Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: rally

Some Characteristics of a Realistic Rally Game

Posted on by Viljami

Here’s two difficult and also very realistic or so to say simulation type of rally games. The first one I have right here is Richard Burns Rally for PC. It is already a bit old game but it’s also still very popular and liked game. The next one we have right here is a newer, it’s actually from 2019, rally game called Dirt Rally 2.0. The end of the name, two point o, comes from an early rally game called Colin McRae Rally 2.0. I don’t know why they actually decided to add that “point o” to the end originally but I think it sounds and looks nice. CMR 2.0 is one of my all time favorite games and it was released for PlayStation back in the 1990s.

How is it to play a realistic rally game one might ask. They are preferably played with a racing wheel and pedals. I however played these games with a gamepad. Richard Burns Rally is older game so I played it mainly with my Logitech RumblePad 2. I have Dirt Rally 2.0 for PC as a digital edition and I also have this game right in this featured image for PlayStation 4. While it is possible to play these both with a gamepad you have to think about lowering the difficulty. You have to consider turning some driving assists on and adjust the driving skills of your opponents. Both of these games can also be played against real human players through internet or maybe even local area network.

As these games are difficult to play you have to concentrate well to handle the car and to succeed in the progress. These games are not very forgiving ones. There are many differences if you compare a realistic rally game to a fun game like the one I already mentioned – Colin McRae Rally 2.0. The controls are more precise. There is a constant feel of danger. You can easily destroy your good stage time and even, if things go really bad, total your car so you get disqualified from the whole event.

Playing Colin McRae 2.0 is a lot of fun. You drive your car, make mistakes, even bad ones, but you still progress. Playing a game like Dirt Rally 2.0 makes you feel that any mistake you make, even a small one, can be disastrous. There is an appeal to both of these games. They aren’t necessarily a good game and a bad game. I just think they are very different kind of games.

As you may have already found out I am a seasoned racing gamer. My roots as a rally gamer go as deep as the roots of Colin McRae Rally series’s go. I was a fourteen year old kid as I stumbled on CMR. I think this was the moment when my deep interest towards rally gaming started. This game was actually so good that I remember that my good friends older brother that was already almost 30 years old became interested in playing PlayStation and eventually bought one for himself. Don’t ask how is it possible that my friends brother is over ten years older than me and my friend. I don’t have an answer to that question.

There are many racing games that I like and have gotten the opportunity to get into. It might be interesting to go through that list here. First on PlayStation 1 I played Colin McRae Rally 1 and 2, Driver and Gran Turismo. On original Xbox I got into Colin McRae 2005 and Burnout 3: Takedown. Later I played Dirt 3, Need for Speed Shift 1 and 2, F1 2010 and Gran Turismo 5 on PS3 and then I proceeded to PS4 with Dirt 4, Dirt Rally 1 and 2 and Gran Turismo 7. I have played also some titles on Xbox 360 and PC. There are many good racing game titles for PS2 also.

Playing racing games with a gamepad has been the most comfortable format of playing racing games for me. I have later used Xbox One and Xbox Series X gamepads for playing these games on a Windows PC. Windows has a nice support for Xbox gamepads. You can also hook up a PS4 controller very easily using a free app called DS4Windows. You can find it from your favorite search engine very easily. I have also earlier written about DS4Windows on this blog.

If you want to experience a realistic rally game you can spend some money and get yourself a racing wheel and pedals and I also recommend that you get a racing chair also. This can however take up a lot of space from your game room and it also costs you a lot of money. I think you can play racing games with a gamepad and at least get started in this way your journey to the world of racing games.

One good thing about racing games is that you very rarely get to experience a real accident where someone really also gets hurt. This is of course a point on any game. We can take a war game for an example, right?

Playing Some Dirt 4

Posted on by Viljami

I have been playing Dirt 4 a lot lately. I got to admit that I do like it as a rally game. It was released back in 2017. I have it for PS4, as a physical copy and also for PC. I have been playing it on my PC. The featured image is this time a screenshot of the rally of Sweden. I think the game feels better on PC. I am quite satisfied with my PDP controller. I have had some thoughts about buying this new controller that is actually Elite Pad 2. It would cost me something like 130 euros. I am considering still if I am going to buy it or not.

Codemasters is one heck of a rally game maker. There is some worries about what is going to happen now that Electronic Arts bought this game studio. This happened in 2021. Dirt 4 was released before that. There have been many good quality rally games released as games of Codemasters in 2010s. Back in the days when our retro games were newest games that existed Codemasters was delivering a heck of a quality. I got my introduction to rally video games as I played Colin McRae Rallly 2.0. I was actually first playing this and after some time I also just had to get my hands on the first game that was titled Colin McRae Rally.

Back in the 90s there were no serious competition for Codemasters. More recently there has been some competition in the form of a game series WRC. They have actually held the official game badge since they have had the rights to the license so they have been able to claim that they are the official rally game. I like also these new WRC games. I really got into them as late as 2020 when I bought WRC 9 for PC. Lately there have been games like WRC 8 for PS4 and WRC 10 and WRC Generations. I like these titles also.

Codemasters is responsible also of Dirt series. It started witb a game called Colin McRae Dirt and advanced into titles called Colin McRae: Dirt 2 and Dirt 3 and then again Dirt 4 and even Dirt 5, which in my opinion, slightly flopped as a video game. There is also Dirt Rally seiries that currently consists of two games. Dirt Rally games brings us gamers some simulation type of rally racing.

Dirt 4 is still a game you definitely would like to play. It has flashy graphics and even the soundtrack is bouncy. Driving feels somewhat challenging. Maybe not so realistic as in Dirt Rally. I like Dirt 4 a lot. One game that wasn’t mentioned, yet, is Richard Burns Rally. That is also a very good rally game. It is a bit old one but I can still recommend it to you if you don’t mind or if you are a retro fan.

All PS3 Racing Games (That I Own)

Posted on by Viljami

Today I started first playing a game for PlayStation 3. This game was Castlevania – Lords of Shadow. I played for some time. I had an idea of a new blog post about some of my favorite games for PS3. I thought about racing games because these are my favorite type of games. I remember many good games that can be said to be in this category.

First I thought that I would like to introduce all my driving games for PS3. I started picking up these games. Suddenly I understood that there were many titles that weren’t so good. I didn’t spend time with them so much. Some titles I had bought from flee markets and I haven’t played them at all. So there is a wide variety of games introduced here. I decided to write a paragraph of every driving or racing game that I currently own. So, here we go.

First in this pile of racing games is Test Drive Unlimited 2. I remember that I was excited about this game when I first got it. Test Drive is a classic and retro type of a game that was released for PC back in the day. However, I didn’t enjoy this game so much. I was actually a bit short of money and I thought twice about even buying this game.

Next we have Dirt 3. It is the third game in a series of Colin McRae Rally Dirt games. This is a very good rally game. I played it for so many hours. I also got my first experience of a setup that I used a racing wheel and pedals. This game I can definitely recommend.

Then there’s Ridge Racer 7. I am sorry for the picture is a bit dark and I can actually barely see the title of the game in this picture. This game is more of an arcade racing game but don’t let that fool you. There’s lots of stuff in there if you play this game. The feel of driving is very different than in any other racing game.

Need for Speed – Undercover is one these games that I’ve found from flee market. Actually I think I have never even launched this game with my PS3. I think it is a typical NFS game that get released so so often. So I don’t have a much to say about this.

Gran Turismo 5 is the first Gran Turismo game that was released for PS3. I played this for some time but I didn’t like it that much. It is a decent game but I think Gran Turismo 6 and 7 are better and of course Gran Turismo 4 might be the best out of all games in the series.

Colin McRae Dirt is a very nice rally game. I think Dirt 3 is still better. I just liked it more. Dirt 3 has also a very nice soundtrack. There is also a second Dirt game for PS3 but I only have it for Xbox 360 and not for PS3.

I really liked Burnout 3 Takedown. So I was anxious to buy this new Burnout game back in the day. And this game was Burnout Paradise. It has a funny soundtrack. That’s where the title of the game comes from. It had a huge open world of diffeerent kinds of roads and goals. I didn’t play this game so much.

Need for Speed Shift is a game that I was practically addicted to back in 2010 and 2011 when this game was actually the best racing, at least in my opinion, game that was available. Very nice game. In can definitely recommend this one if you like this genre.

F1 2011 was sort of an update to F1 2010. I never played this game. I didn’t buy it when it was actually first released. I got it many years later from flee market for very cheap price. Might be a good game. I don’t have anything more to say about it. Maybe I have some day time to get into it. Well, there are some newer F1 titles available so I will probably not.

This is a bit longer post than what I usually write. But it’s a nice subject. So, lets move on to the next game of this pile of racing games. And it is Shift 2 Unleashed. It is a sequel to the first Shift game. I found this game to be very enjoyable. And you can figure why I went and bought this sequel. Because I of course liked the first game so much.

F1 2010 begun a series of high quality F1 games. It was a decent game. I just didn’t play it all the way through. It offers a variety of difficulty. I tried this game also with wheel and pedals. This is a nice game. I can recommend it if you are into this genre and platform.

Last, and maybe the least, heh, is a game titled Formula One – Championship Edition. I think this cost me three euros. So, what the heck…why wouldn’t I pick this up. I remember that the disc was in a decent condition. Otherwise I wouldn’t have bought this one. And…I never have played this game.

There you go. We just went through all racing games for PS3 that I currently own. And, I almost forgot one game. That is Gran Turismo 6. I just played this recently so it wasn’t directly on my shelf. It is a very good game and you should play it.