So in this last week I got a copy of Colin McRae DiRT, Yeh it apprently comes out Friday 15th, but I got it a few days earlier from somewhere in the world….Pc World.

It was nice to get my hands on a game before a lot of people, especially with the way the leader boards work, as I was one of the first 200 people to play DiRT on Xbox Live, I was scoring high in the boards, I’m talking top 10. Now I’m back in the 300th range. Anyway I’m really enjoying this game so far, far better than the Forza demo.

The one game mode you will be spending the most time with is the career mode. You work your way through 11 Different tiers with 14 completey different classes of vehicles ranging from normal 4WD, FWD, RWD Rally cars to Sand buggys to Big Rigs with fat-off wings on the back. You get to race with all the 46 cars in the game in a whole range of different modes each unique with some your going solo on a rally hill climb and then the next minute your racing wheel to wheel with 9 other buggy’s flying over muddy sand banks.

This mode will take you about 15-30 hours (depending on which one of the 5 difficultly modes you pick) to clear everything in this mode and then theirs the traditional style rally championship that followers of the series might already be acquainted to.

Once you’ve gotten through all of that you’ve got the Xbox Live multi player section of the game, which isn’t what you might expect. If you are expecting awesome racing wheel to wheel online but I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. Saying that the online is a rally style mode where your time gets compared to up to 100 other players online, it’s not perfect but it’s still some good fun.

The Graphics are gorgeous, not realistic so you can see the flaws, but its got its own style that really suits the game and you can get some stunning visuals on pretty much all of the tracks. Were talking ‘Gears Of War’ graphics here.

Sound wise the cars are spot on and theirs something werid about how satisfyingly great the crunching and the crashing when you send your car flying to a tree at 100mph. It’s only a shame that theirs no soundtrack while your racing, only some random instrumental tracks that play over the replays and menus.

Talking of menus, damn the ones in DiRT are just about the best I’ve seen in any game in years. They are hard to explain but they are all 3D and sometimes its fun just to move the menus around with the analog stick. The loading screens are even better, showing you some stats about your in-game exploits. It’s only a shame you see them all too much.

So if you like your racing more arcade-based over simulation then, DiRT is your pick for the summer, but with Forza out this has got some competition. but despite the mediocre online play and amount of time spent looking at the loading screen (despite they are sexy as hell) DiRT is so far the best arcade racing game on the 360 and in my opinion is worth a purchase, failing that it needs to be tryed, demo really gives you a good impression of it. Just be warned their is a 15-30 learning curve you have to get past.

Anyway thanks for reading, let me know if I should bust a revizzle on in the future. sorry about the lack of posts, next Tuesday I’ve got my End of year show so its time for a Graphics based post then.