Where can racing games go? How can they push boundaries and the same time provide us with the speed and competition we crave? The genre is already offering some clues about what it might be able to do, aside from improving graphics, realism, or going online, or doing anything else purely technical. The future of racing games is going to depend on designers doing interesting things, and fortunately for us some studios are doing just that.

Let’s take a look… (more…)

News that an eyebrow-raising 3 million Steam activation codes for natty racing title DIRT 3 had been leaked online broke earlier today, and now has an official oh-dear air to it as a result of confirmation from AMD that, yes, the codes were intended for vouchers that shipped with their Radeon graphics cards and yes, a database file containing them was purloined by bad eggs. I’m sure no-one at AMD or DIRT 3 publisher Codemasters is terribly calm right now, but at least it doesn’t appear to be the case that either of their sites or servers were directly hacked. (more…)

What a funny world we live in. A world where $5 DLCs for a PC game must be purchased from their Xbox.com site. It’s a bit of a shame that something like that should be buried there, but the Codemasters.com URL now redirects to Facebook, so I suppose that’s not any more of an appropriate location to sell DLCs for a rather good racing game from, is it?

So what’s the download in question? Why it’s the X Games Asia pack for Dirt 3, a game which I thought was great. Something tells me I won’t be playing this particular set of tracks, however. You can check out if it tantalises your track-buds via the trailer, below.
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According to Codemasters, players have spent 292 years playing Dirt 3, neatly pre-dating the invention of the internal combustion engine. To add on a couple of centuries, here’s the first fully-fledged chunk of content for Codemaster’s superb rally racer, improving on the rather typical showing of extra cars already available. Centring on the Monte Carlo Rally, you can expect snow and tarmac courses through the Alps, changing it up some from faffing around a disused ironworks in Michigan.

The DLC should be available for purchase in the GFWL Marketplace soon is out now for £6.75, and a trailer for Monte Carlo is after the jump.

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Quite a lot of mod news this week, apparently, even though there’s very little for you to actually play. There’s a long-awaited update from Jurrassic Life, as well as plenty of other gubbins related to Half-Life 2, Crysis, Stalker: Clear Sky, Portal 2 and Dirt 3. That’s a lot of games! Read on to find out what’s what.
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Dirt 3 slid neatly into its release spot on Tuesday, before accelerating its way onto my hard-drive. Ah, driving metaphors. That’s enough of those. Let me tell you Wot I Think.>
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No one knows the need for speed better than yours truly. Why, many were the nights I’d stay up late to streak around the ring roads of Surrey in my Rover 200, the engine singing like a broken kettle, the exhausted speedometer showing speeds of 30 or even 40 miles per hour. Those were the days.

If you too are a bit of a speed demon, DiRT 3 might be for you. It’s out, and as you’ll see from the launch trailer below it’s more than a little pretty. Or, if you’d prefer, you could wait for Jim’s review later in the week later today!
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