I'm so disappointed by this game

[lloydisthebest88]

I love racing games and the Dirt series, my first game of the series was the OG Colin McRae Rally, so even though I've not played all of them, I've been around for a while. Dirt 5 is the first game in the series which actively annoys me. It has so many problems, from the fundamentals to the mundane.

 

• Surfaces can be reduced to three types: grippy (tarmac, of which there's incredibly little in the whole game), quite slippery (ice) and regular slippery (everything else). If you exclude tarmac and ice, everything else feels pretty much the same: dirt, mud, gravel, there's no real difference.
• Event types are a bunch of nonsense. The only meaningful difference is lap vs point-to-point racing (with way too many of the former). Stampede, Land Rush, Rally Raid... They're all the same thing, except maybe you're forced to use certain cars. Gymkhanas are back, but there's just so few of them.
• Speaking of cars, who even thought so many SUV and pick up truck events was a good idea. They just feel slow and chunky and are incredibly boring. A racing game (especially a rally one, especially an arcade one) should be maximum adrenaline from start to finish, but instead of giving us fast cars, over half of the campaign events are spent racing toys (some kind of ATV) or chunky slow monsters.
• Related to my last point, it seems like they're trying really hard to appeal to an American audience. I feel like the types of available cars, the Donut Media "storyline", and a few other choices go hard in that direction, in a way going against what the series was known and loved for.
• The AI is just awful. It has some of the worst rubberbanding I've ever seen in a racing game. Regardless of the difficulty setting and the car I pick, I'll quite easily get to first place withing a few corners, but then for the life of me it's almost impossible to pull away. I may drive one lap 5 seconds faster than the previous one, but the AI will just stay 2-3 seconds behind me, regardless. It's incredibly annoying because it doesn't encourage me to drive fast and take risks, it just lets me chill in P1 and have dull races.
• Race objectives are often dumb, and sometimes they just go against each other. I had a race where one objective required me to spend pretty much the whole race in P1, whereas another objective required me to overtake while drifting 10 times. Anyone who's able to do both in the same race deserves a platinum trophy just for that.
• Sponsors are dumb. There's very few of them, and they have basically no effect on anything. Same with money. There's no reason for buying any car besides those with 1.0 multiplier, because they all feel same-y anyway, so you might as well just get the best one and forget about all the others.
• Throwdown events are just... there.
• The game is incredibly light on content. I'm playing it because it was free with PS+ a few months ago, but if I had to pay full price I'd be even more annoyed. The lack of variety is embarrassing, there are 10 locations which you play over and over throughout the career and by the end there were a few tracks which I was so fed up with... I wasn't a huge fan of the procedurally generated ones, but I'll take them any day compared to repeating these over and over and over.
• Speaking of light on content, the amount of pushing for DLCs and PS Store extra content is borderline criminal. Every time I boot the game I need to dismiss two messages about some available DLC, going in the career more requires me to see huge ads for DLCs, and before every races there are a ton of cars with the PS Store logo telling you "buy me!", same with sponsors... I guess EA looked at this and thought "this will fit well in our lineup".
• Racing 1000 miles... Ugh. I hate this kind of trophy. I've yet to platinum Cities Skyline because of the 1001 nights trophy. This is a giant fuck you to players.

 

This was such a letdown, which is a shame because it's from the Driveclub developers and I swear I loved that game so freaking much.

[LastMinuteSavior]

Yeah, it was simultaneously disappointing as a Dirt game and as an "Evolution" game.

 

After this and Onrush (which was actually more fun) chances of us getting a proper spiritual successor to Motorstorm have dropped from slim to none.

 

I would be contented with a good simcade like Driveclub or Forza though, but I ain't holding my breath for that either.

 

Unfortunately Codemasters' days of Colin McRae Rally and TOCA games seem long gone.

 

Right now, I'm just playing cheap and waiting for Grid Legends to hit EA Play.

 

[djb5f]

I agree, this game has been quite disappointing.  It’s functional/serviceable, but not much more.  Everything feels kind of slow for an arcade racer (no sense of adrenaline) and the lack of tracks really hurts it.

 

A fairly barebones experience.  

[dannyswfc9]

Enjoyed it as first but quiet tedious towards end. Doing the dlcs were hard to get motivated to finish

[VenlafaxineHead]

Another developer (Codemasters) that has fallen victim to the evil EA conglomerate. 

 

I will say Dirt 5 was much better on the PS5 with haptic feedback than it is on the PS4...but yeah, still quite underwhelming. Same with Grid Legends...which has the buggiest trophies I've ever seen in any game period. 

[pnepnepne]

Absolutely agree on everything hear. 

 

I started playing after Dirt Rally 2.0 - which was absolutely fantastic and one of the best racing games ever - I thought this may be in some way similar.

 

WRONG.

 

For some reason, I persevered and got through the races - it was crazily boring and repetitive. I thought perhaps I can get just the platinum and move on. Yet I had to come back a few times to complete it as the repetition of completion was grating on me. I still having completed - I've got the 1000 miles trophy left - at around 650. I've rubberbanded the controller and still only at that. My PS5 deserves better.

 

At some point I'll get it done, but I can't be bothered!

 

Very medicore, bland experience overall - you can tell EA are involved. That is FIFA has been a bag of crap for as long as I can recall. Its all about DLC, micro-transactions and this mythical stupid American audience - do Americans really want this? 

[WARLOCK1972]

Agree, its a pretty weak game. I am currently playing Grid Legends, definitely not a great racing game, but has way more depth - story and career modes make the racing fun. Also the  variety of racing car types keep the game cool.

[Skurkitty]

I honestly didn't mind it at all, but maybe that's due to my pure ignorance of having never played another Dirt game. I'll admit it did feel generic, but it didn't take away from my enjoyment based on what I paid for it. That being said, I likely wouldn't purchase Dirt 6 if it ends up just being more of the same.

[GRJ-UNIT]

First time I have played a DIRT game but I agree with most of what is said here. Have finished Chapter 2 and these are my main issues:

 

• Braking: No matter what the surface the brakes just seem to be too powerful and too much grip. You can just touch the brake in full mud/ice and almost stop immediately. Makes it easy to brake late but should be more slip
• Acceleration: Playing on PS5 with the Dualsense there is no resistance on the R2 trigger when accelerating. This makes it almost impossible to gradually feed on the accelerator. So when racing the 80s Rally and Sprint cars (RWD ones) I just get wheel spin the whole time (I am playing with auto trans so manual early upshifts might help). I also play with no assists but for the aforementioned races I have to increase the TC so I can actally drive. Having played GT5 the accelerator on that is miles ahead.