POSTED 29/5/12


DiRT SHOWDOWN

Codemasters
Xbox 360 (also on PS3, PC)

When I was little, I couldn’t understand boys. Actually, come to think of it I still have NFI what they’re on about most of the time.

What flummoxed me as a kid was how they’d have all these beautiful little Matchbox cars, and instead of polishing them, or driving them to the shops, or brushing their hair – umm, maybe not that last one - they’d bang them together. BAM! CRUNCH! SMASH! A micro-sized panel beater’s dream, sure, but why wreck such things of beauty?

Anyway, this offshoot of DiRT was likely designed by little boys. You know all that considered racing stuff that Colin McRae then DiRT have been renowned for? Forgeddaboudit. Smashing, bashing, crashing and anything else we forgot that ends in ‘ashing’ and is contextually appropriate are the order of the day.

There’re three types of event in the main Showdown tour. Gymkhana’s the sanest, where you take the wheel of a Fiesta (why don’t the ones you can actually buy look remotely this funktastic?) or Rex or summat and go stunting. It’s straight out of DiRT3; fun, but challenging as you string together stuff from drifting to pole-orbiting donutmania. Then there’re races, with slight variations, but basically the aim’s to win, by foul means or fouler, be you driving classic or clunker. Finally, there’re destructational arenas, whereby you just go hammer and tongs to break opponents before you’re broken, scoring mucho points for sideswipes, head-ons and outright kills.

There’s also local or online multiplayer, a raft of challenges you can hurl at X-buddies and ‘Joyride’, which is hooning about doing specific stunts and collecting hidden (and really fucking obvious) logo thingies. Presentation’s constantly slick-as.

Sure, it’s not as deep as ‘real’ racing, but damn if we don’t finally get what those little boys were diggin’ when taking those cars and banging them together.

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