The Colin McRae rally franchise has had an appropriately bumpy ride through the years too. By the third release, the once impressive handling felt dated and some would even argue a step backwards from the previous games. This bizarre model has the cars pivot on a central point rather than the four contacts of the tires, a feature that has featured in a number of rally titles and indeed throughout the entire McRae series. Versions four, five and six refined minor details but never really took the genre or franchise forward, leaving it to trail behind rivals Rallisport Challenge 2 and Richard Burns Rally, which covered the arcade and simulation aspects as two products better than McRae did as one.

DiRT represents something of a rebirth for the McRae franchise and also serves as an introduction to a new generation of Codemasters racing. Their new Neon engine ensures the technical side has never been better, but the new direction of the series is as disappointing as it is understandable, and as frustrating as it is enjoyable. DiRT follows the same paths that TOCA took and has ended up as an all-encompassing celebration of off-road racing, and not as a pure rally experience where the series began.

On the surface this change is actually quite pleasing. The introduction of Hill Climb (rallying up a hill minus co-driver) and Crossover (two cars racing a looped circuit from opposite ends) events was to be expected following the popular Rallisport, but DiRT goes several steps further with larger eight-car events. Not just rally cars either, buggies and various trucks make appearances, each type handling completely differently and providing a different experience.

Unfortunately, and this is for many reasons, everything bar the pure Rally and Hill Climb stages just do not have the legs to carry the product. The slow nature of the trucks makes the longer stages rather dull, particularly when the track design on these stages isn't particularly exciting. Towards the end of the lengthy Career mode, a mode that has the player enter every type of race on every available circuit, the non-rally events very clearly show up to be the weak link in title. Adding to the frustration, there are far more proper Rally stages than the alternatives, and yet far less opportunities to enjoy them.

It’s not that these events are particularly unpleasant, rather there is such a gap in quality that the time spent developing them could have been better used refining and indeed filling in some surprising gaps in the Rally events that people came to enjoy.

As a celebration of off-road racing, DiRT makes one fundamental slip-up – you either race on dry tarmac, dry dust trials or dry mud. Dirt, despite the name of the game, is not explored in the slightest. There is no crossing of streams, no thickly splattering mud-encrusted farm paths, no deep puddles and no snow embankments. In fact, it never rains, it never pours, it never snows and it never gets dark. The sport is about the raw power of man using precision to battle through the forces of nature, but DiRT takes the essence of rallying and then puts it on Easy mode.

This is such a massive shame too, because Codemasters have otherwise come so close to delivering an incredibly impressive game. The sensation of speed is phenomenal and the course design for rallying is otherwise excellent. Racing through an Australian forest at 100mph, twisting and turning (and occasionally somersaulting) through the trees gives off that electric racing buzz that only rallying seems to be able to produce. The series continues to improve its trademark driver’s viewpoint too, adding to the immersion and heightening that awesome-yet-frightening pace. While the focus of the game is on Career, a more classical Championship option is also available which echoes the structure of previous games. The career mode still has to be used to unlock the vehicles, however the Championship almost manages to recapture the magic of the earlier titles.

Almost. DiRT is absolutely brilliant when at its best, but Codemasters have not quite implemented the vehicle mechanics correctly. It retains the feel of McRae, but not the subtlety or precision. The car doesn’t feel different enough across the various surfaces, while the ability to stop almost instantly in the majority of cars on any track is a sign that they are not interacting with the ground as they should. They feel loose, almost distant.

Codemasters have taken McRae down a very precarious road and it’s possible that we’ll never see a game in the classic mould again. Quite what the codeshop have planned for the franchise is anyone’s guess, but DiRT and Race Driver seem so similar (though the former mostly off-road and the latter mostly track-based) that it wouldn’t be a surprise if a merge occurred in order to produce one almighty jack of all trades. The purists can only hope this isn’t the case, but the lack of a proper TOCA game in many years would suggest Codemasters are less interested in delivering a title focused on one event and would rather tick all the boxes in a single product. The results of Race Driver and DiRT would suggest they are actually getting close to achieving their lofty ambition however, so this may not be such a bad thing.

DiRT has been released at a very busy time for racers on the Xbox 360 and there was a danger that the diminishing popularity of rally sport in general would damage its appeal, and so the broadening of scope is in fact understandable, if not entirely agreeable. Ultimately DiRT is definitely not a failure and while it may not have been a complete success, the McRae series can still be held in high regard.