DiRT titles are starting to become a regular scalp within my trophy collection (DiRT 4 is the 5th DiRT title to make it in at this point), and there isn't really much that has changed between them all in terms of the challenges they have each individually offered.
DiRT 4 is another fine example of this, reflected by a score of 7, which is shared by 3 out of the other 4 DiRT titles previously reviewed.
It fits within the main chronology of the series, focusing on the roots of the game by offering a variety of racing disciplines which will all require differing strategic approaches. These include all of the familiar favourites such as Rally, Landrush, Rallycross and Historic Rally.
The trophy list is best split into 2 parts, with Single Player and Multiplayer both covered, as is always the case with any DiRT title, but the vast majority of this challenge comes purely from the Single Player portion of the game.
The Single Player game spans across a global series of the 4 aforementioned disciplines, each with a progressive set of events. Subsequent events are unlocked through completing the prior events. For each discipline, you'll start out with a few events to compete in, and you'll need to win a certain amount of medals within these events in order to unlock the next "license", which progresses you further along towards the final Championship. The goal is to repeat this until you reach the end and win the final Championship.
The "Completed it mate", trophy, awarded for Winning the Triple Crown, is the sole focus of the Single Player game, and this trophy effectively comes in 2 parts.
Firstly, you'll need to actually unlock the Triple Crown Championship, which will require you to earn a podium in the main Championship of the Rally, Landrush and Rallycross career branches. Historic Rally is excluded for this, but there are separate trophies awarded along the way for winning the main Championship for all 4 disciplines, so you can't just bypass Historic Rally entirely, and will still need to complete it in it's entirety to unlock the Platinum trophy. This also makes it somewhat pointless to mention the fact you only need to achieve a podium finish, as anything less than 1st place will leave you short of the Platinum.
After this, you'll need to actually win the Triple Crown Championship to then finally unlock the trophy. Up to this point, the Career mode is already a long venture, clocking in at around the 40-50 hour mark to win every main Championship (including Historic Rally) and unlock the Triple Crown itself. The Rally disciplines largely contribute to this, with some of the latter events requiring hours to complete individually, whereas the Landrush and Rallycross events don't tend to be anywhere near as gruelingly long. The Triple Crown alone then adds another 10-15 hours on top, and although there are only 3 events, each of them are the longest 3 events in the entire game, and it becomes a bit of a mental battle when you realise this trophy is actually hidden and the Triple Crown comes out of nowhere just when you think you've reached end-game.
It does actually become tough to stomach, and even as someone who is a massive fan of the DiRT series, the limited stage environments and variety within events doesn't really help the feeling that everything is just a bit too drawn out.
The trophies are not difficulty sensitive, so the actual challenge is determined by the player. I played on Champion difficulty, which is just one off the highest, and did find this to make the game tough in spots, but once you can afford to buy the best vehicles, and also fully upgrade them, then it does start to become less of a challenge, though you will still need a reasonable level of driving skill to win events regularly. This is actually the main driver for the score presented above, and if the difficulty wasn't taken into consideration, it would be hard to justify where the points for this game would actually come from.
You'll unlock a massive chunk of this list along the way towards winning the Triple Crown. This includes 8 trophies awarded for unlocking licenses at set points along the way at certain points within the Career mode, 4 trophies for winning the main Championship in each of the 4 racing disciplines and a handful of easier trophies you will no doubt unlock naturally on your way towards winning that Triple Crown. Once you've completed this, you will have around 70% of the entire list accounted for, leaving you with just the Multiplayer trophies, and a few stragglers left behind from the Single Player which you can easily go back and collect later.
The Multiplayer also doesn't stray too far from the norm, with both competitive online and community events both covered, as they have been in more recent DiRT titles.
In all honesty, there isn't much at all that is challenging and/or note-worthy from the Multiplayer aspect of this game, which is a bit of a difference from a series that has previously featured some lengthy online leveling journeys in the past.
The "DiRTy Dozen" trophy, awarded for Completing all 12 Stages of a Monthly Event in Community Events, requires you to post a completion time for a monthly recurring event, without actually mentioning the fact that if you abandon the event, or retire your vehicle due to an accident or excessive damage, you will have wait until next month in order to compete again. This happened to me, whereby I damaged my vehicle to the point of retirement, and had to wait for next month's event in order to compete again, so the best thing to do is just be cautious and ensure you finish all 12 stages without any mishaps. It will take a couple of hours to beat all 12 stages, but there's no pressure to post specific times or outperform anyone, so take your time and you'll be OK.
The rest of the Multiplayer trophies are extremely casual. You'll need to complete 25 races within the Pro Tour game mode, which is just a competitive head to head scenario, and there are also a few trophies for top tier performance within daily events, but the fact these are daily means they're frequently available, and even if you do struggle to reach the top tier for each day, you can keep trying at regular enough intervals that it shouldn't be a problem.
The stuff you don't pick up along the way within the Single Player mode, and through the Multiplayer, can be easily collected later, and there is also a little bit of dabbling in the Joyride/Academy game modes for good measure (which effectively act as practice for the main game).
I will uphold the opinion that, the difficulty of this list is determined by exactly what the player makes of it. If you don't want this to be an overly challenging Platinum, then it doesn't need to be. Play through the game on the lowest difficulty and, providing you don't mind a Career mode within the region of 60-70 hours, then you'll completely coast through. Much of the overall score for this game is purely down to the fact I chose to play through on one of the higher difficulty levels, and the game does provide an adequate challenge for those who want it. Even in previous DiRT games, the Multiplayer has provided a reasonable challenge through online leveling, but this aspect has been completely stripped down on the list this time around, further emphasising the point that the challenge is pretty limited to whatever difficulty mode you choose to tackle the Career mode on.
Once you manage to win the Triple Crown, the game is effectively over, and the rest just makes up the numbers for a full list. The Multiplayer and any other trophies which were previously missed will only add another 5-10 hours on top, and are just a matter of going through the motions, rather than any sort of focus of challenge. Even the "DiRTy Dozen" trophy only gets a mention because you can fail this challenge and need to be made aware of this due to it's limited availability.
Despite playing on one of the game's harder difficulty levels, I actually found it harder to stick with it throughout what is a pretty lengthy Platinum, coming in at around 60-70 hours all in all. The game attempts to add variety via a unique random track/terrain generator, that will always make sure that no route is ever the same, but with the same 5 rally environments, it does become a little bit of a struggle seeing the same scenery, especially once you start to reach the latter stages of the career when individual events can take hours to finish alone.
The game doesn't contain any challenging Multiplayer trophies, which is rare for the series, but this is offset by a much longer Career mode than ever before, and a sometimes tough and unforgiving simulation, which is, of course, optional, but ultimately drives the justification for a steady 7/10.
Notable Trophies -
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| Completed it mate - Win the Triple Crown DiRTy Dozen - Complete all 12 Stages of a Monthly Event in Community Events |
Completed it mate
Win the Triple Crown
