Dirt Rally 2.0 vs WRC 8
Discussion
Has anyone else played both of these and if so, which do you prefer?
I have been a long time fan of the Dirt series, but I didn't play Dirt 2 on release because of the awful state it launched in, with most of the content and the best stages missing from the rally mode.
I recently downloaded it on Games Pass to see if it was any good. I was rather disappointed to see that it is pretty bare in terms of content. It feels very lightweight in terms of courses and cars and quickly starts to feel very familiar. I didn't feel much inclined to spend money on such a cynical cash grab, though I did buy the 911 and the Germany stages.
The Rallycross mode is actually great fun, better I think, than the rallying mode. The Rallycross handling seems to have been smoothed off and made less twitchy, which has helped. The rallying, which is what I'm really there for, is disappointing. The stages tend to feel samey, with very bland scenery and cut and paste sections. Mostly I find them to be quite anonymous, with the small recognisable setpiece assets being about the only thing to stand out.
Tarmac remains a bugbear on the handling model, still being devoid of feedback and leaving cars feeling twitchy and unsatisfying. Also, where the f
k is Pikes Peak and the accompanying cars? Most of the daily, weekly and monthly Racenet events are locked out if you haven't purchased all of the DLC. Seriously, Codemasters took the piss charging £49.99 for this shell of a game on release.
Cue WRC 8, which my brother kindly bought me a copy of. I haven't been impressed with the WRC games in the past, but a move away from the developer 'Black Bean' has clearly paid off. Now, an official WRC game is a genuine competitor to Dirt Rally and in many ways, surpasses it.
Now, WRC 8 does have a far more limited selection of cars but it does let you drive the top tier WRC cars, and the Yaris WRC is just about the coolest damn thing I've ever seen. The R5 and JWRC classes are represented, as are a couple of historic models or models that don't fit into the other classes. My feeling here is that you better just pick a car in each class that you like and learn it, because you'll need that familiarity in the more demanding rallying action.
Each WRC location is represented, giving a huge variety of stages set over a range of terrain. Every location has it's own distinct feel, which is commendable. I particularly like the fast, flowing Finnish stages. The German stages look incredible but I find the tarmac to be like Dirt Rally, leaving cars feeling twitchy and unpredictable. The stages themselves are much longer and geographically more distinct than those in Dirt, with a lot of effort having been put into the detail in the surrounding terrain. You really feel the benefit of these being real roads modelled into the game, rather then the proc-gen look and feel of Dirt Rally 2.0.
The frame rate in WRC 8 is not as silky smooth as Dirt, a trade off for the increased detail, but it performs well. The handling model is noticeably different too. Whereas Dirt allows for maximum attack, WRC 8 is much more about finding the balance on part throttle and driving smoothly. It's definitely trickier to go fast in WRC 8, but feels much more satisfying when you start to learn how the get the performance from the cars.
I am just getting started on career mode in WRC 8, with hopefully more enjoyment to come. In short, Dirt is disappointing and WRC 8 is surprisingly great.
I have been a long time fan of the Dirt series, but I didn't play Dirt 2 on release because of the awful state it launched in, with most of the content and the best stages missing from the rally mode.
I recently downloaded it on Games Pass to see if it was any good. I was rather disappointed to see that it is pretty bare in terms of content. It feels very lightweight in terms of courses and cars and quickly starts to feel very familiar. I didn't feel much inclined to spend money on such a cynical cash grab, though I did buy the 911 and the Germany stages.
The Rallycross mode is actually great fun, better I think, than the rallying mode. The Rallycross handling seems to have been smoothed off and made less twitchy, which has helped. The rallying, which is what I'm really there for, is disappointing. The stages tend to feel samey, with very bland scenery and cut and paste sections. Mostly I find them to be quite anonymous, with the small recognisable setpiece assets being about the only thing to stand out.
Tarmac remains a bugbear on the handling model, still being devoid of feedback and leaving cars feeling twitchy and unsatisfying. Also, where the f
k is Pikes Peak and the accompanying cars? Most of the daily, weekly and monthly Racenet events are locked out if you haven't purchased all of the DLC. Seriously, Codemasters took the piss charging £49.99 for this shell of a game on release. Cue WRC 8, which my brother kindly bought me a copy of. I haven't been impressed with the WRC games in the past, but a move away from the developer 'Black Bean' has clearly paid off. Now, an official WRC game is a genuine competitor to Dirt Rally and in many ways, surpasses it.
Now, WRC 8 does have a far more limited selection of cars but it does let you drive the top tier WRC cars, and the Yaris WRC is just about the coolest damn thing I've ever seen. The R5 and JWRC classes are represented, as are a couple of historic models or models that don't fit into the other classes. My feeling here is that you better just pick a car in each class that you like and learn it, because you'll need that familiarity in the more demanding rallying action.
Each WRC location is represented, giving a huge variety of stages set over a range of terrain. Every location has it's own distinct feel, which is commendable. I particularly like the fast, flowing Finnish stages. The German stages look incredible but I find the tarmac to be like Dirt Rally, leaving cars feeling twitchy and unpredictable. The stages themselves are much longer and geographically more distinct than those in Dirt, with a lot of effort having been put into the detail in the surrounding terrain. You really feel the benefit of these being real roads modelled into the game, rather then the proc-gen look and feel of Dirt Rally 2.0.
The frame rate in WRC 8 is not as silky smooth as Dirt, a trade off for the increased detail, but it performs well. The handling model is noticeably different too. Whereas Dirt allows for maximum attack, WRC 8 is much more about finding the balance on part throttle and driving smoothly. It's definitely trickier to go fast in WRC 8, but feels much more satisfying when you start to learn how the get the performance from the cars.
I am just getting started on career mode in WRC 8, with hopefully more enjoyment to come. In short, Dirt is disappointing and WRC 8 is surprisingly great.
I have practiced a bit more on the tarmac stages this morning. I do think that the tarmac in WRC 8 is better represented than in Dirt Rally 2.0. In Dirt, the tarmac feels like glass which is fine, until you break traction, which is not communicated well through feedback or the controls. The German stages in particular require high speeds where the car will break away without much warning at all.
The tarmac stages in WRC 8 are much more dynamic and the layout is much trickier. As I said, maintaining control in WRC 8 is more about balancing the car on part throttle, getting the aero working and maintaining the car's balance and weight transfer. This works on tarmac also, but it's still inferior to the feel and feedback of the cars on gravel. What did impress me last night was Rally Sweden, where the snow experience is miles better than Dirt. Sweden isn't even included in the basic Dirt 2.0 release.
What I would say, Speckle, is that it's worth setting any past experience of WRC aside as this one delivers a much more interesting and authentic experience.
The tarmac stages in WRC 8 are much more dynamic and the layout is much trickier. As I said, maintaining control in WRC 8 is more about balancing the car on part throttle, getting the aero working and maintaining the car's balance and weight transfer. This works on tarmac also, but it's still inferior to the feel and feedback of the cars on gravel. What did impress me last night was Rally Sweden, where the snow experience is miles better than Dirt. Sweden isn't even included in the basic Dirt 2.0 release.
What I would say, Speckle, is that it's worth setting any past experience of WRC aside as this one delivers a much more interesting and authentic experience.
I've been getting on well with WRC8, having started it recently after playing Dirt Rally 2.0 for a while.
First, my thoughts on Dirt Rally 2.0; I have been a long-time casual fan of the Dirt games. I enjoyed Dirt Rally 1 but when DR2 came out, I was actually quite surprised at the staggering greed of Codemasters to release the game in such a state. It had less content that DR1 and launched with a raft of DLC, except most of the DLC was stuff that was in DR1. Germany, Sweden, Greece, Wales and loads of cars, cut out from the game and sold back to the player.
I will hold my hands up and admit that I did get some of the courses and cars, but then I play the game effectively for free through Microsoft Gamepass, if I'd paid £50 for the base game to find it so devoid of content, only to find existing assets from an older game being sold back to the player as additional content, I'd be absolutely outraged. Codemasters' contempt for the longer-standing fans of the games is incredible.
DR2 isn't a bad game, it's just extremely limited. I didn't really bother wit the rallycross stuff because I find the idea of driving a load of laps around a course that takes 20 seconds to drive around to be quite unappealing. The rally mode is missing locations and while the car roster is decent, the gameplay quickly gets quite boring because of the limited physics model the game has. You can drive quite aggressively, the cars seem to float over bumps and you can take some big bumps without damaging the car much. It's fun for short bursts but you don't feel like you're really learning or improving after a quick familiarisation period. The tarmac physics in particular feel like a total afterthought, the cars have grip like an LMP1 car, right up until they don't and then they break away immediately.
Maybe my biggest gripe with the game is the lack of the locations and the boring stages. You only get a few stages for each location and they are mostly anonymous. As said by the OP, aside from passing perhaps a cottage with a hay bale chicane next to it, or a bridge with a river flowing under it, you could never tell which stage you're on or whether you're near the start or finish of the stage. The stages generally feel very samey from start to finish. There is a single corner in the entire base game that has a "camber" pacenote. One corner with bad camber in the whole base game - it's pretty astonishing how flat and unimaginative the courses are. The game does have a very high and stable framerate and the cars look ok, but the detail in the stages is very low and in particular, the road surface textures are very bland. I find the colour palette in DR2 to be pretty lurid. The cars look ok, but the environments are very arcadey in terms of brightness, lighting and colour. I think it's been cooled down a bit over DR1, where they really hit you over the head with colours (Greece is yellow, Australia is red-orange, New England is orange etc).
There are some good aspects to DR2, the sound is generally excellent with a really pleasant, warm quality to the cars. It all sounds very smooth and the linkage of the car sounds to the controller inputs are perfect. For all that Turn 10 and Playground Games trumpet on about recording cars with a hundred microphones to make perfect reproductions, the quality of the car sounds in DR2 makes the Forza games sound crap in comparison. However, the sound effects don't interact much or even at all with the environment, the pops and bangs, don't change whether you're driving down a narrow mountain canyon, a forest or an open plain, there's little to no reverb or ambiance.
WRC8 in comparison is much more sim, for better or for worse depending on your perspective. It's not a perfect package - I've encountered a few bugs, namely the menu in career mode locking up during the tutorial at the start of the game, which I got around by starting a new career with no tutorial enabled, and the game did crash to desktop once after a training stage. Other than that, the car roster isn't huge, but you actually get to drive the current generation WRC cars, which you don't in Dirt. The sound isn't quite as lush as Dirt but it is still a good effort, the cars do sound nice and in particular the ambience of the pops and bangs of the environment feel realistic.
The career mode in WRC8 is much more in depth, with a choice in what events to do in between major calendar events, hiring and firing staff, managing relations with teams etc.
As nice as that stuff is, it's all window-dressing if the game doesn't feel good and boy, does it feel good. The physics of the driving is considerably better than DR2 on any surface type. It's a lot harder than DR2, the stages are much less forgiving, less predictable and have many more narrow sections and hazard to avoid. The cars handle superbly, responding as you'd expect a real car to but be warned, if you want to jump in a WRC car and do 100mph along a stage without any practice you will probably struggle. I jumped in the Toyota Yaris WRC and went to Germany for my first try at driving a car in the game and it was a really bumpy ride to the finish line. The cars, in particular the 380bhp WRC cars, will spin if you are too heavy with the throttle and steering, but the breakaway is progressive rather than the cars snapping out of control. The differing surfaces have a big effect on handling and tyre wear, which I found to be virtually imperceptible in DR2, makes a huge difference. I was doing Tour de Corse earlier with 2 stage between each service and fresh set of tyres - I could attack the first stage but had to be careful, particularly towards the end of the second stage when the tears were worn as the car was becoming much more wayward. Tyre wear is indicated by a percentage indicator in real time for each tyre.
If the handling and driving experience is what matters the most to you, I'd say WRC8 is just better than DR2, much better. To me, I play a rally game because I want to feel a little bit of what it must be like to drive a real rally car. I think WRC8 lands very nice on the sim vs arcade scale, it's difficult but rewarding but whether you're great at the game or terrible at it, you will feel the weight, the surface, the tyres, the power and sense of speed you'd get in a WRC car.
The stages look absolutely beautiful and that is where the longevity in this game will be found. The colour palette is realistic and the textures are brilliant. The game looks pin-sharp in 4K and while the frame rate isn't as high as DR2, I think it's a good trade as there is so much detail packed on screen at any time. The stages look very authentic to how they look in real life, in particular the feeling of heat in Corsica, or the chill in Sweden, particularly when you're driving in a snowstorm, is brilliant.
First, my thoughts on Dirt Rally 2.0; I have been a long-time casual fan of the Dirt games. I enjoyed Dirt Rally 1 but when DR2 came out, I was actually quite surprised at the staggering greed of Codemasters to release the game in such a state. It had less content that DR1 and launched with a raft of DLC, except most of the DLC was stuff that was in DR1. Germany, Sweden, Greece, Wales and loads of cars, cut out from the game and sold back to the player.
I will hold my hands up and admit that I did get some of the courses and cars, but then I play the game effectively for free through Microsoft Gamepass, if I'd paid £50 for the base game to find it so devoid of content, only to find existing assets from an older game being sold back to the player as additional content, I'd be absolutely outraged. Codemasters' contempt for the longer-standing fans of the games is incredible.
DR2 isn't a bad game, it's just extremely limited. I didn't really bother wit the rallycross stuff because I find the idea of driving a load of laps around a course that takes 20 seconds to drive around to be quite unappealing. The rally mode is missing locations and while the car roster is decent, the gameplay quickly gets quite boring because of the limited physics model the game has. You can drive quite aggressively, the cars seem to float over bumps and you can take some big bumps without damaging the car much. It's fun for short bursts but you don't feel like you're really learning or improving after a quick familiarisation period. The tarmac physics in particular feel like a total afterthought, the cars have grip like an LMP1 car, right up until they don't and then they break away immediately.
Maybe my biggest gripe with the game is the lack of the locations and the boring stages. You only get a few stages for each location and they are mostly anonymous. As said by the OP, aside from passing perhaps a cottage with a hay bale chicane next to it, or a bridge with a river flowing under it, you could never tell which stage you're on or whether you're near the start or finish of the stage. The stages generally feel very samey from start to finish. There is a single corner in the entire base game that has a "camber" pacenote. One corner with bad camber in the whole base game - it's pretty astonishing how flat and unimaginative the courses are. The game does have a very high and stable framerate and the cars look ok, but the detail in the stages is very low and in particular, the road surface textures are very bland. I find the colour palette in DR2 to be pretty lurid. The cars look ok, but the environments are very arcadey in terms of brightness, lighting and colour. I think it's been cooled down a bit over DR1, where they really hit you over the head with colours (Greece is yellow, Australia is red-orange, New England is orange etc).
There are some good aspects to DR2, the sound is generally excellent with a really pleasant, warm quality to the cars. It all sounds very smooth and the linkage of the car sounds to the controller inputs are perfect. For all that Turn 10 and Playground Games trumpet on about recording cars with a hundred microphones to make perfect reproductions, the quality of the car sounds in DR2 makes the Forza games sound crap in comparison. However, the sound effects don't interact much or even at all with the environment, the pops and bangs, don't change whether you're driving down a narrow mountain canyon, a forest or an open plain, there's little to no reverb or ambiance.
WRC8 in comparison is much more sim, for better or for worse depending on your perspective. It's not a perfect package - I've encountered a few bugs, namely the menu in career mode locking up during the tutorial at the start of the game, which I got around by starting a new career with no tutorial enabled, and the game did crash to desktop once after a training stage. Other than that, the car roster isn't huge, but you actually get to drive the current generation WRC cars, which you don't in Dirt. The sound isn't quite as lush as Dirt but it is still a good effort, the cars do sound nice and in particular the ambience of the pops and bangs of the environment feel realistic.
The career mode in WRC8 is much more in depth, with a choice in what events to do in between major calendar events, hiring and firing staff, managing relations with teams etc.
As nice as that stuff is, it's all window-dressing if the game doesn't feel good and boy, does it feel good. The physics of the driving is considerably better than DR2 on any surface type. It's a lot harder than DR2, the stages are much less forgiving, less predictable and have many more narrow sections and hazard to avoid. The cars handle superbly, responding as you'd expect a real car to but be warned, if you want to jump in a WRC car and do 100mph along a stage without any practice you will probably struggle. I jumped in the Toyota Yaris WRC and went to Germany for my first try at driving a car in the game and it was a really bumpy ride to the finish line. The cars, in particular the 380bhp WRC cars, will spin if you are too heavy with the throttle and steering, but the breakaway is progressive rather than the cars snapping out of control. The differing surfaces have a big effect on handling and tyre wear, which I found to be virtually imperceptible in DR2, makes a huge difference. I was doing Tour de Corse earlier with 2 stage between each service and fresh set of tyres - I could attack the first stage but had to be careful, particularly towards the end of the second stage when the tears were worn as the car was becoming much more wayward. Tyre wear is indicated by a percentage indicator in real time for each tyre.
If the handling and driving experience is what matters the most to you, I'd say WRC8 is just better than DR2, much better. To me, I play a rally game because I want to feel a little bit of what it must be like to drive a real rally car. I think WRC8 lands very nice on the sim vs arcade scale, it's difficult but rewarding but whether you're great at the game or terrible at it, you will feel the weight, the surface, the tyres, the power and sense of speed you'd get in a WRC car.
The stages look absolutely beautiful and that is where the longevity in this game will be found. The colour palette is realistic and the textures are brilliant. The game looks pin-sharp in 4K and while the frame rate isn't as high as DR2, I think it's a good trade as there is so much detail packed on screen at any time. The stages look very authentic to how they look in real life, in particular the feeling of heat in Corsica, or the chill in Sweden, particularly when you're driving in a snowstorm, is brilliant.
Interesting - thanks for taking the time to post in such detail. I was fortunate enough to pick up DR 2 with all DLC content for about £25, mainly because I ignored it at launch due to the lack of VR support (a huge step back from DR 1). So, whilst there isn't an abundance of content, I still feel like I've got value for money.
What I have never understood with the tarmac handling is how it ever gets through testing. It feels awful and unrealistic. How can games like project cars and Assetto Corsa get it so right, and yet rally games still struggle.
Having no VR is the only thing left putting me off a WRC 8 purchase. I've been using VR for sims almost exclusively for a number of years now and have been reluctant to return to a flat screen. Presumably, I can change the FOV to suit my setup?
What I have never understood with the tarmac handling is how it ever gets through testing. It feels awful and unrealistic. How can games like project cars and Assetto Corsa get it so right, and yet rally games still struggle.
Having no VR is the only thing left putting me off a WRC 8 purchase. I've been using VR for sims almost exclusively for a number of years now and have been reluctant to return to a flat screen. Presumably, I can change the FOV to suit my setup?
Yeah, there are loads of options to adjust the game to suit. I prefer a chase camera view.
I have now driven far further on the tarmac roads in this game and really got keyed into them. It quickly becomes apparent that there is more grip and feel available than in Dirt Rally 2.0. The WRC 8 handling model has a lot more depth than DR2, even though it initially may feel a little less intuitive or user friendly.
I have now driven far further on the tarmac roads in this game and really got keyed into them. It quickly becomes apparent that there is more grip and feel available than in Dirt Rally 2.0. The WRC 8 handling model has a lot more depth than DR2, even though it initially may feel a little less intuitive or user friendly.
I've played some Dirt 2.0 but just cannot get the hang of the handling model. It feels completely unforgiving as you have to drive almost perfectly to get a podium and there are no rewinds. Tried the Group B Quattro and could barely even keep the thing in a straight line. Gave up in frustration after I reached the final corner of a near 10 minute stage and ended up sliding down a bank, taking me from 2nd to 16th. Odd thing was I really enjoyed Dirt 1, and whilst hardly a master I was at least competent.
I like the tarmac and snow on WRC 8. I don't rate the gravel at all. Even on the better surfaces the cars feel strange, like they're on giant elastic bands slowly extending and contracting. And still after all these years the cars pivot in the centre.
There are some aspects of Dirt 2 I prefer over Dirt 1, the RWD which felt like mid wheel drive at best in 1 and I hated the lack of steering wheel movement, but somehow 2 feels a bit less fun.
There are some aspects of Dirt 2 I prefer over Dirt 1, the RWD which felt like mid wheel drive at best in 1 and I hated the lack of steering wheel movement, but somehow 2 feels a bit less fun.
I've been playing with the Lancia 037 on WRC 8 tonight, which comes as an add on with a 911 RSR. The Lancia is just stunning. I prefer it on a wider, sweeping course like you find in Chile or Finland, as it tends to twitch and slide under power. You can't just drive it flat out as it'll leave the road in a split second but coaxing it into the right speed and gear so that it settles, grips and goes is really great. I usually find Group B cars in sims to be frustratingly unpleasant to drive but this is great fun.
The Stratos, which is included in the base game, is also brilliant fun and what I would expect to be the most 'true to life' replica in a game. It also requires a deft touch to drive, but the noise and surge of power at the top end is amazing. It really does feel like a supercar.
The Stratos, which is included in the base game, is also brilliant fun and what I would expect to be the most 'true to life' replica in a game. It also requires a deft touch to drive, but the noise and surge of power at the top end is amazing. It really does feel like a supercar.
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