This announcement comes shortly after EA’s acquisition of Codemasters, which is hard at work on its upcoming GRID Legends. The studio recently also shipped F1 2021, which received great reviews and has been enjoying solid sales.

Xbox has now hit its stride with Xbox Game Pass, which seems to be growing larger by the day to such a degree that fans consider it to be the quintessential part of owning an Xbox console. The upcoming Halo Infinite also wrapped up its first flight test, which has been well-received by fans all around the globe.

https://twitter.com/EAPlay/status/1422240783772573696

Gran Turismo Sport

Whether this is a “true” franchise sequel or not, Polyphony Digital’s Gran Turismo Sport is superb. It’s razor sharp in its focus on photo-realism, which is aided by lightning, material quality, global illumination and real-time shadows for everything. Vehicles look highly detailed, whether it’s reflecting the outside world or when admiring from the driver’s set. With numerous cars and tracks added over the years, Gran Turismo Sport is the way to go before Gran Turismo 7’s release.

METAL GEAR SOLID 5: THE PHANTOM PAIN

Metal Gear Solid 5’s emergent sandbox has a ridiculous amount of depth, with multiple systems constantly interacting with each other to deliver some of the mot dynamic stealth gameplay we’ve ever seen. Weather effects are one of many layers in that complex web. Rainfall and storms can dampen the noise you make, making it easier to sneak around enemy bases, while sandstorms do the same, in addition to also impacting visibly, which impacts the enemies as well as you. Having to adapt strategies on the basis of the weather feels truly rewarding in The Phantom Pain.

Last week, a video leaked revealing that Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Codemasters’ DiRT Rally 2.0 would be free for PlayStation Plus subscribers in April. Though the video has been taken down, Sony has now officially confirmed that both games are indeed free with the service next month. Check out the trailer below.

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End is the conclusion to Nathan Drake’s saga as he teams up with his long-lost brother to hunt down treasure. Serving as a final send-off to Drake, the PS4 exclusive was rated very highly (check out our review here) and sold over 15 million copies in its lifespan.

As for DiRT Rally 2.0, it’s the follow-up to Codemasters’ critically acclaimed off-road rally racer. Though reviewing positively with critics, it didn’t quite catch on with fans in the same regard. Still, it’s worth checking out for its realistic simulation of racing, especially for free. You can read more in our review here.

Lots of people are stuck inside right now in the midst of quarantines and lockdowns, but somehow it feels like the months are flying by all the same. It’s already nearly the end of March, and April is right around the corner. That means it’s time for a new batch of games in all our various subscription services, including PS Plus. We weren’t scheduled to know what those titles were until later in the month, but it seems someone flipped the switch a tad early.

A video went up revealing that Naughty Dogs’ critically acclaimed adventure title, Uncharted 4, and Codemasters’ ode to off roading, DiRT Rally 2.0, will be the April games for PS Plus users. While the video has since been deleted, it was too late and now we know.

Both Uncharted 4 and DiRT Rally 2.0 will be available next month to all those who subscribe to the PS Plus service. The current games are Shadow of the Colossus and Sonic Forces, so you’ll want to nab those soon to make sure you get them.

Xbox’s Free Play Days initiative is back. This allows Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate consumers to play entire games free for a limited time. This week it’s Codemasters’ DiRT Rally 2.0 which is currently free to play till January 5th, 11:59 PM PST.

As a follow-up to the beloved DiRT Rally, DiRT Rally 2.0 features eight circuits and 50 cars including the Chevrolet Camaro GT4.R and Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X. You’ll be racing across six locations including Australia, the United States, Argentina and more. In terms of authenticity, the DiRT Rally series has always been top-notch in providing the best off-road racing.

You can read more about DiRT Rally 2.0 in our review here. You can pick up the game at a discount on Xbox One for the duration of the free trial period. The Standard Edition and Digital Deluxe Edition are both 70 percent off and cost $18 and $24 respectively. The Super Deluxe Edition is 20 percent off and costs $50.

There’s no shortage of great games in the Xbox Game Pass library, and soon, even more of these will be coming. Microsoft has announced the next wave of games that are being added to Xbox Game Pass on console, and there’s some really good stuff in there.

To start off, on September 19 – which is tomorrow – will see the addition of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night – an accomplished metroidvania title and an excellent spiritual successor to some of the best Castlevania games ever made – and Jump Force – an ambitious anime/manga crossover that is sadly, somewhat disappointing.

Following that, September 26 will see the arrival of Codemasters’ excellent rally racing simulator DiRT Rally 2.0 on Game Pass. On the same day, open world title LEGO Worlds and real-time tactics roguelite Bad North will also be added to the service’s library.

The value of Game Pass continues to expand. If none of those games seem interesting to you, there’s plenty of other stuff already in the catalog to grab your attention, including – but not limited to – recent heavyweight additions like Devil May Cry 5 and Gears 5.

Even with concerns about its physical launch sales in the UK not measuring up to even Mass Effect Andromeda, BioWare’s Anthem continues to dominate charts in its second week. According to UKIE/Gfk Chart-Track (via GamesIndustry), the online looter shooter saw a 71 percent drop in sales over the past week. FIFA 19, another Electronic Arts title, meanwhile managed to place second.

New entries in the top ten include The LEGO Movie 2 Videogame in fourth place, with the PS4 version making up 59 percent of sales, and DiRT Rally 2.0 in sixth place, also having 59 percent of its sales on PS4. Codemasters’ latest rally title actually accounted for the second highest revenue of the week due to its higher retail price and was only beat out by Anthem.

The final new entry for the week was Trials Rising, particularly the Gold Edition, which debuted in tenth place. It saw 39 percent of sales on PS4, 33 percent on Xbox One, and 28 percent on Nintendo Switch. That’s a pretty good split, especially considering the franchise has just now made its debut for Nintendo consoles with this entry. As for Team Ninja’s Dead or Alive 6, it didn’t even come close to cracking the top 10, debuting in 21st place.

Check out all the games in the top ten physical sales chart below for the week ending March 2nd:

1. Anthem
2. FIFA 19
3. Far Cry: New Dawn
4. The LEGO Movie 2: Videogame
5. Red Dead Redemption 2
6. Dirt 2.0
7. Metro Exodus
8. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe
9. Super Smash Bros Ultimate
10. Trials Rising: Gold Edition

As usual, we will begin with the PC version. The developers recommend an AMD Ryzen 5 2600X or Intel Core i5 8600K, 8GB of memory and AMD RX Vega 56 or NVIDIA GTX 1070. On the graphical settings front, DiRT Rally 2.0 features a rather massive list of visual parameters you can play with. These includes the likes of Multisampling, Anisotropic Filtering, TAA, Shader Detail, Texture Detail, Reflections, Screen Space Reflections, Shadows, Night Lighting, Ambient Occlusion, Advanced Ambient Occlusion, Particles, Advanced Blending, Weather, Crowd, Cloth, Track, Mirror Details, Lends Dust, Motion Blur and just about anything can be tweaked. Our test PC includes a GTX 1080Ti, 16GB of GDDR4 memory and Ryzen 1700 CPU. We notched up every setting at max, and found out that the game performs quite admirably on our hardware. DiRT Rally 2.0 manages to run at more than 60 frames per second majority of the time but we came across sections of the race where the game was consistently dropping frames. Overall, we are extremely pleased with how much effort Codemasters have put into the PC build and it’s easily one of those games that does the platform justice, thanks to its vast range of graphical settings.

On the console front, things are rather intriguing for PS4 Pro and Xbox One X owners. Just before we started working on this analysis, we spoke with the game’s chief designer Ross Gowing. He revealed a couple of interesting things in terms of how DiRT Rally 2.0 handles it resolution across the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. To begin with, the PS4 Pro runs at 1080p and targets 60 frames per second but with a range of improved quality options. The Xbox One X, on the other hand offers two modes, a mode in which you can switch off 4K mode and the other one which supports 4K. According to Gowing, for the Xbox One X, DiRT Rally 2.0 supports either 1080p/60fps with a range of improved quality options, or running at 4k with the standard quality options.

On the console front, we analysed the game’s performance by taking some sample scenes from the game and running it through trdrop, an open source software. Note that this tool gives us a mere demonstration of the game’s performance, because an exact 1:1 representation of performance can only be provided by the developers themselves since they have access to vast of array of tools and profilers.  So, on both the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, the game runs at a rock solid 60 frames per second. There were no drops at all according to the tool and even through a manual observation the game doesn’t seem to be dropping any frames. In short, the game performs better on the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X compared to our test PC!

As far as differences goes between the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X versions, there doesn’t seem to be anything noticeable, other than the obvious differences that pop up due to resolution gap. However, the PC version, quite clearly, takes the lead with better reflection quality, better material shaders quality, shadow quality and draw distance.

We also wanted to talk about the various improvements that Codemasters have done to the game’s engine over the course of around 4 years since DiRT Rally  came out. The very first thing we want to talk about is the game’s lighting technology. DiRT Rally used a rather a flat but decent lighting methodology to get the job done; this tech was improved in DiRT 4 and now we see it rendering close to its full vision in DiRT Rally 2.0 The tech has been modified in DiRT Rally 2.0 and it almost sticks to a full implementation of physical based lighting. This is especially noticeable in the car and track material shaders. Unfortunately, the environment, though largely improved, still utilizes a flat lighting model.

Next up is the game’s track degradation system. For those living under a rock, track degradation is a pivotal feature in rally games; the vehicles going before you will degrade the track conditions making things a bit difficult for you. However, in video games this isn’t exactly a new feature as many games in the past have implemented the same, although with mixed results. DiRT Rally 2.0  manages to somehow deliver a close to realistic presentation of degradation that not only renders the wear and tear on track but also impacts gameplay. For example, a track may get degraded due to the rain and this will be reflected in the shaders for mud on the track which in turn will impact on how it will look like based on time of the day which further impacts the vehicle’s handling.

Despite improving in several areas, DiRT Rally 2.0 features a rather underwhelming damage system. In our interview with Codemasters, Gowing stated that, “the team have re-written the underlying damage system to give them  more control than ever before over how cars get damaged – for example you’ll now see carbon fibre panels flex before they crack and bits splinter off, whereas metal panels will dent and collect scratches and scrapes instead.” However, the current system still feels a bit superficial, although it has definitely improved compared to its predecessors. We are hopeful, that Codemasters will improve the damage modeling system further in a potential sequel.

DiRT Rally 2.0 may not be a visual behemoth and may not compare against the likes of Forza Motorsport or Gran Turismo from a visual perspective. But there is something special about DiRT Rally 2.0. Its fantastic simulation-based gameplay, its strict adherence to 60 frames per second, along with a fantastic PC port and decent console versions, makes it one of the best racing games out there. The future is looking bright for the Dirt series and DiRT Rally 2.0  seems to the step in the right direction for the franchise.

If you enjoyed Codemasters’ focus on hardcore rally racing in DiRT Rally, then there’s good news for yoi. DiRT Rally 2.0 is now officially available for Xbox One, PS4, and PC. Check out the accolades trailer below, which highlights some of the more positive impressions that critics have had about the game.

DiRT Rally 2.0 features eight official FIA World Rallycross championship tracks, in addition to rallying courses set in New Zealand, Argentina, Australia, and the USA, among other locations. Over 50 cars and a Career Campaign with various events and championships await as well. Codemasters also hypes up the handling, track degradation, and environments, which all look pretty good in the trailer.

There’s plenty to sink your teeth into, whether it’s tuning a car to suit your play-style, or building a team up to improve your chances of success. There are daily, weekly, and monthly challenges to complete, along with global leaderboards and events. For more information on our thoughts on the game, check out GamingBolt’s official review of DiRT Rally 2.0 here.