Dirt 5 Review: Gameplay Videos, Career Mode Impressions and Esports Appeal

Dirt 5 from developer Codemasters Cheshire goes the opposite direction from its predecessor, Dirt Rally 2.0, fully embracing arcade-styled action in a relentless bear hug.  

While 2019's 2.0 was one of the best simulations on the market for the rally scene (Metacritic score of 84), the longstanding Colin McRae Rally series has a habit of dipping from one styled experience to the next. 

Dirt 5 strips away the simulation and embraces arcade and style, working through a variety of different off-road racing types. It's a globe-hopping affair with stunning presentation and a varied feature set aimed at keeping players engaged with a strong career mode and multiplayer support. 

As one of the big, final racing games of the current console generation, the latest in the successful series has a chance to be a fitting sendoff that straddles the console gap.

Gameplay

Dirt 5 doesn't shy away from a much looser feel compared to 2.0. 

While the previous game was more simulation-minded and featured a ton of micromanagement in the form of sliders, team systems, tire grips for various surfaces and beyond, Dirt 5 tones it back. 

That isn't to say some of that still isn't present, but handling is certainly more arcade-like than Dirt Rally 2.0. It's easier to round corners of any degree, bouncing off other cars isn't as punishing and one little mistake isn't ending an entire run. 

Pulling off major drifts over a variety of different surfaces and weather circumstances is a thrill, as an arcade experience should be. It feels like track degradation is still in and has an impact, but it is hardly the race-altering feature it was in 2.0. 

The sense of speed isn't so pronounced here as it might be in other games, but on a straightaway, while distancing oneself from the pack, there is some slight camera shake and controller vibration. 

And it's that feedback that makes the dynamic weather system and track changeups in real-time so much fun. Whether it's blitzing across ice, skidding through mud or using bigger vehicles to hammer away at the track and opposition, everything about the game feels distinct on an event-to-event basis. 

That applies to different styles of events, too, whether it's just blazing around an oval or opening up to a man vs. nature sort of sprint alongside others. Where the simulation predecessor would have depth in the minutiae, this game offers depth in its all-encompassing scope of varied events and feels. 

Opponent A.I. feels serviceable, as expected. They're not explicitly seeking out revenge for hits that leave their vehicles notably damaged as doors and stuff go flying, but they aren't backing down around corners, either. 

It's a masterful pick-up-and-play racing game where an understanding of the basic controls can have newcomers drifting around corners en route to a podium finish. There's a workable skill gap experienced players can lean into, of course, but the lighthearted nature of the gameplay works into a feedback loop that often leaves the player hungry for more. 

Graphics and Presentation

Dirt 5 offers a fun presentation treat from the first race players drop into on initial boot. 

There, players dart over a muddy seaside course—featuring crowds screaming, birds flying overhead, balloons floating over the course, ocean waves battering the side of the course's bridge with a foamy splash, and smoke gently wafting from course-side buildings. 

It borders on sensory overload—but of the best sort—and almost every course seems to pack in these little details, whether the backdrop is a cityscape or a lush jungle. 

As an aside, the amount of impressive technical stuff happening still doesn't do enough to overshadow poor-looking crowds, which feature repeatable NPCs who more often than not seem to just be standing or sitting around and not reacting. 

But the whole unique style of each locale, amplified by impressive weather systems and track alterations as an event unfolds—plus differing event start times—plays into the engaging, stylistic vibes of it all. 

So too does a smooth soundtrack that plays from the menus to when a race gets started. Audio-wise, as expected, each class of vehicle sounds different. More impressive is the audio feedback as they travel over various surfaces. Tires sliding over muddy patches and splashing into submerged parts of the track sound realistic, and on drier tracks, gravel can be heard pinging off a vehicle's undercarriage, as two examples—and it all heavily plays into the immersion. 

While Dirt 5 isn't big on cutscenes, it does have some notable heavyweights in the audio department—as any game with Troy Baker and Nolan North playing key roles should. 

Players can tinker with performance settings to get variable FPS rates, though we'll have to see how it plays on next-generation consoles. On PC, pushing 100-plus frames smoothly isn't an issue. 

As a whole, Dirt 5 probably won't go down as the best-looking racing game of the last year or two. But the tradeoff is unforgettable, varied and fun locales that play into the general vibe so well that little rough spots or lacking areas feel like nitpicking. 

Career, Esports and More

One of the big-ticket items for Dirt 5 is an accessible career mode. 

There, Alex "AJ" Janicek serves as a mentor of sorts for the player's driver, who locks horns with a rival by the name of Bruno Durand. 

It's pretty standard stuff as far as "story" goes for a racing game. The real boon is the open-ended nature of progression, as players aren't locked behind major completion requirements of past events to enter a multi-branching set of future events. 

And the story gets a smooth rollout via quips from the well-acted DIRT Podcast, which moves the narrative along and gives a greater sense of purpose to what would otherwise just seem like a random set of events in a typical racing game career mode. 

There's a meaty career experience here that players won't take down in short order. Necessary side items like real-world sponsors make the cut as well and add a little bit of depth to the experience. Dirt 5 makes sure to work the advertised 70 routes over 10 locales into the story smoothly, too.

On the multiplayer front, another major checklist item made the cut—four-player split screen. Hopping into the arcade, picking an event, number of A.I., weather and more and then having somebody else press a button to join split screen is as simple as it gets. 

Online, Dirt 5 fully embraces the arcade-style with a fun set of unorthodox game modes. Vampire mode is a twist on tag, where one car starts the event as the vampire and the others have to avoid getting infected until the sun rises. 

King has similar themes, as teams of players try to control crowns and avoid contact with other teams in the arena, lest they turn over those crowns. Transporter asks players to grab an item and carry it to a destination, with more points awarded for holding it longer—which is thrilling with 11 other players trying to steal it. 

These modes are fun diversions that really let the game show off its creativity and some of the damage systems built into the presentation. They're entertaining and easy to return to often. 

Otherwise, at launch, online is a curated list of events for players who want to link up with other players in singleplayer modes. Codemasters says private lobbies are a post-launch add, which will be a must-have feature for long-term player retention. 

That loops in the subject of esports. This release is more of a niche, broader-appeal game compared to the world series again launching in Dirt Rally 2.0. But that doesn't mean there wouldn't be appeal to a competitive side once the private servers go live. 

After all, there's a big skill gap for competitive-minded players who want to disable all of the game's laundry list of assists and duke it out on courses that change by the lap thanks to time-of-day and weather circumstances. 

That's sort of the balance an offering like this presents—a broader audience can have a long-term blast with the arcade modes or general matchmaking, while the competitive side is free to carve out a borderline pro niche, provided the lobby system arrives and the servers are quality. 

And none of this has hit on the Playgrounds mode, which lets players craft their own courses and slap one of three distinct styles on them, including time trials or drift-happy courses. It's clearly a first-try effort with a simplistic design and a limited number of setpiece items, but it's snappy and easy to use. 

Given the broad appeal of the game as a whole, it should be fun to see what some in the community can come up with since players can upload and download these on a whim.

Conclusion

Dirt 5 is a nice curveball of sorts from the usual fare in this series. 

Not that the series hasn't tried arcade-y spinoffs in the past. But Dirt 5 manages to one-up them all and stand alone as one of the more enjoyable, accessible racing games released to market this year. 

Given the uniqueness of the experiences offered, the ability to customize the experience and the fact it will straddle the console generations right at launch, Dirt 5 has some serious staying power that will appeal to the strictly simulation fans and a much broader range of potential players as the calendar turns to 2021.