Many of the 55 tracks you'll visit are licensed, with the 12.4 mile-long hill climb event at Colorado's Pikes Peak already making our eyes water at the level of concentration and control required. The variety of racing disciplines to master already sounds daunting, but sensibly the 66 events are arranged in a logical pyramid fashion, so you can choose your route toward becoming the off-road champion without grinding to a halt and even change the difficulty level if you're finding the competition too tough.
Number-crunching aside, we're most looking forward to seeing DIRT potentially eclipse MotorStorm's mud-splattered mayhem. Every object in the game has its own physics, so you'll see smaller trees bow and break, wood splinter before snapping, grass flatten and glass crack and smash. Fragile items such as signs and hoardings can be smashed through leaving only light scratches and a steady build-up of dirt, but sturdier objects such as rocks will flip lighter vehicles, cause parts to detach and fly out, and races might even end up with your car wrapped around a tree. Should you switch to the in-car view, you'll be able to see the plush interiors take a beating. You'll definitely want to rewind and watch collisions again from different angles in slow-motion.
A 29-year-old PC racing game going cyberpunk anime with Troy Baker, Initial D drifting, and cutscenes from the Metroid: Other M studio sure wasn't on my Game Awards bingo card
A speedrunner just beat Need for Speed: Most Wanted's world record by 90 minutes - by using Half-Life's Gordon Freeman instead of a car
