I've usually had a lot of time for Codies' racing games, despite only being a car person to the extent that I can replace the fuse for the cigarette lighter if push comes to shove. They tend to comfortably straddle the line between the cheerful anti-physics of arcade driving games and the stony-faced realism of the sim crowd, which is the sweet spot where I can convince myself that 'yes, I am incredible race driver man!'
Dirt 4 [official site] sounds as though it's a game consciously in search of that sweet spot, with Codies having previously talked of fusing Dirt Rally's "realism" with the rather poppier Dirt 2 and 3's "fun". In trailer terms, that means spraying mud, near-misses and possibly inappropriate use of the word "banging" for its soundtrack.
]]>Codemasters today announced Dirt 4 [official site], a new entry in their racing series coming this June. Dirt 4 will have rally cars racing across track and field, same as ever, while also bringing back vehicles missing from the series for years: buggies and trucks. The option for procedurally-generated tracks is an interesting addition too. 2015's Dirt Rally was good stuff -- "It's like slamming your genitals in the door of a washing machine on a cotton cycle," one of the sad dads off the telly might say * -- so Codies expanding their scope sounds grand.
]]>''''''''Wheely'''''''' great horseless carriage 'em up Dirt 3 is free for the next day-and-a-bit on the Humble Store as part of the virtuashop's third birthday celebrations. A great many games are on sale too, as they always are somewhere these days. As the saying goes, "It's always a sale somewhere. And it's probably 5 o'clock there too, dear god please." But if Humble are giving away Dirt 3 in party bags, what are you giving them as a birthday present?
]]>Codemasters have taken Dirt 3 [official site] to the valet service, clearing out almost four years of crisp packets, newspapers, melted ice lolly goop, dried mud, travel sweet tins, and Games for Windows - Live guff. In what turned out not be a hilarious April Fool's prank, yesterday they released a version of their racing game with GFWL cut out and Steamworks boshed in.
Folks should be able to add GFWL copies to their Steam library, and as a nice bonus everyone who owned it will receive the Complete Edition that includes seven DLC packs.
]]>Humbly I present to you, our bundle of readers, this week's Humble Weekly Bundle. It concerns seven games from venerable Brit publisher Codemasters, which are on average Quite Good. Racing! Man-shooting! Very sweary man-shooting! Imp-herding! An ARPG I've never played! More racing! More imp-herding!
]]>UPDATE: Oh dear, turns out to be some mobile thing. BETRAYAL.
The DIRT and GRID games have all been jolly good, accessible fun, but I know a certain contingent of Metal Box Moving At High Speed fans have long rued Codemasters' retreat from traditional rally games - specifically the once-ubiquitous Colin McRae Rally series. Looks as though mud'n'hatchback fans might be due to have all their Christmases come at once, as the CEO of Codemasters has announced plans to visit all their houses, tie them to a kitchen chair and force-feed them 85 whole turkeys, 340 roast potatoes and 21 pints of gravy each. After that, he might even confirm that there will indeed be a new McRae Rally game, as today's viral teasing has heavily implied.
]]>Where can racing games go? How can they push boundaries and the same time provide us with the speed and competition we crave? The genre is already offering some clues about what it might be able to do, aside from improving graphics, realism, or going online, or doing anything else purely technical. The future of racing games is going to depend on designers doing interesting things, and fortunately for us some studios are doing just that.
Let's take a look...
]]>News that an eyebrow-raising 3 million Steam activation codes for natty racing title DIRT 3 had been leaked online broke earlier today, and now has an official oh-dear air to it as a result of confirmation from AMD that, yes, the codes were intended for vouchers that shipped with their Radeon graphics cards and yes, a database file containing them was purloined by bad eggs. I'm sure no-one at AMD or DIRT 3 publisher Codemasters is terribly calm right now, but at least it doesn't appear to be the case that either of their sites or servers were directly hacked.
]]>What a funny world we live in. A world where $5 DLCs for a PC game must be purchased from their Xbox.com site. It's a bit of a shame that something like that should be buried there, but the Codemasters.com URL now redirects to Facebook, so I suppose that's not any more of an appropriate location to sell DLCs for a rather good racing game from, is it?
So what's the download in question? Why it's the X Games Asia pack for Dirt 3, a game which I thought was great. Something tells me I won't be playing this particular set of tracks, however. You can check out if it tantalises your track-buds via the trailer, below.
]]>According to Codemasters, players have spent 292 years playing Dirt 3, neatly pre-dating the invention of the internal combustion engine. To add on a couple of centuries, here's the first fully-fledged chunk of content for Codemaster's superb rally racer, improving on the rather typical showing of extra cars already available. Centring on the Monte Carlo Rally, you can expect snow and tarmac courses through the Alps, changing it up some from faffing around a disused ironworks in Michigan.
The DLC should be available for purchase in the GFWL Marketplace soon is out now for £6.75, and a trailer for Monte Carlo is after the jump.
Quite a lot of mod news this week, apparently, even though there's very little for you to actually play. There's a long-awaited update from Jurrassic Life, as well as plenty of other gubbins related to Half-Life 2, Crysis, Stalker: Clear Sky, Portal 2 and Dirt 3. That's a lot of games! Read on to find out what's what.
]]>Dirt 3 slid neatly into its release spot on Tuesday, before accelerating its way onto my hard-drive. Ah, driving metaphors. That's enough of those. Let me tell you Wot I Think.
]]>No one knows the need for speed better than yours truly. Why, many were the nights I'd stay up late to streak around the ring roads of Surrey in my Rover 200, the engine singing like a broken kettle, the exhausted speedometer showing speeds of 30 or even 40 miles per hour. Those were the days.
If you too are a bit of a speed demon, DiRT 3 might be for you. It's out, and as you'll see from the launch trailer below it's more than a little pretty. Or, if you'd prefer, you could wait for Jim's review later in the week later today!
Codemasters announced today that Dirt 3 will include a party mode. Dirty parties, one presumes? Rally cars gracelessly mounting other rally cars, and huffing great cupfuls of cocaine through their grilles? Alas no. Dirt 3's party mode will all be good, clean, online fun, and Codies have invented three special new multiplayer modes which resemble playground games than anything else. Details after the jump.
]]>Have we used that joke before? Definitely. But hopefully the following fact will distract you- the trailer after the jump shows off the Group B rally cars that'll be in Dirt 3 (releasing this May). You can read about Group B cars here, but basically Group B was a new set of regulations for building rally cars introduced in 1982 that meant the cars could be made out of lightweight materials and the engines turbocharged with no limit. The end result was cars so fast that the spongy reflexes of humans couldn't possibly cope, and following a series of catastrophic accidents where drivers inserted the things into the landscape like horrific flags Group B cars were banned. But not in Dirt 3! Come, watch.
]]>Speaking of Codemasters, DiRT 3's latest videoramic offering is showing off Ken Block talking about "Gymkhana", which is basically trick-driving an obstacle course in a modified rally car. The video mixes real footage with game footage, so that you can experience the queasy dissonance of virtual light still not quite looking like the real thing. Speaking of things that are funny looking: Ken Block. (Also they should have called it "dIIIrt", right?)
]]>Dirt 3 is going to have a good balance between arcade accessibility and realism, say Codemasters, as they unveil the latest adventure in offroad antics in this early developer diary (posted below, obviously). The racing game, which is due to turn up some time next year, also seems to feature time travel, as one of the races will be "a Mini Cooper in the 1960s". It's also going to shift the focus back more towards classic rally, compared to Dirt 2, which can only be a good thing for those of us who are fans of sending nightmare versions of normal cars hurtling down roads made of leaves and optimism.
]]>The first trailer for off-road racing sequel Dirt 3 was shown during ESPN's X-Games coverage last night, and you can see it below. Needless to say, it features Ken Block's fancy Ford Focus racing about a bit, suggesting different environments for vehicular athletics. Phwoar, eh readers?
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