Recent reviews by LindQUEST

The barrage of broken updates makes me beg Valve to improve their testing (or at least test the gameplay features, because they definitely work very well on the game skins). I do not recommend playing this game in its current state.

The online mode is just a loading screen simulator, which after 10 minutes may randomly fail and kick you back to the single player game. And it does not tell what it is doing, because it is surely not an SSD limitation, or even a CPU one.

It amazes me how awful the netcode in this game is compared to something unofficial like GTA:SA's MTA, which supports 1000+ players in a single server, and doesn't seem to be mining bitcoins while it attempts to load the game. Also, no constant de-syncs.

DiRT Rally has the style of the first installments of the Colin McRae series, while being even more challenging than them all, not only by being way less "arcadey" in its controls, but also by "humbling up" the player, and forcing them to either accept that the 1st place is not always possible, or to go crazy retrying their runs until they give up (usually because each retry seems to worsen one's skill, strength, and stamina).

While this is a definite strength of this game, it is also what makes it sometimes hard (for me) to casually boot it up and play. The "feels good" moments are intense, but far between, and the bad moments are part of the course, even more so if you only play once in a while.

Its campaign is essentially endless, and has an reasonable progression at first, forcing the player to start with slower cars, having shorter championships and easier opponents. It does get quite hard when the professional leagues and up are reached, mostly due to unbalanced opponent times for some stages (you can sometimes easily get first by driving quite conservatively, while on other instances not getting close to top 3, even when really pushing through the corners and still surviving unscathed). Also, some co-pilot calls are either too early or too late, and this is not adjustable on a call by call basis (you can only apply a global offset).

The variety of cars is also commendable, and it really helps spicing up the gameplay. Each car, even when on the same class, fells unique to handle, and will always take a while to get used to (if ever, as some cars like the Stratos are very hard to master).

If you like simulation games overall, then this is an easy recommendation, as this is one of the few games I've always come back to, even considering its aforementioned unfriendliness towards a more spaced play frequency. In case you have a good steering wheel and gearbox combo, then this game is a must-have, as it fully utilizes their potential. It is still an excellent game if played using a normal joystick, or even with a keyboard, but some form of "tapping modulation" will be needed, as a full throttle or full steer is hardly usable on most stages (and almost impossible with RWD cars).