DiRT 3 trailer emerges, drops McRae's name

For starters, there will now be proper variations in weather conditions. There's a bone-dry Kenyan rally stage which looks mighty familiar, but then the background is swept away and replaced by a torrential downpour on a muddy Finnish lakeside course.Then there's heavy snowfall on a Norwegian stage before Block's Ford Fiestahits tarmac onthe hills above Monaco and gets to racing a Mitsubishi Evo X.

The trailer ends with a glimpse of some gymkhana action. This is a show-offy automotive discipline which sees drivers like Block (who popularised it almost single-handedly) drifting and spinning through impossibly tight gaps, while things explode. This feature was hinted at in the last game but never actually incorporated, so it should give us plenty of brand new gameplay to try.

So, new weather effects, gymkhana action, 50 rally cars from five decades of rallysport and almost double the contant in terms of tracks from last year's DiRT 2. Sounds great to us - here's hoping the first in-game footage looks just like this trailer.

Aug 3, 2010