Currently Playing: DiRT 2

First off the bad news. Ken Block and his X game American cohorts yelping and hollering is annoying. As is the games instance on battering your senses with menu selections and unlocked events hammering into place every few seconds. You get the feeling that our American Cousins will be loving being told their awesome after every event by the AI. It's just not something we, more reserved, Brits appreciate.

You've got to look past the surface sheen. Or even enter into the spirit by talking back to them (sample exchange: Ken Block "Woo.. Alex.. There's enough room for both of us!" Me "Eat wall you idiot!" having just punted him off).

The career mode is immense. While there's only 2 or 3 tracks per country there are a lot of countries and they're all nicely diversive in an organic way (They feel like countries and not a generic 'this is a jungle and this is a snow level'). The graphics are sublime. As the car crosses the line (complete with pyrotechnics) there's a super slow mo which never gets old and you can really see the love that's gone into it.

Of course any driving game lives and dies on it's handling. Initially DiRT 2 disappoints feeling over arcadey and with a tendency to be too oversteery on the limit. Perservere though (especially with the brilliant bonnet cam) and it all starts to come together and it reveals the depth that allows you to start taming what at first felt impossible.

Online is a huge leap for Codemasters, both from the previous game and GRiD. There's a Jam mode where, at last, you can have a host and pick exactly what you want to do as well as the Pro mode which is similar to previous efforts (no host and a random track and vehicle selection which you can veto) which works fine. It's nice and snappy and there's no waiting around while people chat and no idiot picking a car that's too good. It's better than before because of the wider scope of disciplines now availabe online.

If this is, as has been hinted, the last game to feature McRaes name then it's a fitting send off.. Just remember to tell Block to fuck off from me.