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Even when you mess up a turn early in the race, they seem to let up on the gas just to let you get back into their bumper zone and overtake them over insurmountable odds. They're so fairly balanced against you at all time that it just seems … unfair. The computer opponents are either blundering or designed to trail just behind you at all times, but either way, they are just no fun to run against.
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Even racing newbies should be able to handle almost every mission on Professional difficulty, the highest difficulty available. To be fair, though, the most glaring problem is the complete ineffectiveness of the AI.
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There is a minimalistic upgrade system fueled by in-game money, with some user-unfriendly symbols representing traction, acceleration and other typical racing stats that don't feel like they have any impact on the races. Even the appearance customization is pretty lacking, letting you choose from a set of a few colors in a handful of shades, and not allowing for decals or multi-color choices. It takes all incentive out of vehicle choice except for simple aesthetics.
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They feel remarkably similar, and to make things incredibly inane, your opponents all drive the exact same car that you chose for each race. The lineup of vehicles is also unimpressive, featuring six heavy hitters seemingly picked at random and a few other smaller cars thrown in for good measure. A sharp hit from any other car at the wrong time can be an easy death sentence, dooming you to a trip off the path and subsequently stopping your car and returning you to the determined roadway. The only problems with handling come when you accidentally bump a car, which can either graphically glitch your taillight a few feet away from your vehicle or send you careening at top speed at an inconvenient angle.
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Drifting feels equally divorced from reality and is hardly ever necessary due to the title's easy turning. There is some sense of speed, but it feels almost detached from the ground you're rolling over, as if it were a hover-craft racing game. Turns become slightly easier on snow than on gravel, but there are no drastic spin-outs or rude awakenings when switching between surfaces. The surfaces range from asphalt and gravel to snow, and while there are slight tweaks to handling on each surface, there is nothing drastic and no "feel" of unpredictability normally associated with these surfaces. The problem with every single race, though, is the pathetic attempt at emulating an off-road experience.
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Almost all of the events are simple races against incredibly incompetent opponents, although there are also checkpoint and time-attack modes against invisible racers. The main menu is simply a map, with locations highlighted in random colors, and the cursor auto-resets to the newest obstacle. The mode would be adequate, taking players through each of the game's roughly half dozen race modes in seemingly random order and unlocking different countries as races are won, but the menu presentation is so bare and the variety so superficial that it becomes a slogging chore. Unfortunately, career is kind of a misnomer because it is essentially a hand-guided walk through the available tracks. Career mode is the staple mode, with the only other offerings a quick-race and local multiplayer. The design of the game is simplicity incarnate. DiRT 2 is a sludgy, boring experience without the benefit of any exciting mechanics, innovations, shiny graphics or detailed physics to bring it past the excitement level of mud. The same is true of Codemasters' latest offering, a Colin McCrae-inspired off-road racing game, which manages to capture exactly none of the gritty excitement of the off-roading on which it's based. There's not a lot of fun you can have with a pocketful of dirt unless you're a little kid without the experience to know that there's more to life than slipping down slides and running around the sandbox.
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