Rally cars are set up to oversteer at the slightest provocation. Oversteer, where the car turns more sharply than the wheel is spun, is inherently unstable—and in the hands of an inexperienced driver, fabulously dangerous. But in rally, it's what makes getting around a sheer 90-degree bend at speed safely not only possible, but remarkably entertaining for both driver and audience alike. In a controlled slide across a dirt road, a rally driver endures a mess of tiny brake, throttle, and steering adjustments—an all-yaw battle that allows for quick changes in direction on the unpredictable surfaces of a rally stage.

Learning how to oversteer like a pro—or even worse, perform the dreaded "Scandinavian flick"—can take years of dedicated practice; some people never manage to master it. Perhaps that's why, when faced with the prospect of driving a virtual rally car in "one of the hardest racing games" ever made, many chose to simply ignore Codemaster's Dirt Rally rather than battle it (myself included). How best, then, to win those people back—the same people that loved the bombast and "sim-lite" feel of Dirt 2—without losing the latest contingent of realism romantics that made Dirt Rally a huge critical and commercial success?

The answer is simply more of everything. Dirt 4 isn't just a direct sequel to the more gamer-friendly Dirt 3, nor does it just build on the sim-heavy handling of Dirt Rally. There is, Codemasters hopes, something for everyone. The handling, for instance, remains the same as in Dirt Rally, with a few extra tweaks and additions to make it even closer to the real thing. But if, like me, you'd prefer something a little less terrifying, there's a new mode that adds a layer of assists between the simulation engine and the controller in an effort to make things a little easier.

"There was a huge barrier to entry with Dirt Rally—we were pretty uncompromising with everything we did," designer Paul Coleman told a packed out room at Dirt 4's unveiling in London. "But I'm a huge rally fan and I want to be as popular as it can be—up there with the likes of Formula One. One of the best ways we can do that is to show how cool it is via the game, and take them by the hand and lead them into the experience, and get them up to speed as to what it's like to drive these cars. That was one my frustrations with Dirt Rally: we didn't do more to help players into the experience."































There are four different assist presets: Gamer, Racer, Pro, and Fearless. Each has a different mix of assists enabled from the difficulty of the AI and the number of track resets, through to stability control and ABS strength. Each of the modes can be customised too, so if you prefer weak AI opponents, but with clutch override and traction control turned off, it's just a button press away. Codemasters' hope is that players move up through each mode, eventually braving the full simulation. That might be be wishful thinking if players find a level they're comfortable with and stick with it (as I did), but the promise of rally school in the final game, complete with all the tips and tricks needed to get around a track fast, should help spur them on.

The differences, at least between the first two modes, are subtle. Gamer allows you to throw the back end of the car around the track and through tight turns with just a few flicks of an analogue stick. Racer ups the skills of AI opponents, limits you to 10 restarts, and begins to disable some of the assists. There's not much difference in feel, although, the margin of error when taking corners is greatly reduced. Pro toughens up the AI again, drops the restarts down to five, and disables most assists. This is where the game gets challenging. It doesn't matter if it's a mistimed brake, a hair too much oversteer, or just mishearing the co-driver, all result in the same thing: spinning out, or flipping the car into a ditch.

Disappointingly, none have quite the same level of arcade-accessibility of Dirt 2 (at least in the early build that I played). Building on top of the same simulation engine as Dirt Rally might be a smart way to train rally drivers—or alternatively, a clumsy way of putting off amateurs. On the plus side, many of the non-rally events that made Dirt 2 such fun are set to make a return, including the tight turns and outrageous jumps of the off-road circuits in "Land Rush."

If, as a Dirt Rally fan, that all sounds too tame, there are new features for you too. There are new tracks like Montealegre in Portugal, new cars from the 2016 season, and new historic cars like the heavily requested Mitsubishi Evo 6. Rallycross, a form of sprint racing on closed mixed-surface circuits, is promised for the finished game, alongside expanded multiplayer modes..

But Codemasters is tackling a far greater challenge with Dirt 4: keeping fans fed with content. After all, there are only so many times you can race along the same 10 or so tracks before you've mastered them enough to sit at the top of leaderboard.

"Your Stage," a procedural track generator, aims to fix that. Players can choose the complexity, length, setting, and weather for a track, before pressing a button to create it. This, claims Codemasters, should result in the creation of millions of different tracks: enough to last a lifetime for even the most hardened of rally fans. Players will be able to save tracks, share them with friends, and set up custom events and championships based on them. This, says Coleman, makes Dirt 4 "the coolest Scalextric track you've ever played with."

But if the dry auto-generated playlists that Spotify used to provide, the "infinite" and infinitely dull procedurally generated universe of No Man's Sky, or the fake news that proliferates Facebook thanks to overzealous algorithms has taught us anything, it's that left to their own devices, computers aren't that good at creating compelling content. Whether Codemasters' solution works, or whether it eventually demands a human touch, will make or break Your Stage.

"For fans, they want harder, faster, longer stages, and we've provided that, says Coleman. "For the more casual gamer there's a demand for shorter, less technical stages, and we've provided for that. For fans that wanted elements found in Dirt 2 and Dirt 3, Dirt 4 also provides for that...We've had our community in. We've had them playing it, had them testing it to make sure that we're not making mistakes—and that they love what they see."

Dirt 4 is due for release on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 in early June.