Who and what is Dirt 5 for? I have repeatedly asked myself this question as I drive stone-faced on the gravel that I seem to forget. I don't know the answer, and neither does Codemasters. After all, this is the series that made its name by injecting extreme sports culture into the "Colin McRae: Rally" series, which had been a bit warmed-over until 2007. "Colin McRae: Dirt" is fresh and fun, and I've thrown my Pacenote out the passenger window and did donuts because I felt like it.

The problem is that Dirt Rally and its sequel have arrived. Lovely, straightforward Dirt Rally. Dirt Larry has finished his geography homework and has his morning PE gear lined up. And it is, indeed, wonderful. So great that it made me realize how much I missed the pace notes, the ultra-realistic off-road handling, and the drizzly Welsh trails. It's stuff like that that made me fall in love with old rally games all over again. Dirt" was created to bring it back.

Then, number five has no clear raison d'etre. The core element of it all, the essential Dirt-ness, was conceived as a deliberate departure from sim-oriented realistic driving. But now that "Dirt Rally 2" is enjoying the excitement of a passionate community and sim racing esports, it is sim-oriented realistic driving that is gaining steam.

Of course, you might really prefer an unburdened racer where braking is purely optional and the familiar event pyramid from the career menu wraps around you like a comfort blanket; "Dirt 5" is certainly that kind of thing;

"Dirt 5" is a realistic racing experience, with a realistic, realistic, realistic driving experience.

The handling model doesn't want you to go out backwards and wrestle for balance. It wants you to obey. With a quick increase in throttle, most cars can be thrown into most corners and get up more or less on pace. The career mode menu offers medals for optional tasks such as changing paint or catching five seconds of air while drifting. As expected, cars are painted in colors, vinyl, and sponsor stickers, and the retina peels off as you watch.

While Forza Horizon's creator mode could consume hours while attempting the most basic designs, Dirt 5's tools are surprisingly quick and easy. There is perhaps less fine-grained control over decal placement and dimensions than we are used to, but if I can go from menu to grid to glorious tricolor 306 Maxi in a matter of minutes, I choose it. From structure to course design, staging and handling, it delivers exactly what one would expect from a "dirt" game without any surprises or notable advances.

Surprises are not abundant on the track either. There are plenty of fireworks, confetti, and pyrotechnics when you hit a jump, but the AI drivers do not interact with you or each other as they would in a GRID game. Even the ice racing events are a highlight throughout the career mode, as all of them are a bit more civilized and require a sense of balance in low grip.

It's the geographical variation that you feel as you plunge down the next hill or dive into a ridiculous camber hairpin. Never overlook the fact that we are racing in China, Italy, Norway, and New York. The sense of touring these worlds is highly intriguing to your career, as the different event types are not very clearly distinguished except for the frequent 1vs1 showdowns, respectively: the bamboo fields, the Dolomites, the snow-covered countryside, and the frozen cityscapes.

At this point, it should be acknowledged that hundreds of teams worked tirelessly and adapted to telecommuting to get this game out. While there were some performance issues in the Steam review build, Dirt 5 does not bear the scars of an unusual development process. This is worth mentioning.

So it's worth looking under old socks and crumpled Sainsburys receipts for bits of great games. Yes, there are just the right ones in here. For example, Playground. Gymkhana has been a staple of the series for a while, but the level of challenge in "Dirt 5" is so much higher that it's much more interesting than just completing the career events. The intricate pursuit of perfection, like "Truck Mania" with its off-road tires, is nerve-wracking to drive and can be bent to any shape the community content creators want at their whim; in Dirt 5's career mode, the playground is the star of the show. In yet another world, the fantastic tracks of the current career mode are retained, but experienced through the ultra-high difficulty physics model of Dirt Rally 2.

Dirt 5 is not a bad game; Project CARS 3 is not. But the two are an interesting comparison. Both have made the strange decision to move their IPs away from sim racing at a time when sim racing has never been more popular, and probably never will be. But whereas Slightly Mad's game seems to be jaw-dropping and aggressively challenging itself to find something to like in its pre-franchise identity among the new mess of utterly impersonal racing, "Dirt 5" is guilty of the opposite ... Rather than abandoning its identity, it plays it too safe and clings to it too tightly, seeking out the casual racing gamer who is scared of the brake pedal.