Looking at DIRT 5's New ‘Playgrounds’ Mode
Not that long ago, I was speaking about the popularity of Fall Guys to a few friends, and mentioned that the developer has been toying with the idea of adding a level editor to the game, which would, in my opinion give it a much-needed longevity boost over it’s initial hype phase. But what does that have to do with DIRT 5?
Well, this last week, an email dropped into my inbox, inviting me to take a look at the latest build of DIRT 5, following up on the initial build we got to play with last month. Most intriguing is that this build introduces the Playground mode to DIRT 5, something that we hadn’t heard anything about. Until now.
Playground mode is what you’d get if you took Trackmania, added in a sprinkling of gymkhana and dropped in some smashable blocks and wrapped it up in a rally setting.
In it, there are three types of events you can take part in. Gymkhana, which stalwarts of the series will know from previous iterations as showing off to the crowd, drifting, doing donuts and smashing things, but with new tricks you can pull off, like squeezing through narrow gaps, and sliding through targets.
Smash Attack has you breaking through various items around the arena, with the more you smash gaining you a higher score. This quickly becomes a case of working out the best path around the obstacles to get the highest score, but some of the smashables will negatively impact your score, so be careful.
Rounding out the three modes, and my personal favourite of the three, is Gate Crasher. Make your way through all of the checkpoints and then head to the finish line. Some courses will be laid out in such a way that you can only go one way to the end, others will have the checkpoints free-flowing so you can make your own path.
But that’s not all. No.
Codemasters have added the ability for users to make their own creations in these three modes, which is certain to lead to some absolute shenanigans in terms of course design. Remember I was talking about Fall Guys adding an editor for longevity? Well here’s Codemasters’ answer to that.
I thoroughly enjoy Trackmania but sometimes it just feels like you’re trying to guide a bullet to the finish line, in that there’s not much variance about the routing you need to take, but with rally cars, there’s much more nuance to how you get the car from A to B quickly. Or through all the checkpoints, or smashables, or various tricks and stunts. And being able to create your own setups to hoon around will be great not just for the longevity of the title, but for setting up challenges between you and your friends to ruin what tattered remains there is after some split screen multiplayer.
DIRT 5 is shaping up to be a good fun entry into the series, and a worthwhile successor to DiRT 2 and 3. I wonder what else Codemasters have up their sleeve before release...
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