Friday, June 17, 2011

Racing in the DiRT

I was looking for some new game to kill time and I heard that DiRT3 was out.  Being a fan of Colin McRae and racing in general, I decided to check it out.  The first thing that caught my eye was the graphics.  I don't know how they do it but with each version, the graphics just keeps getting better.  Maybe its just that we spend so much time looking at concentrate walls in NFS that the tracks filled with greenery in DiRT becomes a welcome sight for sore eyes.

If you have tried Colin McRae before then you'll know that DiRT is no easy game to master.  So, I took it slow for a couple of races so that I can settle into the game.  What I realized soon after is that the game was pretty darn easy (compared to the usual Colin McRae).  So, what's the big deal you ask?  Damn man!  The difficulty is everything.

In a normal racing game, you win most of the races in the first attempt and you keep moving forward along with the story.  Your interest in the game is maintained by your desire to drive faster cars while you are immersed in the story.  But in Colin McRae, its different.  There is no story and the slow cars are as much fun as their faster siblings.

The USP of a Colin McRae game is that its insanely difficult.  A normal game has Easy, Medium and Hard whereas a CMR has 6 to 9 difficult settings and not to mention the various assists that can be turned on or off.  Reaching pole position in medium difficult will take you months.  To win a race in high difficult setting is near to impossible for most players.

You know you can't beat the computer, so, you keep trying to beat your own time.  If you ace one corner, you might get a .4 sec advantage.  You keep trying again and again for hours perfecting every single turn.  All of a sudden you get that perfect lap where you kissed the apex in every corner to beat the computer by .2 seconds!  In that moment, you will feel INVINCIBLE!  In that single moment, you will have realized what gaming is all about!

Its that feel that I miss in this game.  They have toned down the difficulty and I'm finishing first regularly even though I've played the game for just two days.  I'm hoping that the game will get more difficult as faster cars get unlocked.. *fingers crossed*