Dirt 3: the dumbest sport ever invented

Rally racing is a terrible idea. Whose idea was it to go fast over, like, gravel? And dirt and mud? You can’t get any traction on that stuff. Your car slides. And sometimes there are rally races in snow. Snow! Can you believe it? That’s the stuff people ski on. It’s the worst place in the world to go fast. When people have footraces and baseball games where it’s snowy, I’m pretty sure they bring out big snow melters to clear the track, or whatever it is you do to get snow out of the way. But not in rally racing. In rally racing, it’s like they intentionally want you to drive on snow. It’s like they go to whole countries full of snow, such as Finland and Aspen.

After my ongoing love affair with Shift 2, I was a bit worried that I’d be tapped out in terms of racing games. But the kind of driving you’re doing in Dirt 3 is really its own beast. It’s loosey-goosey enough for things to go wrong from time to time. The above video illustrates perfectly the difference between actual racing and rally racing, and the difference between Shift and Dirt. If the above had happened while I was playing Shift 2, I’d go straight to “restart race” in the pause menu. But in Dirt 3, it’s just another thing that can sometimes happen on the way to the finish line.

By the way, I blame the elephant grid for what happened in that video. Stupid elephant grid.