Jay’s Internet Log

To be honest with you, I didn’t know that DiRT3 existed a week ago. After completing L.A. Noire, I looked around for a new game and saw that DiRT3 was getting review scores in the 90% and above range, so I decided to give it a try. This is hands down the best racing game I’ve played in a long time. I’m the type of person who likes my racing games more on the arcade side rather than the simulation side, and DiRT3 seems to blend the two types together nicely. You can adjust five aspects of your car such as suspension, braking, ride height, etc, which makes it somewhat of a sim, but from what I’ve played so far, it doesn’t critique every move like one. Every race you get 5 chances to back time up and try a section again if you fail. I’ve gone off the road many times but just hit a few buttons in order to make it through a section.

DiRT3 is made up of four different racing seasons, and after going through the first season, you open up a big parking lot full of jumps, poles, and sliding areas. This reminds me of the old(good) Tony Hawk games where you had a certain amount of time to complete multiple objectives, and you can replay it repeatedly. In DiRT3, there is no time limit, but this track has about 20 different objectives to complete. It’s very cool and supposedly you can play this mode with friends. I went online and played some rally races against human oponenents, which was fun and surprisingly void of lag. It plays very smoothly, and even though I didn’t win a single event, I had a blast playing.

This game features a way to record clips from races and upload them directly to youtube. It isn’t the best quality, maxing out at 480p, but it’s better than nothing. I tested it out on my very first race, and you can watch a short clip here. Overall, DiRT3 really does impress, and if you’re looking for a great all-around racing game, I don’t think you can top it right now. Even the sound and music choices are superb. Codemasters did a great job with this title.