My Steam Replay tells me that by far my most played game of 2022 has continued to be Dirt Rally 2.0 as I’ve made a more determined effort to go through just about every bit of content in it. But of course all sim rally racers will tell you that the greatest ever sim rally game ever made continues to be Richard Burns Rally, a game that was first released in 2004. Its makers having long gone out of business, the game is today maintained by a community of fans and modders, and is effectively free to download. I elected to download the version from rallysimfans.hu, the so-called Hungarian plugin as everyone says it is the most developed and has the largest community.
Installation is straightforward despite the profusion of options and it does use a surprising amount of storage due to how many tracks and cards are included. I had some difficulty getting my wheel set up and understanding the controls (the engine can actually turn off by itself here!) I also discovered that you need to register an account on their website or the only activity you can do is practice. Anyway once all that was done, I could finally experiment with some short practice runs and learned for myself that this is indeed as difficult as everyone says it is. Even driving cleanly through what passes for the tutorial stage without going off the track was almost impossible to me. The damage model is really unforgiving as well as trying to go through even some low shrubs is enough to cause serious damage to your car. You can really feel that damage too when the car becomes difficult to turn in one direction. The upshot is that all of my previous experience with rally games counts for almost nothing and I need to relearn everything again.
I’m still such a newbie at this that I hesitate to give my opinions, but I feel that there is so much more inertia and weight in the cars here. Players gush about how there is so much more detail in the force feedback. My own experience is that, yes, you are much more aware of every bump in the road even at low speeds and that is more representative of how real driving is like. In Dirt Rally 2.0, you really only care about bumps when moving at speed as it could wrench the car in an unexpected direction. But I also feel that it’s because the force feedback is set so high. I set my T-300RS to something like 60% of maximum force because it’s too tiring to use it for hours at a time at higher settings. I’m not sure if this game somehow overrides that or something because the forces here are so strong and really strains my arm. In that way, that helps to provide more feedback and make me feel more apprehensive about tight turns and bumps because I know I will be feeling that. I wonder how much of a difference it would make if I similarly ramped up the settings in Dirt Rally 2.0.
The graphics in this game are understandably more primitive given its age but it’s actually not that bad. There’s enough detail to see the bumps and ruts on the track and if the game renders a shrub on the roadside, you better believe that it’s a real object that you can hit. The sound is a bigger problem for me. That are a lot of cars included and it’s great to try out the modern cars that are unavailable in Dirt Rally 2.0 such the Toyota Yaris. However there are not dedicated sound packs for each car and you’re sometimes supposed to pick a best match yourself. Even when there are updated sound packs, the quality isn’t great to my ears. This is a major issue for me as I’m heavily reliant on listening to the engine sounds to know when to shift. The diversity of the tracks available is fantastic though I will note that there are a lot of urban gymkhana-type tracks that involve navigating a specific path through obstacles. I’m useless at these as I never know which way I’m supposed to go.
There are still a lot of idiosyncrasies in their system that I don’t understand. I’m not sure why the continue rally option doesn’t work for me for example so I have to manually remember and find the particular rallies I’m participating in. It seems there is also a time limit, in real time I mean, to continue stages of the same leg. I only realized this after I stopped playing for the day and later came back to see that I had been kicked out of the rally. In general, it’s pretty frustrating to me that all of the rally events are online only. Since any small accidents usually results in rally-ending serious damage, you better believe that I retired out of a lot of events. I’m not sure how rally events are created, perhaps on the website itself, and I found myself spending a lot of time scanning through the list of events to find those that suit me. It would have great to be able to practice with some offline rally events I created for myself.
After playing this for a while, it’s easy to understand why Dirt Rally 2.0 for all its claims to be realistic is still so game-like. For example, I now realize that perfectly reliable and predictable braking is unrealistic. In Richard Burns Rally, braking introduces instability to the car so it actually feels risky to brake when you are at high speed. I learned to moderate my throttle input a lot more as it simply isn’t possible to get through some turns with 100% throttle. It made me feel like I maybe need an analog handbrake since pressing the single button that I usually use is just too sharp. I also realized why everyone complains why the tarmac handling in Dirt Rally 2.0 is crap as tarmac gives you so much control here. I feel that there is so much that I could learn if I stick with it and I absolutely understand why so many people call it the greatest rally game ever made.
Even so, I think I will continue on with Dirt Rally 2.0 for a while longer. This is after all a pretty old game and I like having modern graphics and sounds in a driving game. It’s also too focused on just online rallies for my tastes and it’s so frustrating to keep crashing out of rallies without a retry option. Making good use of the pace notes here is tough too as this game doesn’t use the numbering system and some calls for moderate turns should really be like a 3 for me. I may come back to give this a serious go at a later date but I’ve also heard that BeamNG is now a decent rally game and there are mods for Assetto Corsa to do tarmac rallies. I want to check all these out and I suspect them being newer games might appeal to me more even if they’re not as good as Richard Burns Rally.