Dirt Showdown Message Board

Ryan and Drew fill their doors with cement and brace themselves for this wild departure from classic Dirt.

Smash into anything, especially other racers, to take the win in Dirt Showdown.

Dirt Showdown is now available worldwide on Steam!

Race, crash and hoon your way through a world tour of motorized mayhem in DiRT Showdown! Crowd atmosphere, social gameplay and accessibility are all ramped up in this turbo- injected shot of driving delirium. Smash down the accelerator and earn the adulation of frenzied crowds at hyper-energised events at iconic locations. Trick, speed and smash your way to victory, then do it again.

It seems that there’s something messy underfoot every step I take at the moment. The latest in a long line of trailers for car smashing lark Dirt Showdown was firmly on my ‘to be ignored’ list, seeing as there have been approximately six trailers released every day since the game was announced, but less filth-ridden nodes of the Hivemind pointed out that this was a demo trailer and as such comes with a demo. And it’s a demo with a race and an online demolition derby event, and none of that gymkhana nonsense, which is surely the vehicular equivalent of synchronised swimming or something equally toxic to my good spirits. I’ve put my mettle to the pedal. Thoughts below.

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#dirtshowdown As a fraternity man, and as a guy whose gamertag is, literally, "dudemanbestbro1," it pains me to say this but, yes, Dirt Showdown goes a little overboard with its woah-killer-brah commentary. Who the hell did they hire for this, the SAE rush chairman? More »

The demo for Dirt Showdown will be alive and kicking up dust on Steam, Xbox Live Marketplace and PSN today, Codemasters has announced. The demo includes the single-player mode's 8 Ball race, which runs by San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, and the multiplayer Rampage mode. Rampage is an eight-player demolition derby where points are earned for crashes and take-outs.

The Dirt Showdown demo also offers the first taste of RaceNet, a free online tracking and comparison extension for Codemasters racing games. Those who sign up for RaceNet get some special perks when the full game launches on May 25, including $20,000 of in-game currency. Yes, 20 big ones. Either that's an awesome bonus, or Dirt Showdown operates in a universe where everyone is a millionaire.

Let’s get the preliminaries out of the way. There’s another video of Dirt Showdown doing the rounds, this one avoiding the collisions and boosting that have been the highlights of previous trailers, and instead seeming to show a mating ritual between automobiles. Perhaps some form of dance. I don’t know, but it’s not as much fun as the actual grinding of metal on metal, the eruption of oil and petrol, the concertina crunch of repeated impact. You can see the coquettish conveyances below and you can also bear witness to only the second time I’ve been amused by an achievement.

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According to Codemasters, Dirt Showdown will be its most connected game ever. Codemasters is investing a lot of energy in spruiking the game's extensive multiplayer options, as well as its new social tracking service RaceNet (which you can read about here), but solo play hasn't been left out of the ...

Ford Fiesta versus Mitsubishi Lancer versus the fundamental laws of physics.

DiRT Showdown, Codemasters' spinoff about spinning out, will crash wildly into retail starting May 24. Codemasters announced regional release dates for the Xbox 360/PS3/PC racer today, with that May 24 date kicking off the release in mainland Europe.

A UK release will follow on May 25. The game will then drive across the Atlantic in time for a May 29 release in North America. A demo will be released worldwide May 1, featuring both single-player and multiplayer wreckin'. The release is the first from the new "Codemasters Racing" label, and will be the first game to use "RaceNet," an online hub for Codies racers. You'll be able to join up for the demo, and track your progress against friends.

Along with the date announcement came some rare news: Dirt Showdown will be sold at GAME, which, along with Gamestation (and Walmart in North America), will offer an exclusive "Hoonigan" edition of the game with some in-game bonuses ... like Monster Energy liveries for some of the cars. Free advertising with your game!

#codemasters The last few years have been rough for British game developer and publisher Codemasters. Despite a lengthy and varied history going back to the 1980s, their more recent games have seen mixed success. More »

Multiplayer never meant much to the series, but Dirt Showdown is finally showing some online initiative by cribbing from Halo and Battlefield. Codemasters is borrowing liberally from first-person shooters for its multiplayer modes and online infrastructure. This is most evident in the team-based, literally red vs. blue Smash & Grab competition, as well as the upcoming in-game social network, RaceNet...

At a recent Namco Bandai press event in Las Vegas, Codemasters revealed plans to rebrand its publishing arm to better reflect its commitment to the racing genre. The independent UK developer and publisher will publish games under the moniker Codemasters Racing, with upcoming DiRT Showdown to be the first title to carry the new branding and logo...

The Dirt 3 reboot that is Showdown actually looks like a torrent of fun. The latest trailer, which shows nothing more than the “boost” function operating in the various scenarios, neatly demos the game’s focus on rough-and-tumble full-contact racing, where the collisions between vehicles are just as significant as the neat racing line. I suppose it’s easy to mock Codemasters’ “extreme sports” hyperbole, but I’ve nevertheless enjoyed the Dirt games enormously, and they get the sort of toyish, consequence-free possibilities of these sorts of cars just right. Looking forward to this one, too.

The game is out in May.(more…)

Boost.

British developer/publisher Codemasters has left THQ Partners, who handled its distribution in the Americas during 2011, in favor of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, who will now take care of distribution, sales and marketing for all of Codemasters' 2012 releases in North and South America, including Dirt Showdown and F1 2012.

Fake eyewitness accounts report seeing THQ Publishing outside of Codemasters' bedroom window, holding a ghetto blaster above its head that was said to be playing "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel. We have, however, received conflicting reports that a freshly embittered THQ Publishing has opened a record shop and hired a young and enthusiastic Jack Black to work behind the counter.

Take all that serious business about driving you learned in the Dirt rallycross games and throw it out the window. Actually, throw it through the damn window, as smashing stuff is pretty much par for the course in Dirt Showdown. We're pretty sure that's all you do in it, actually.

The DIRT Showdown team have released some more bombastic footage of their glitzy off-road racing spin-off from the DIRT series. Showdown’s latest peek shows “Massive Damage Gameplay”, which, as you might imagine, shows off the destruction model. The explain: “DiRT Showdown’s Knock Out mode is revealed, featuring drivers using their cars as weapons to force opponents off a raised platform in a chaotic battle for domination. Eliminated vehicles can re-enter the fray by racing up ramps and jumping back onto the platform, where points are earned for knock-outs, hits and owning the ring alone.” It’s pretty, and silly, and pretty silly. The game is out in May.(more…)

I’ve deleted the official spelling of Codemasters’ “Dirt” three times now. Every time I attempt to write it big d small i big r big t my keyboard starts to glow red, smoke comes out of it and I hear a thousand voices screaming. That’s what I get for using Vigo the Carpathian’s old mechanical keyboard. But he calmed down when he saw the smashing cars of this raw footage from Codie’s arcade spin-off of their rally series. His giggle was almost infectious.(more…)

If there's one thing we'd have to say the Dirt series has been missing, it's demolition derby -- cars crashing into cars crashing into cars. Another thing: so many pyrotechnics. Dirt Showdown realizes this and offers a taste of both in the latest trailer.

Drew and Ryan are joined by Ian Smith of Codemasters Racing, who shows them how to get down and dirty.

May will see the high-evolved dust-and-mud particles of a new Dirt game being thrown up onto our screens. This one is called Showdown, and is as glitzy and noisy as any off-road racing game could possibly have any right to be. As we mentioned previously Showdown is more of a spin off from the main series than a genuine sequel, and will be less focused on the traditional racing and more on destruction and the alarming things that happen with cars crash into each other, or static objects. So that should be entertaining. The trailer below shows something called Nevada 8 Ball, which seems to involve large American cars coming to a sticky end.(more…)

2012 marks a turning point for the Dirt franchise. After a sly late-year hint it was working on Dirt 4, Codemasters also announced Dirt Showdown, an arcade-centric answer to gymkhana's inclusion in Dirt 3. Where Dirt 4 will stick to point-to-point rally, Dirt Showdown is about destruction, drifting, and big crashes...