After several years focusing on rally simulation racing, the DIRT franchise has finally returned to its fun and arcadey style for the first time in almost a whole console generation - and does so by not only delivering a feature complete and content-filled package, but by delivering what is arguably the best racing experience this year and even one of the best this generation.

DIRT 5’s career mode offers an extremely lengthy journey that will take players to over 70 routes spanning 10 unique locations around the globe, from the dusty deserts of Arizona to the sun-soaked mountaintops of South Africa to the gorgeous yet muddy Chinese and Brazilian rainforests - there is a ton of variety on display.

This variety also extends to the amount of race types on offer, with a huge slate of different and unique event types that will have you sliding across ice as you race for the finish line in Ice Breaker, or conquering treacherous terrain and behemoth sized boulders in an attempt to reach the top in Pathfinder.

Not only do traditional point-to-point and circuit races return, but for the first time since DiRT Showdown, Gymkhana is back, and it feels just as rewarding as ever. These events can be tough if, like me, your last proper gymkhana experience was almost a decade ago, but are super satisfying to complete, especially once you masterfully chain together donuts, 360 spins and a perfect run through drift gates and smashables landing you that sweet, sweet 3x multiplier.

What adds to the thrill of spinning tires and tearing up the dirt in these exotic locales with these rally icons is the fantastic soundtrack accompanying the action. DIRT 5 in its presentation has an early 2000’s aesthetic, from the menu icons and font, and something which is masterfully presented with its rocker boy style music selection which no doubt will have you putting a couple into the Spotify playlist.

At the beginning of your DIRT journey, you’ll be introduced to Donut Media’s own James Pumphrey and Nolan Sykes, as they narrate a radio show-esque podcast revolving around your globe-trotting adventures. Pumphrey and Sykes aren’t the only talent you’ll hear in DIRT 5 however, as legendary voice actors Troy Baker and Nolan North also play a crucial role in your racing story.

As you progress through the chapters of your DIRT career, the DIRT Podcast begins to tell a racing substory of the rivalry between Troy Baker and Nolan North’s characters. While many will mostly skip these, I always found myself excited to listen in to “the next episode” when returning to the career menu after an event. These moments are packed full of hilarious banter between the two voice-acting icons as they argue and debate each other’s racing skills, which both feels authentic and a brilliant use of their talent for a racing game like this.

However, I’d be remiss to mention the career mode’s fair share of flaws. For starters, the XP system. By completing events early on and placing first or achieving the target score/time, you’ll earn enough XP to roughly level up one and a quarter levels. However, once you hit Level 50 and earn the trophy/achievement, the XP system suddenly just drops off and you’ll barely earn any XP.

For context, I managed to hit Level 50 before the end of Chapter 2, with roughly 80+ events still left to complete. I have since 100%’d every event in the game and am only level 58, with one of the unlocks in the Profile section suggesting there’s at least 96 levels. It’s extremely strange to throttle progression like that and could make further progression feel meaningless to some players.

While the event types and locales are great, and the career does a good job of introducing new routes of certain courses to make them feel fresh to race around, some events - mainly the Sprint and Path Finder events - can get a bit repetitive due to their simplistic nature. You’ll also unlock special “Throwdown” events as you progress which will let you go one-on-one with certain AI racers, though these events didn’t feel very different to normal races in comparison.

DIRT 5 also features a Multiplayer component, and not just online PvP but four-player offline splitscreen… in 2020... Yeap, you read that right. DIRT 5 also makes the return of Party Modes, with fan-favourites reimagined for today including Vampire, King and Transporter. While I’ve yet to test any of these modes, I’m extremely excited to delve into them once the game officially launches and players populate the servers!

One of the biggest new additions to the DIRT franchise is Playgrounds, and quite simply its a game changer. Not just for DIRT but for racing games in general and should be made standard in racing games going forward. Playgrounds instantly adds an insane level of replay value to DIRT 5, and with the small amount of arenas I’ve played so far, its going to be a huge hit with the community.

Playgrounds mode offers an easy-to-use creation suite filled with tons of objects and props to create your dream course, such as industrial pipes, stunt ramps, platform blocks, dirt mounds, motorsport barricades, destroyed vehicles, you name it. The tools are snappy and can even have the most novice of creators building their own small gymkhana course or racecourse in a matter of minutes, which is something vital to the success of a level creation tool like this.

So far pre-release I’ve sampled some excellent player-made arenas which showcase the potential this mode has including an X-Games style race track, a 10 minute sky-based course and even a slow-paced “Try Not to Fall” challenge where you follow a very tightly designed course to the finish line. This mode has DonJoewonSong written all over it and has me eagerly excited to see what the racing game community does with it.

My only hope is that post-launch Codemasters supports this mode long-term with new content, tools, features and improvements suggested from the community. One issue I already noticed was various blank or unfinished arenas published to the community, and as the game launches I fear this will no doubt get filled up with more arenas like this cluttering the feeds.

A personal gripe I have is with one of the trophies/achievements in this game, which while most of them are very easy to earn, one in particular requires players to drive 10,000 MILES which is ridiculously grindy (with no stats system to check this). I can almost guarantee this trophy/achievement will result in an influx of blank, AFK farming Playground arenas for people to grind it out… (Please Codemasters, change this to something more reasonable like 1000 miles!!!)

In an era of incomplete service games and titles removing features from past iterations to add later, DIRT 5 has a staggering amount of content on offer that caters to literally any and every type of gamer out there.

Enjoy racing by yourself? DIRT 5 features a narrative driven campaign with renowned voices and up to 20-30 hours of length. Competitive racing more your style? DIRT 5 has PvP multiplayer for up to 12 players. Prefer messing around and having fun than being competitive? There are three fun and exhilarating classic DIRT party modes for players to pratt about and enjoy. More of the creative type? There's a huge arena Creation suite to let your imagination go wild and create the wackiest and out-there courses to share to a pool of infinite replay value. DIRT 5 even features split screen of all things! Will this be a widely used feature? Most likely not, but the option is there, and I can't commend them enough. And all this is available AT LAUNCH(!)

All these things combine to create one of the finest arcade racing experiences I’ve had in a long time, which in many ways culminate in what I like to think is the perfect Motorstorm and DIRT 3 spiritual successor. DIRT 5 is not perfect by any means, but it’s pulling out all the stops to define what an arcade racing game should be: Fun.

[Disclosure: Review copy provided by Codemasters, reviewed on a PlayStation 4 Pro console]

DIRT 5 Review