Dirt Rally 2 PC review – a punishing sequel for skilful drivers

Rally is a punishing discipline. In road racing drivers have the benefit of careful planning, but in rally that premeditated memorisation is replaced with a passenger who is constantly blurting out a series of numbers and directions. The predictability of staying within your limits of traction is replaced with improvised, reactive fixes and the counter-intuitive truth that maintaining traction is often not the fastest way around a tight corner. Rally requires precision like road racing, sure, but there’s no knowing what the target is until you need to hit it. There’s a reason the only car I’ve ever crashed was a rally car. Unless you really know what you’re doing, start out on your Dirt Rally 2.0 career in a front-wheel drive car with low power and work your way up. That’s infinitely less frustrating than trying to hop straight into a squirrely, twitchy Rallycross Supercar. 600 horsepower may be a lot in something like a McLaren, but it’s utterly ludicrous in a Ford Fiesta. Crashes in Dirt do serious damage that can impact performance or just take a car out of action completely - heavy impacts are accompanied by a subtle sound effect and a white blur, not unlike how some games simulate flashbang grenades. Even if you get lucky on the damage you might still lose quite a bit of time. Like its forebear, then, Dirt Rally 2.0 is not mucking about.

from PCGamesN https://www.pcgamesn.com/dirt-rally-2/pc-review