Dirt 3 PC

I have been playing car racing games since their early beginning on PC. I currently have a logitech G25 force feedback wheel to play with.I have played most of the Colin Mc Rae, Need for speed, Grid and Dirt2 games before. I also tried my hands at more simulation oriented games like GTR, GTR2, GP Legends...Dirt2 came in as a nice and pleasant surprise. Dirt3 tops it off.As I am sure many will detail everything about this game, I will limit myself to the most important points for me.Pros:- Amazing graphics- Amazing physics- Challenging but entertaining racesCons:- Gymkhana- InterfaceWhat went through the conceptors mind about gymkhana? Racing is not easy for most but gymkhana is really a pain in the neck.I saw the videos of Ken Block on Youtube and indeed he is really impressive. Am I even dreaming of doing the same? No!Racing require good racing skills to start but Gymkhana requires a perfect control of the vehicles and most of us will never achieve such level. So I find the attemps slightly pointless and extremely frustrating.Now, what about the interface? Simply put, it does not remotely compare with Dirt2's interface. It is messy, I had to search online to figure out where to find my best times. There are not enough info about the cars, the races, the sponsors... It leaves a lot to desire. A complete miss.Conclusion:As far as rallye racing. This game is the best out there today.If you are one who needs crazy challenges, try the gymkhana and good luck!In spite of my criticism, I definitely do not regreat this purchase.

Pros:The game is about driving all sorts of vehicles on all different terrain, and at that the game does very well. There are a number of different vehicles to unlock in each vehicle category and the tracks range from asphalt to dirt to snow, some mixing the various terrains in a single course. If anybody has played any of the Colin McRae Rally games, or naturally any of the previous Dirt games, they should feel right at home* (see Cons for *).The game basically has the player build up his fame to gain more sponsorships and be invited to tournaments and open new seasons. In the first season you are shown all terrains types and give the opportunity to learn gymkhana (~stunt driving~).The graphics are polished and high quality, especially on the vehicles, and engine audio is up to par.Gameplay is fairly straightforward, yet quite entertaining. Smashing your and opponent's vehicles is a ton of fun and damage modeling is well done.Its just fun to drive and crash in the game. The game is very "modular" and can be picked up to play for just a short while or you can go all out and spend hours and hours.Cons:Gameplay can get repetitive, and even if the type of event is switched nearly every other race, you get to replay the same tracks, a number of times in different events (which are "different" really only by name).Car feel is somewhat bland, most cars in the same group feel very similar or nearly identical, the biggest difference you will feel is the stopping distance increase with more horsepower of the car. By contrast, this also makes it weird when a car actually behaves quite differently than the others, such as Ken Block's car or the Original Mini Cooper.In conjunction to the above, car handling is a bit weird at times, might be me, using a keyboard, but, during a normal dirt rally stage, you pretty much cannot recover from a real handbrake turn. Not sure if it is because of car tuning or abs still on (abs should not matter, but it's the only thing I have on) but once the car's back-end has slid around past say 20 degrees off center, the slide is irrecoverable. Does not matter if you apply full opposite lock, does not matter if you break, accelerate, or just let go of the gas pedal, does not matter what type of turn it is (shy of a hairpin), your call will keep sliding in the same direction, potentially getting more sideways, until you crash or slow down to 10 km/h (6mp/h).Games for Windows Live - whenever you see this logo, be afraid, very afraid! In Dirt 3, you will HAVE TO have or create a Windows Live account, or you WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SAVE THE GAME. Or play online for that matter. This is just some crappy DRM scheme and I was quite sad to find out about it, as this, plus having to always have the dvd in your drive, makes just booting the game an annoyance. Once all is set up, its not that bad of a hassle, but still, why punish players that buy the game?The menus and animations, and introductions will drive you up a wall. The are cool the first 100 times, -_- , not allowing me a way to skip them is just cruel. You will notice this the most when you enter a race: unskippable animation to show you your car, 1 second pause, menu pops up with "Race" and "Mod car stuff", etc, and then another 5 second animation to show you your car again, but on the starting grid, 1 second pause, and then its time to race, 3 second countdown till you can actually drive. Also every time you select an item from the race menu (those triangle things) again, animation, 1 second halt, here is what you ordered, oh new selection, sorry that need another animation.* People that were used to the Colin McRae games might be wondering where real rally went in the game. The one with the stages, and having to spend time in between races to repair damage, having to complete a few stages of a race with a half broken car. The special feeling of being part of the WRC is mostly gone. Now most races are on the short side (they do get longer as you progress), can be restarted at any point and no previous-race progress is lost, and even more there is the rewind feature. Naturally you do not need to use these mechanics, but just being there spoils the mood.Other Thoughts:It may seem like I slammed the game pretty hard, but then gave it a strangely high mark. The point is that the game is good, quite good, despite all the above issues, which all in all are actually fairly small things. Plus the cheap price bumps it up a notch.You will want to immediately turn off all assists (keep the driving line and abs at first, then decide for yourself) else the car basically drives itself.The loss of a true rally mode may be a make it or break it deal for somebody. The game is really fun, the driving is very fun regardless of the issues stated above, yet you will miss good ol' Colin.I would have given the game 3.5 out of 5, just because of the great stuff lost over the years, but I realized that it was not fair to compare it with something that (unfortunately) it is not anymore.For $12 it's a great deal.

So you just want to buy and play this great rally racing game? Good luck. I have a typical Windows XP system with an nVidia video 8600 series card and 4GB ram. Decent but nothing tricky. I am also quite resourceful and capable of doing things like "deleting .dll files" running special installers from third party websites, etc.YOU MAY VERY WELL NEED TO BE AS WELL.If your install does not work and the game gives you and error, you may be on your own. Codemaster's tech support? Responded twice total. I spent another $30 on a registry and .dll fixer, nothing, then they told me to uninstall a bunch of other stuff I had on my machine and then when I did, wouldn't return my response that their help did not resolve my problem. Poof, gone.There is no phone number and their home page is on Facebook.So I used Google and found their official forum and posted a lengthy message with the details as requested by their forum guide and got NOTHING, no help.I was able to eventually get it to run through more Google searching for related problems in other games. Problems that should not exist in today's games. I had to download and run special installers from a sound card manufacturer and "drill into" the Dirt 3 game folder and delete a specific file.How stupid is this? And nothing? No help? No FAQ? No fix or patch? Even more remarkable is that their forum is filled with demands that Codemasters fix the bugs. Demands for many months now, apparently gone unanswered, literally.This IS THE FIRST AND LAST CODEMASTERS GAME I will ever buy or help someone with.I gave it one star for the horrible "welcome aboard, have fun installing" for this game and "one star" for game play as it has been a week and countless hours spent, with no help from Codemasters, getting it to run, which is not much "fun." So One star for fun.It now works, maybe I'll come back and reassess my fun score, maybe not.Good Riddance.