DiRT Rally / WRC

FINALLY got to try out some DiRT Rally...

It is pretty darned good so far.

It doesn't wow graphically as much as DiRT used to be, but it's pretty pleasant to look at most the time.

And oh baby is it not forgiving. Admittedly, I haven't played DiRT in a very long time, but I believe that the feel of the dirt and gravel when on the gas feels significantly looser in the force feedback than before, yet at the same time seems like it has a lot of detail in the feel and you still fly when throwing that dirt out behind you.

Also, resetting your vehicle is like a minimum of 12 seconds+. Rack those up and it's huge. If you can still "go," even if you're turned all the way around, or against a wall, you'd better go instead of resetting.

Your vehicle also has to survive 4 events (in Career). But it's kind of odd what seems to actually trigger a full wreck where you're out of the whole event. It's only happened to be once, yet I've gone head on off of drops into a tree many times...

This is definitely a game where being cautious and kind of slow is better, definitely on your early go-throughs.

Though I do have a couple larger complaints that I'm not even sure I'm justified in having. A lot of the time, I wish that the callouts were actually less detailed. I'm getting adjusted again to how much I need to definitely pay attention to the callout vs just going by eye... because I still have trouble doing both at the same time. And yes, I do have the visual callouts on as well, which can both help and hurt - and can make me too aggressive or too cautious.

Hell, I still get thrown by the fact that lower numbers mean sharper and higher numbers mean wider. I honestly wish it was the other way around, even though that's not the fact. (Also, I feel like his callout (the way he says it) for a 1-turn is too small or not obvious a lot of the time. That should be the one you're made most aware of.)

Another one is that, yes I know there's a setting to tweak it, but I feel like the timing of the callouts is often not when I like, yet also inconsistent (and they also get grouped together at times, like I'm sure they are in real life), so I don't know if tweaking the timing will make half of them better, but also half of them worse. It kind of depends on the track and your own speed as well I assume.

But the other main one is the damned junctions (or road intersections).... Holy hell, was it intentional to make the roping at 90 degree turns at intersections (almost 100% of which are blind) that visually confusing?? Is that how it's roped in real life?.... It seems so weird to me... The rope across the straight that you are not supposed to take is not right up against the intersection, but 50 feet back (sometimes with parked cars behind it), but the ropes on the sides of the road are still there too and this completely distorts any closer visual cue of where exactly the actual turn is... That and a lot of these get called out at I'd say the last possible moment you might have to brake hard and slow down after flying down a rather lengthy straight section...

But I still have to get better at it and I haven't gotten to trying online yet.

Oh and I did find it a little odd that it seems like it does have progressive vehicle stat upgrades (as well as for your repair crew). It's not just buy your car and then buy the next car. Yet the upgrades don't seem to be detailed really, just progressing up bars. I think, but I'm not sure. Oh, and apparently you have to be careful, because even though it literally lets you go through event to event (with hardly any different indication that you've finished a full event if you aren't actually paying attention to what's on screen between rallies), the contracts of the people in your repair crew can run out, perhaps mid-event. So really, you have to back out to the menus, even though you don't have to at all, to go check on your crew's remaining contract times... which I don't think it even shows you in the screens between events... Just seems a little odd. Allowing us to fly through events without having to go back to the menus, yet having a risk of our crew bailing on us without showing us the contract time remaining between events?

Oh and the other minor thing is that the icons for the wheel button configuring do nothing to help you out if you've got a PS branded wheel like I do. It's all numbers (which isn't really uncommon I guess), so that's a tad bit difficult to figure things out with.

GRiD is free on the Humble store.

Sweet. I may have to get it. Drive club is great in VR, I'm hoping the graphics can be better in dirt, but even still the graphics in DC are pretty good except for distance.

Of course I never get to play enough so why buy a second racing game...but still!

What....

blog.codemasters.com/dirt/01/announcing-dirt-4/

Didn't get sick with it? Some people do get sick with Dirt Rally VR. I... don't know yet, but I don't think I would because I've played so many racing games, also with a wheel.

I do want to try out the official Minecraft VR, but I found a couple people reporting that because your movement doesn't ramp up (if you aren't teleporting) and because it's practically a sprint, it makes you sick instantly.