DiRT Career Mode Spotlight

One driver, tons of off-road vehicles, and metric tons of mud, dirt, and grime. We dive head-first into this racing game's career mode.

Codemasters' upcoming off-road racing game DiRT has gotten its fair share of attention thanks to its razor-sharp graphics and a driving model that seems to live up to the high standard of the game's forebear, the Colin McRae Rally series. While we've had opportunities to take brief dips in the DiRT and check out the game's gorgeous presentation and multiplayer features, with the final build of the game recently sent to us by Codemasters, our latest goal was to dive into the game's career mode to get a feel for the heart of the single-player game.

Making your way through DiRT's career mode will require you to drive through a number of races organized in a tiered pyramid system that will have you moving up through the ranks as you win races and earn points. Before you can enter a race, however, you'll have to buy a car that fits into that event's discipline (you can't run a Mitsubishi Lancer in a big-rig hill climb, for example). Luckily, the cash you need for cars is easy to come by in DiRT--and the higher the difficulty level you compete in, the more money you'll earn for winning.

At the bottom tier of the career pyramid you have 11 events to choose from, though not all of them are available to you right away. Still, in keeping with DiRT's inclusive approach to the grimier racing disciplines, there are plenty of event types to choose from straightaway--traditional rally racing, rallycross events, and CORR (Championship Off-road Racing) events are a few examples. All of them require different cars (not to mention different approaches) to find success on the track. We started off with a CORR event, which had us taking control of the massive, high-riding dune buggies that characterize the series. Switching immediately to one of the two in-car views that DiRT will feature was a shock, as the CORR buggies feature netting in front of some of the windows--which, as you might expect, is very hard to see through. As a result, we quickly chose the standard chase cam to complete the CORR event... (from gamespot)