14 DAY TRIAL // 
After delighting racing fans with impressive rally simulators, Codemasters has now released, through its newly founded Racing label, Dirt Showdown, which takes the long running series into a whole new direction, away from rally events and into destruction-based ones.
With the promise of delivering an action-filled, full contact experience, did Codemasters Racing do the right thing by taking the Dirt series into a new area or should it stick with the tried and true rally simulation it does so well?
Let’s take Showdown for a test drive and see how it performs.
Story
There isn’t a story per se in Dirt Showdown, largely because you just play as a driver who goes through different competitions and events in order to make a name for himself. You could imagine you’re doing this to save the world or something like that but, most of the times, it’s just you, driving a car, and listening to an annoying announcer that tries so hard to be the 1990s definition of “cool”.
Gameplay
While Dirt Showdown doesn’t really have a narrative, the game keeps you hooked on its various experiences by ramping up the difficulty across multiple competitions and always keeping things from getting stale.
Each tournament is composed of different events and includes things like full contact races, where you can crash into opponents, to variations of its type, like Elimination, where the driver in last place gets eliminated every 14 seconds, or Domination, where you need to set the fastest time on different segments of the circuit.
As you can imagine, these pure racing events are the high points of the game, as Codemasters’ expertise shines in terms of track design and enemy AI, which manages to give you a good challenge almost every time.
Of course, one of Dirt Showdown’s biggest claims to fame is the introduction of demolition derbies and various other destruction-based events. These can take place either in the classic bowl-like arenas or on elevated platforms from which you can push your opponents and score big points. There are also reversal events called Hard Target, where you need to avoid getting crashed into for a certain time.
This is where the game hits and misses, as while the destruction events are quite fun, the scoring is all over the place because there isn’t that big of a difference between scoring crashes in the low hundreds and scoring over 1,000, even if you use boost.
Last but not least, Dirt Showdown marks the return of Gymkhana competitions, although this time they’ve been refined and tweaked for a less annoying experience, while being renamed into Hoonigan events.
You can enter experiences where you drive head to head against another driver on special courses designed to get you to execute all sorts of maneuvers, from drifts, to donuts or jumps. There are also Smash Attack events, which challenge you to do things like smash items of different colors in quick succession, as well as Trick Rush ones, which are the most reminiscent of the Gymkhana from Dirt 3, as you drive around an abandoned compound and do whatever tricks you want.
While the regular Hoonigan competitions are pretty nice and manage to test out a variety of skills, the smashing ones are a bit annoying as you always need to drive with a low speed in order to make sure that you won’t miss your items.
Luckily, only in these types of events, you can use the rewind feature that can reverse time for a few moments and try your last maneuver once more. In races or destruction events, however, this feature isn’t available.
In terms of cars, Dirt Showdown uses licensed vehicles only in Hoonigan events, as Codemasters opted to come up with its own vehicles for the full contact races and the destruction derbies. Even if you’re not driving a real car, the vehicles in these two types of events are quite decent, but you’re better off with upgrading the first ones instead of buying cars that you unlock as you progress through the game.
The AI is pretty good in races, a bit too good in demolition ones, and quite challenging when you go head to head during Hoonigan competitions towards the end of the campaign.
If there's one downside to the Showdown experience, however, that would be the loading time, as even on the fastest of PCs, it would still take around 30 or so seconds for a race to be loaded.
Multiplayer
Just like Dirt 3, Showdown has a variety of online modes from which to choose and complements it with a special RaceNet service that's free and provides the kind of experience similar to the Autolog one from EA's Need for Speed or Call of Duty Elite. Via this service, Codemasters offers different kinds of challenges to players, whom it then rewards with more in-game cash.In terms of actual online modes, Dirt Showdown allows up to eight players to engage in various competitions from the single-player mode, from contact races to demolition derbies or Hoonigan ones.
Besides these traditional affairs, Dirt Showdown also offers some out of the ordinary modes, like a Capture the Flag one, where you race around a huge area and try to keep a flag from being stolen by others, so you and your friends are in for some great times online.
Graphics and Sound
Dirt Showdown may not look that much different from Dirt 3, but this isn't a bad thing as Codemasters' Ego engine once again shines and recreates some really satisfying crashes without any bit of a slowdown.
Cars look great and the whole visual design of the experience makes the game stand out from other racing titles. Throw in some impressive level design complete with different types of weather depending on your location and Showdown will definitely delight your eyes.
Your ears, on the other hand, are in for a mixed experience. The soundtrack is filled with progressive rock, rap and quite a lot of dubstep, which may not be everyone's cup of tea. Throw in the awful commentator who feels the need to keep you up to speed with what's going on the screen by shouting corny one-liners and you might want to play your own music while experiencing Showdown. This is too bad, as the sound created by engines and crashes is quite satisfying.
The Good
- Great racing mechanics
- Improved stunt mechanics
- Impressive graphics
The Bad
- Hit and miss demolition derbies
- Annoying announcer
- Frustrating Hoonigan competitions
Conclusion
