Dirt Rally 2.0 Review (bonbon321)
A great rally game that gets a negative review due to its negatives outweighing the positives:
Negatives:
-Always online requirement for a SINGLEPLAYER GAME meaning:
-If you have no broadband or an unreliable ISP you can't play at all, mid stage connection loss? Tough luck, back to the main menu.
-Steams weekly scheduled maintenance means you can't play at all during that time.
-The game has to wait for validation with the server increasing load times when starting a rally, entering the race events menu, accessing cars in garage menus, uploading a leaderboard time at the end of every single stage etc.
-Career progress can be reset to 0 for some people when servers detect discrepancy between local and cloud data.
-After losing connection to servers trying to reconnect can crash the game lol. (Only happened once).
-DLC model which recycles content from Dirt rally 1. Thankfully all DLC can be obtained at once with the GOTY edition.
-DLC locks out legendary rally vehicles like the Lancia 037, Subaru Imprezza (2001), Subaru Imprezza S4, Peugeot 206. There's a lot of rallycross car DLC too.
-Lack of modding in a SINGLEPLAYER GAME compared to Dirt rally 1 due to DLC files being unalterable (cant mod DLC car liveries and even base game cars have only 1 or no liveries that can be replaced. Why not let us add to the list of liveries like the game Art of rally.)
-4WD up to 2000cc class consists of entirely DLC cars.
-Few real liveries for vehicles
Postives:
-Very good physics on all surfaces, not perfect but very good.
-Stages are based on real life locations
-Great voice acting from the English Co-Driver Phil Mills, all of the throat clearing and changes in the tone of voice to sound more scared when the car is being thrown around a lot/ moving at speed adds to the feel a lot.
-Much more rallycross content than the first game (granted rally is what most people play for)
-Plenty of cars and rally locations with all DLC
-Good graphics
Overall the game is great but the listed problems warrant a negative review.
Handling is great on both controller and wheel and there's not really any other rally sim substitute other than RBR which is from 2004 and no longer sold
(RallySimsFans: Richard Burns Rally is playable and a free game and highly recommended!)