Xbox 360
If there's one thing Colin McRae DiRT 2 (CMD2) does correctly it's to pay tribute. Right from the start of this off road racing game it brings his name into play with fitting respect for what he had achieved in his life. Your first car in the single player game is Colin's own from his appearance at the X-Games.
There's something here for everyone too. Those who like the styling and flashbacks of Racedriver: Grid [http://www.square-go.com/review/96] will see similarities, those who liked the previous DiRT and Colin McRae Rally [http://www.square-go.com/feature/636] games will also find areas of comfort as it improves on most of these formats too.
Rule one with any driving game has to be the handling; you can put up with other flaws as long as the driving comes up to scratch. It does, with a dramatic update in realism from DiRT, each car showing delicate and sometimes subtle differences to the others making each a completely new driving experience for the player. Although you may think the car with the highest stats will always be the best a certain amount of consideration on track and requirements also helps.
This means that car set up, which can be set to automatic, can be tailored for each car, saved to memory and extracted when you return to the same location. It can take time to tool your cars to the correct expectations but that's part of the fun. Unfortunately CMD2's tooling system will disappoint players of the previous games as it has been dumbed down a great extent. Good for new players to the game but not so for old aficionados.
Flashbacks play another part in the experience. Ported from Grid they allow you to rewind the action to correct mistakes. It's a good tool for beginners to finish races without the annoyance of re-starting and at the hardest difficulty setting none are available.
The events are based around X-Games driving with numerous rally tracks added for fans of those. Therefore you see shorter tracks in the main across a variety of world locations. As you complete tracks you gain experience and unlock more. Your target is the three X-Games titles you can achieve which then allows for you to drive the Colin McRae memorial, a tough competition.
Not everything here glistens. The whole game feels terribly sterile at the start, something that reduces as you get more involved. There are some issues with the number of tracks; users who've found their optimum setup and try to clear all the events there will notice a slight reduction on track variety. The flashback system although good in the intense road combat of Grid takes away some of the urgency that the previous Colin McRae Rally games had; as you worked hard to make up seconds after a crash.
It's also great to be asked your name at the start and have the other drivers use it during races and in interludes but the effect is spoiled if they only have a limited number of lines. On the third asking in back to back races of whether Ken Block had tried to sell me his shoes you may just turn it off.
Varied and exciting online play also features including the great non contact races, nullifying aggressive online drivers opportunities to bump your car off the road, and as a whole package CMD2 is a fundamental racer. Trying not to appease all parties at the same time would have given the game a better direction and whilst, as mentioned at the start, this is a great and fitting tribute to the man it may never quite reach the expectations of all who play it.