So, I played this game for about 1 year with a big boycott period in July of 2024 for 3 months and I must say...


As much I enjoying Rally titles of Codemasters(CM for short), this is just underwhelming. It was 2 years of failing in-game mechanics. weirdness in physics, lack of customisation options, overlooked possibilities, and 2 huge elephants in a room: Poor Graphics and Live Service model with baked-in kernal-based Anticheat system that is already broken.

If you are strictly looking into getting some rally action on real tracks and cars than sure. At the right price on sale, you can enjoy it as you wish.


We already had same things for MANY years and experimentation is needed to actually attract new blood to enjoy both series and motorsport I love. There are no Showy Super Special Stages from Colin McRae Rally series or even KT studios WRC games, that could be played head-to-head online like in DiRT 3. Multiplayer is simple time attack against ghosts of players which we already were plating with for MANY years.


How can games that are delisted for more than 10 years ago have a way better multiplayer than now? It's mindbogling that we have such poor multiplayer expirience in the game with the name of one of the biggest motorsport?


This game runs on Unreal Engine 4(UE4 n.) instead of in-house Ego Engine and it's still a mess. Yes, performance was improved. Yes, now with implementation of Kernel level AC now it doesn't matter because with it's intrusive pipeline made game work about the same frametimes and framepacing it was in 2023.


Since it's UE4 changes to texture work and rendering must have been done. Oh, it's too gawdy, sharp and colors all messed up? NOTHING THAT TEMPORAL ANTI-ALIASING AND DEEP LEARNING SUPER SAMPLING CAN'T FIX! Welcome to harsh reality of realing that "Codemasters" couldn't deliver on optimisations and left us with what we have here.


EA killed them by injecting their AC into the game. Proton simply doesn't work with them.


If on sale, it's still a decent package of "you get what you see" but do not expect much. Game delivers on baseline content with legit no extra fluff on top. But as I stress above I found it a bit sad. It's supposed to be fun but it's the same thing we had for over 10 years of CM rally steam releases. If you having DiRT rally 2.0 you are not missing much.

Very good physics and enjoyable gameplay all around.
IMO these are the best rally car sounds in any WRC game as well.

Codemasters would deserve a negative review because of that Kernel level anticheat. It makes Linux and Steamdeck users unable to play the game, not to mention it causes a huge vulnerability on other systems. But I cannot give this game a bad review because they mostly improved upon DR2.

Positives:
-tons of new and returning cars from previous Dirt games.
-tons of stages, locations (around 20)
-the stages are very well made, more realistic looking, less surprise troll rocks and logs than in DR2
-car suspension is finally working properly, the most realistic it has ever been
-cars are more nimble on tarmac, they turn faster than in DR2
-car sounds are usually slightly better than previously although the sounds in DR2 were great to begin with
-car damage seem to be improved a bit
-there are tons of customisation options regarding to rallies and championship, more than in DR2
-there is rally school, which is very basic but it acts like a tutorial.
-official 23 and 24 WRC1-2-3 championships because of the new licence
-new builder cars, which introduces limited customisation into the game
-tons of new real and fictional rally scenarios to try

Major negatives:
-the graphics are blurrier and has some artifacting, not to mention it has micro stutters rarely, texture pop-in is very prevalent, especially on some stages
-the lighting feels somewhat flat and worse compared to DR2, gravel at night looks outright terrible when lit
-awful looking trees and vegetation in general thanks to UE4 lod problems
-kernel level anticheat

Minor negatives:
-some of the smaller objects like saplings and wooden fences were breakable in DR2 but aren’t in this game
-the menu text sometimes have weird vibration issues
-no Rallycross tracks and cars, which is only a negative compared to DR2 which has them
-those who bought WRC early have to buy the Season Pass or DLCs separately if they want the content from them meanwhile late adopters got them with the game
-aside from the official WRC ones not many liveries to choose even with DLCs introducing more
-some of the moments are locked behind an extra paywall of EA access