DiRT Showdown – Game Analysis & Review
By Patrick Newman
Developer: Codemasters Southam
Publisher: Codemasters
Distributor: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Engine: EGO
Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Release Dates: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 (June 12, 2012), Microsoft Windows (May 23, 2012)
Modes: Single-player, Multiplayer
Rating: Everyone
DiRT Showdown is half a great game, making it the ideal GameFly rental, but not necessarily a title every racing fan should own. Sporting smoothly transitioning menus and overlays and detailed car models (replete with mud, dust and other nice particle effects), as well as beautiful and destructible environments, Showdown hits the nail on the head for much of its visceral experience. Unfortunately, the presentation of the game’s online component as essential, without providing any satisfying alternative route for the Twitter-averse gamer, comes off as narrow-minded and restrictive. Coupled with an aggravating commentary track, this bold addition to Codemasters’ latest is the nail in the coffin for the Showdown’s aspirations to rise above mediocrity.
The jacked-up tone of DiRT Showdown’s racing puts it leagues away from something like Gran Turismo and makes the game easy to pick up and enjoy, with its plethora of satisfyingly rendered battle damage, drift-and-jump intensive level designs, and rich displays of track pyrotechnics. The car handling has been greatly improved since DiRT 3, erasing much of the frustration that typically accompanies tight turns and brazen acceleration in the racing genre. Among the gameplay modes offered here (many left over from DiRT 3), the Demolition modes are above and beyond the most satisfying, since they are the furthest leap away from driving simulation and into pure arcade.
That’s not to say that the destruction derbies couldn’t benefit from further tweaking. A major setback in these smash-intensive tracks is the lack of racing opponents, limiting the levels to merely 8 cars in a gaming era that has already seen as many as 12 vehicles tearing down the track. Furthermore, the four Demolition sub-modes (Rampage, Knock Out, Hard Target and 8-Ball) are countdown-based, a notion that flies in the face of what derbies are designed to be – a last man standing event where the winner is the vehicle that manages to oust every other car while keeping its own engine humming.
The vehicle AI in Showdown is impressively challenging. Though the emphasis here is certainly on the multiplayer experience, bot-controlled cars will take any opportunity to ram you into oblivion, a quickly learned fact that adds tension to what are already explosive set of competitive modes. With this in mind, the best mode to play offline is without a doubt Demolition’s 8-Ball, which layers cross-overs (open intersections) into the track. The threat of being T-boned by either player-controlled or AI vehicles opens the player up to danger on all sides, making for an extremely entertaining, harrowing experience.
Despite Showdown’s undeniably entertaining collection of modes, two overriding game characteristics hamper what’s entertaining here at every turn. The first is its over-reliance on internet services such as YouTube, Twitter, and Racenet (a statistics tracking service similar to Burnout Crash’s Autolog) to merge social networking with racing. It’s not a bad idea per se, but the reluctance of Codemasters to offer players a choice of whether or not to play the game unplugged robs gamers of that necessary bit of autonomy. The same goes for Christian Stevenson’s commentary, which takes all of 30 seconds to wear thin with its constant stream of hyperbolic nonsense. Codemasters only allows players to cut the volume of the commentary track in half, not to toggle it on or off, making for a narrow and sometimes aggravating experience despite the racing pluses.
True to its title, DiRT: Showdown doesn’t ultimately create an original, separate experience from DiRT 3, but instead adds some entertaining demolition modes and experiments with new social media augmentation. Exceeding neither its predecessor, nor the superb 2007 Bugbear title FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage (of which Showdown also borrows heavily), this is a title that stumbles as often as it succeeds. Showdown is ultimately mediocre, and the first of the Codemasters racers that will likely only be embraced by die-hard racing fans.
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