Dirt 5 is an arcade racer for the PlayStation 4 (as well as every single other system available). It doesn’t have much of a tutorial but since it’s a racing game, the controls are pretty easy to pick up anyway. The right trigger is used to accelerate, and the left trigger to brake / reverse, while the circle button is used for the handbrake. This is an arcade styled racer but unlike Need for Speed, you don’t have a boost so drifting relies purely on using the handbrake at the right time.
The game looks amazing, on the PS4 it has HDR and for the PS4 Pro, you can either allow it to focus on higher frame rates or have it render in 4K. That said, even on the setting to prioritize frame rates, there are still slowdowns and noticeable frame drops. The cars themselves look good, and you have the option to just check them out, opening the doors and customizing their color scheme. As you race, it does take on damage and gets dirty, particularly if you were racing in the mud.
There is a single player campaign which is comprised of races chained after each other. There is some voice-overs commentary from time to time but it’s basically just winning as much as you can. The tracks takes place all over the world and even when you go on the same track again, the weather effects or the road conditions are different enough that it takes a little bit longer before it becomes repetitive. There are some uncommon effects like dust storms and fog in addition to the ones you’d expect like rain, snow and thunderstorms. While there are some really great looking races, the night time races on frozen rivers with all the lights is simply breathtaking.
There are a lot of customizable options. As you win and level up, you also get in-game currency. These can be used to get new vehicles, new decals and other bits to decorate your vehicle. There are various camera angles to choose from, although a few of them feels a bit too low, particularly on tracks with various elevation. This can make it hard to realize a tight turn is coming up if you’re unfamiliar with the track, and end up relying on the mini-map.
The levels in the campaign are separated into different types. One type may have you racing on ice, so it’s much more slippery. Another will have you rally racing in mud, or you’ll have to use a specific car. This adds variety but also means that there will definitely be some types that you do not like. At least since progression is fairly relaxed, you can safely skip some events and still move ahead to the next level. Each level also has three optional objectives. Sometimes it is easy such as hitting another vehicle or drift a certain number of times, others are a bit more annoying. Since they’re optional, you can ignore them if you want.
The handling takes some time to get used to, particularly in learning how to take the curves. The default difficulty seems to take this into account as you’ll take first place in the earlier races with ease. There is also a plethora of driving aids to help you if you want it, such as better handling and traction over and above the actual vehicle’s stats. Most of the maps have tight turns, so you need to get used to the handling in order to get past these without bumping into the sides.
The game is quite easy on the default difficulty. You won’t have too much trouble getting first in most of the races in the campaign on it. However, it does make the AI feel very rigid as they seem to go on a predetermined path more often than not. It’s also quite annoying in the beginning of races where with the amount of opponents, it ends up being a bumping match instead of using technique to overtake each other. Once you’ve overtaken most of the opponents, the races are a lot more fun since you won’t have them wrecking your turns.
Despite the easiness, there are also times where AI is very cheap and there is obvious rubberbanding where it not only manages to catch up and keep you with you, but then shoots far ahead. At the speed that you’re usually going, and the way the cars handle, the tracks can feel too narrow at times to take those corners. However, this makes getting clean laps and races really satisfying. It is absolutely no fun at all when you have twelve cars all bunched up together trying to fight to turn the corner at the same time. You cannot overtake, you cannot make your turn properly without hitting another car, and it’s terrible.
There’s no sense of progression with getting better and better cars. You can get decent cars from the beginning, and then soon after, are able to get very nice cars that you end up using for most of the game. As if the game is not repetitive enough, the later campaign levels require you to do five laps instead of three, so you eventually just go through the motions, all excitement lost. Considering there are over 100 levels in the campaign, even accounting for variations like weather, modes and reverse layouts, there aren’t enough tracks to keep you from seeing everything within the first two hours, let alone the ten to twelve hours required to complete it.
There are several online modes, the main one of course is just racing against other players. It has cross-play so you can match-make against players on other systems, but you cannot pick the track and type of race you’re doing. Another mode is the Playground mode where it uses player generated content but these are limited to modes where you score points or checkpoint time trials.
Overall, Dirt 5 is an average arcade racer. It’s fun for the first hour or two. The more you play, the more obvious the flaws are, from the track design, crap handling, poor visibility at times, annoying and cheap AI, pop in, stuttering frame rates and the repetitiveness. It leads to a mediocre racing game that lacks its own unique identity and feels generic as a result.
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