#review]

Habt ihr schonmal eine Gulasckanone bzw. mobile Feldküche als Modell gesehen? Wir bis vor Kurzem auch nicht aber das lässt sich ändern. [ Gulaschkanone, mobile Feldküche http://bit.ly/2hzR2bx -Tariq

[#Review] Gulaschkanone, mobile Feldküche

For my whole lifetime I couldn't afford to run newest games. Last summer, this fact changed and the latest fruit of that change is here. Is it bitter?

DiRT is the successor line to the late Colin McRae-named rally series, and after a good introduction and a somewhat botched sequel the third piece arrived in stores in May 2011. Knowing it was developed and published by Codemasters, I expected highest quality racing for both rookies and pros, as my experience from ToCA and GRiD indicated. I was very pleased and also bitterly disappointed. Pleased by every moment on track and disappointed by everything else.

In terms of driving experience, DiRT3 delivers pure gold. I have played the game with both keyboard and the Logitech Driving Force GT wheel (review pending) and both experiences were superb in their respective categories. Controls are responsive, customizable and welcoming, yet the cars can be very easily turned over or wrapped around a tree if you make a mistake. Setting up the wheel took a little time to find the sweet spot, but it's nothing that can't be done in 20 minutes.

Cars are diverse, ranging from '60s Alpine Renault to Loeb's WRC Citroen, and so are tracks. Point-to-point rallyes in Finland or Michigan leave little to be desired, and other gaming modes like rallycross or stadium truck racing are also enjoyable as intermezzos. 'The thing' of DIRT3 is Gymkhana, in which you do various shenanigans in a stunt arena supervised by the shenanigans grandmaster, Ken Block. Before every race, you get to set your car up to match the conditions on track. This setup is very straightforward and its effects are clear and predictable.

So far, you'd say everything is well, right? So read on. Everything I have said up till now is massively outsized by what happens when you're not driving. The guys at Codemasters probably thought that DVD menus with lengthy transitions and useless glitter are an awesome thing and made DiRT's menu look and work exactly like that. After every keypress, you are delayed by lenghty useless animations, transitions and commentaries (like 'Also, check multiplayer for some totally awesome racing!' - for real?). Fortunately, when you progress, the commentaries happen less often, so less often you want to shoot that guy's head off. However, all the transitions are unskippable, adding to the frustration.

The ultimate frustration, though, is the mighty Microsoft Live gaming platform. Not only it looks extremely ugly compared to Steam, it's also dumb as f**k. Not only it disregards the fact that you've got the latest version installed, it still has to download it itself. You accidentally revoke UAC before installation? Download again! Most people won't care, but I'm on a 1Mbps connection and 70 MB update is a problem for me. Okay, so after this update you get a sledgehammer into your face - you need to download a 1 GB update for the game or you can't play. On FUP? Too bad. Slow connection? Too bad. So, after x hours of downloading, setting up a Live account, going past the Securom check (mine fails quite often, even with an officially purchased medium), you finally get to play the game. Enjoying it? Not that much. I wonder why I didn't dump the game after all that.

That being said, DiRT3 is a very controversial game for me. A superb driving experience being mutilated by unnecessary issues, nuisances and problems. I am enjoying the driving very much, but because of this vendor-imposed idiocy I will hesitate much before buying the sequel.