There are many racing games available for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Heck, even the Wii has Mario Kart 8. Codemasters' DiRT Rally game gives something different as you have to go off roads in all kinds of weather. The game is slated for a release date on the PS4 and Xbox One, but the Early Access allows for free updates like new locations, new game modes and vehicles.
According to the DiRT Rally site on Codemasters, makers of this automotive game, the player can "hurtle along dangerous, undulating roads at breakneck speed, aiming to squeeze everything out of your car whilst knowing that one crash could irreparably harm your stage time". It also describes the game as "ultimate" as in "ultimate test of a driver's skill" and "ultimate in high risk".
Yes, this isn't your ordinary racing track with paved roads and one oval shape. This is different types of surfaces that the driver has to adapt to very quickly, not to mention different weather patterns. There are various stages that you have to take your rally team through, and there are time-limited repairs between each stage. Check out a video of the action on YouTube.
DiRT Rally is available in Early Access, which means that those to sign on will have free updates including new locations, new game modes, and vehicles. Codemasters sees the community of DiRT Rally drivers as their co-driver and want to shape the game around their feedback.
DiRT Rally offers five massive new real-world rally locations and fifty challenging stages, with more being added on soon. It is possible to drive them during the day in dry, overcast, sunny, misty, wet, rainy, and snowy conditions, which all make the experience of going off-road very intense. There are 25 cars with over 7 new and classic classes to drive now. The courses are located all over the world in Pikes Peak (USA), Powys (Wales), Monte Carlo (Monaco), Argolis (Greece), and Baumholder (Germany), which was just added last June.
The Early Access program will run until the end of 2015, and then a full version will be released. At this writing, the game is available on Steam for a price of $37.99. The price will increase throughout the Early Access program, and again after Early access to "reflect the state of the game". In other words, the price of the game is probably going to go up as it develops, but if the player wants to pay for it right now, all of the downloadable content (DLC) will be for free.
So, with all this action available for DiRT Rally on the PC, when will the release date occur for the PS4 and Xbox One? Well, that is a good question, and most sources that address this issue are over a month old. According to Game Reactor, there is no official release date for when DiRT Rally will be coming to the PS4 or Xbox One. If I had to make an estimation, it sounds like DiRT Rally will be fully complete and not available for Early Access at the end of the year, so perhaps 2016 will be the time when the game makes the leap to console. However, if I were Codemasters, I'd have a console version ready before holiday 2015, but that could be a taller order than I think.
