Although the Xbox 360 got DiRTy back in June, Codemasters held the PlayStation 3 model back a few months. The extra time has paid off, making the PS3 version of the game the one to get. The only unfortunate thing is that Colin McRae passed away right at the time this game was released, making it possibly the swan song of the series.

Rally racing is big in Europe but you can only do so much with a game that is simply point to point, single car racing. Although previous games in the series had in fact done this pretty well, DiRT tries to add more depth by including other off road events as well as rally and hill climb competitions.

The in-game tutorial is very helpful, reassuring and informative. The number of events in career mode is astounding—over sixty events covering different types of races. The events are displayed as sort of a $20,000 Pyramid; you start at the bottom of the pyramid and as you earn points you unlock more events and move up the pyramid until you’ve completed them all.

If there’s anything to complain about it’s that at the very beginning you are limited to the choices of cars you can purchase, but as you earn money you can upgrade and replay the races to earn all the points necessary to move up in single player. Load times between races take a while; you are kept occupied while the track is loading by viewing your career stats. You’ll see your best time, the number of victories you have, the prize money you’ve racked up, etc. It’s a real clever way of keeping you interested in the game when usually you’re just given a bland “loading” screen.

The graphics are amazing. The 360 version looked very good but sometimes chugged with some draw-in at the horizon. The PlayStation 3 version literally pops off the screen with an HDMI cable. The frame rate isn’t 60 fps, but it is much smoother than the 360 – perhaps the three months extra time really helped with this? (You can also notice the difference in the PS3 demo.)

The game is the first one to use Codemasters “Neon” engine and definitely won’t be the last. Everything looks good and is in play while in game. The dirt spinning from the tires looks great; the vehicles look incredible. In previous rally racing games, if you tried to deviate off the path, you might have hit an invisible wall or even worse collided with an object that caused considerable damage to you but nothing really happened to the object you collided with. Not so in DiRT – if you hit a fence, the fence will take just as much damage as your vehicle. Crashing into everything is not condoned but it’s still visually impressive to see.

If there’s any gripe with the PS3 version of the game it is the controls. Not having tactile rumble or force feedback hurts when compared to other console versions. The SIXAXIS isn’t supported at all (as in you’ll have to use the left stick to drive rather than tilt the controller).