the highly tuned, aerodynamically sound cars and replace them with big beasts of machines, made for horse power and nothing more.

This is Rally, the specific genre Dirt is looking to hit and for the most part, they have succeeded. Dirt 3 is one of, if not the best Rally games on the market today. Each car has it’s own unique feel, making your choice of vehicle all that more important as picking the wrong vehicle could leave you eating dust as your opponents leave your behind. With each type of race brings a new set of cars. Time trial races across a barren and arid landscape will bring low maintenance, power rally cars. While multiple car races held on snowy tracks will bring huge, buggy like cars with huge spiked tires.

Like most other racing games, the main goal behind your Dirt 3 career is to place high in a multitude of races while building up your status as a driver. Unlike other racing sims that will lead you down a story driven path, Dirt 3 takes a more arcade style approach by giving you stages to complete. Each stage has multiple races across different types of terrain so one moment you’ll be hitting the asphalted tracks of Michigan, the next you’ll be breezing across the wilderness of Finland. Placing high enough in each race will eventually unlock a final stage which you must complete to unlock the next stage.

The process can get somewhat monotonous and you’ll find yourself hitting the same tracks multiple times and the feeling of progression from unknown to racing legend is non existent. Dirt 3 does a great job of presenting a game that blurs the line between racing simulations and arcade racers. However the career mode leaves much to be desired while the multi player is fun itself with various game modes, the most captivating being capture the flag, it doesn’t do much to help the game. For that Dirt 3 gets 3 out of 5.

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