Dirt 5 Preview – Playgrounds of Potential

Codemasters’ Dirt 5 is already shaping up to be the most multifaceted entry so far in the long running series after they revealed eight modes for the title earlier in the year – Landrush, Rally Raid, Ice Breaker, Stampede, Pathfinder, Sprint, Gymkhana and Ultra Cross. But those announced modes are not the final amount in Dirt 5, as the Cheshire-based part of Codemasters has just revealed a brand new feature for their upcoming off-road racer, dubbed “Playgrounds”.

Playgrounds is best described as Dirt 5‘s way of giving the player the ability to create their own challenge events using objects to build custom arenas and share them online for other people to test and get their fastest times on the leaderboard. In the work-in-progress preview build available to us the mode featured three challenge types to base a playground on. I have been told that this is the amount that will be available in the launch version of the game, but that  does not stop future updates adding post-release content.

Playgrounds’ game types will be familiar to fans of the Dirt series. Gymkhana is a mode already featured in Dirt 5‘s main campaign, and it does not change much for Playgrounds – Gymkhana is about earning as much score as possible from tricks and linking them together in the limited time available. Not as easy as it sounds, since repeating tricks reduces the score, and of course, making sure not to crash is important otherwise the current trick count will be lost and the combo reduced. The other two modes are Smash Attack and Gate Crasher. Smash Attack involves hunting down inflatable objects, driving into them to shatter and earn points before the time runs out, but be careful, as time penalty objects can sap away time reducing the ability to score high. Lastly, Gate Crasher is a checkpoint system in which all checkpoints must be passed before being able to go through the finish gate.

Creating a playground within the game is incredibly straightforward. I was crafting something enjoyable within an hour or so of time (check the video at the bottom to see me designing a playground from scratch to completion). It begins firstly by selecting a theme from one of three launch Playground arenas. These are your sandbox to begin crafting up your fantasy or devilish challenges. Each venue is given a surface type and arena size. The three available were dirt surfaces across two themes, the Cape Town Stadium, which was a small arena set inside, you guessed it, a stadium, while the Arizona Desert is set outside, but caged in by a wired wall. The latter had the option of medium or small variations. Adding more arenas seems like a no brainier, as there is clearly space to quadruple the amount available, and the fact that only dirt surfaces were accessible in this preview build makes me speculate we could see updates after launch day that add tarmac, gravel or maybe even snow, which sounds great for a Christmas themed playground.

Once a venue is selected a dull, empty arena now awaits for some creativeness. The main menu inside playgrounds is where the challenge type is set and from here it is simply about hitting the create button and letting your imagination design something by placing objects in the arena. Dirt 5 comes with an assortment of things to select from. The way the menu is designed has the objects split into categories and once highlighted can then be placed into the arena. This object screen seems like it also could easily be updated with more options, maybe Halloween themed objects to create a scary playground for the occasion?

Each challenge has to start with a Start Gate, and then from there it is all about adding objects and making sure to add in challenge type objects as well, such as additional checkpoint or finish gates for Gate Crasher or smash balloons for Smash Attack. There is a good amount of freedom with the objects available, such as various ramps, platforms, blocks, barriers, banks, mounds and stunt objects that I can see players coming up with some masterpieces. The only limiting factor, apart from one’s imagination, is the memory counter that sits in the top right of the screen that increases with each object placed. This is most likely to stop designs that eat into the hardware resource and cause performance issues with the game.

Objects have set height and size, so there is no way to extend this other than building another one next to or on top to increase its area. Objects, by default, will snap into an invisible grid or to part of another object to slot in space or line up neatly with other objects. It is this simplicity of the tools where I feel it will help get people building in the game who might not often be invested in a mode like this. Within a few minutes my course had a tunnel that lead to a jump over some wrecked buses onto a raised platform, then another jump that landed into a water splash, then onto a thin ramp over some shipping containers. I wanted to keep adding elements to it, so to finish up my course after about an hour of designing I dropped some giant Monster Energy Cans for that true X-Games feel.

I would say I am a person who normally would not participate in the creative elements in games that feature them. I never made any levels in Trackmania nor did I do so Super Mario Maker, but my first attempt at building a playground came out fine, and seeing my design unfold as I was building it made me want to keep on adding more and more. For the people who similar are not a creative type, the publishing aspects are where Dirt 5 will shine. Already with the limited users having access to the preview build I have seen some ingenious playgrounds that can show what potential this feature has. Trackmania is know for its fan community building complex and insane tracks for the game and I can see Dirt 5 having a similar element to this, especially if they keep adding content to the mode and increase the arena sizes to allow massive courses.

User created content seemed to be the next step for the Dirt series, although, I was expecting the developers to extend the random generation track design that was part of Dirt 4 and allow users to make their own rally tracks. While playgrounds does not offer that ability, what it does is deliver something that can make the Dirt series more unconventional than one might expect. No one was expecting to be creating Trackmania inspired tracks in Dirt 5, but you can. People are going to build some of the most ridiculous and wildest playgrounds, but restrictions are in place to make it fair, as creators have to finish their playground otherwise the final design cannot be published online and shared to the world – that might stop some of the sadists out there.

Community will be key in making sure playgrounds can hit its full potential, and it looks like it should, thanks to how uncomplicated constructing a challenge turned out to be. In theory, this gives Dirt 5 tremendous amount of replay value. We have seen how other games have escalated their profile thanks to user generated content, and if Codemasters can keep pumping new modes, environments and objects into playgrounds, then there is no reason why Dirt 5‘s freshly cooked mode cannot be up there with the best of games that thrive in the brilliant idea of user generated content.

Dirt 5  was previewed on the PC version. Dirt 5 launches 16th October on PS4, Xbox One and PC, and arrives on PS5 and Xbox Series X towards the end of 2020.