Previews// DiRT 3

The great outdoors, sunshine, rock music, and cars chucking up buckets of dust and grit against an army of spectators. It felt like I was at some kind of festival, but in fact this is how Codemasters rolls when it wants to present its latest rally game, DiRT 3, to the press. And I’m not complaining - I was entranced by the motoring talents of one Ken Block as he blasted around the makeshift track outside Battersea Power Station.

Of course, there was a reason Block was there, spinning cars around cranes and underneath cargo trucks. He represents a growing motorsport known as Gymkhana - which puts drivers in arenas filled with multiple urban obstacles, and challenges them to drift, donut and launch their way around the course at high speed.

Incidentally, this forms a large part of DiRT 3 as well, with a special mode dedicated to the technical car-ballet that is Gymkhana. Sat in Ken Block’s own Monster-branded Subaru (virtually, of course) is a battle in itself for those who aren’t used to the somewhat slippery handling of rally cars. Gymkhana takes it to the next level - Block’s beast is more than happy to drift and slide at the slightest twist of the wheel.

Getting around this initial issue involves getting your head into the right zone. Rather than a handbrake-to-drift deal - in fact, it’s probably worth ignoring the brake pedal entirely at first - the right handling is achieved by way of compensating at the wheel. Unlike other rally modes (and much like similar modes in Tony Hawk games) you can go wherever you like in the circuit, and must rack up points by performing as many tricks and spins as humanely possible.

If you ultimately suck at the game, like me, then there’s a rather handy gameplay mechanic called Trick-Steer, which will guide your car through drifts and help you avoid barrels and other hazards that might scrape a chunk of paintwork off your car. It’s a gradual assist, so it can be tuned up or down to your liking - eventually you might not even need it. Not me, though. I’ll need it for all time, most likely.

Of course, there is a good chunk of actual rally racing involved as well - from Kenya to Scandinavia and beyond, these traditional trials will keep you on edge and after the fastest time on the leaderboards. I raced around a circuit in the Kenyan countryside and found myself battling uphill tracks, swerving around hairpin bends and trying not to fall off of cliffs! The track design surely has been amped for this iteration, so it certainly won’t be seen as ‘the boring option’ compared to the tricksy Gymkhana.

I was able to get a sneak peek at the kind of multiplayer modes one can expect in DiRT 3 as well, and Codies seems to be rather inspired by first person shooters in this regard. Three modes were on offer at the Battersea event - Invasion, which sees players smashing into cardboard cutouts of killer robots to score maximum points; a car-based version of the classic Capture the Flag mode in Transporter; and Outbreak.

The Outbreak mode is perhaps the most interesting, and works a little bit like a game of Tag. One driver is designated as ‘infected,’ and has to spread his green disease by crashing into other cars. Matches either turn into a hilarious game of hide-and-seek, or a race to see which players can outrun the infected. Those who have been turned will have the benefit of a map to see where their victims lie, while ‘human’ cars will just have to keep their wits about them.

These are all really quite exciting additions and changes to the traditional DiRT formula, and to be honest I think it’s something that the series truly needed. The expansion into Gymkhana and the interesting and entertaining multiplayer modes will help keep the brand name firmly ahead of the pack when it arrives on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC on the 24th May.