Dire disappointment

The demo for the new Sega Rally went up on the Xbox marketplace today.
I really don't like arcade racers so haven't really been all that interested in this game, but pretty cars and interesting terrain deformation gave me enough reason to give it a spin. Bland track design and simplistic handling hit me in the face like a wet trout, it's an arcade racer alright.
The terrain deformation cuts tracks through the dirt, mud and snow leaving harder ground and faster lines behind it, or at least that's the idea, but taking the line exactly the same second time round is not easy, and basically impossible on an arcade racer like this. I could see in the video that as the car drove through these lines it bounced around like crazy, and my fears were confirmed when I played it for myself, as you go through the crosshatched mess of lines left by the other cars it not only impairs your handling, but actually lowers your speed. I found the only time this worked was when I drove on the far left of a stretch of road when all the computer controlled cars drove on the far right, then by the third lap I had created my own personal track. But the rest of the time it was a complete inconvenience.
What does look very good however is its selection of cars. The selection of cars on DiRT is not only limited but rather unbalanced. Sega Rally has what will look to be both a large and evenly balanced selection of rally cars, featuring such greats as the Impreza, Xsara, 206, Celica, Evo and most especially, the Ford Focus. If the full game has a 307 and C2 it will be a fierce list of rally cars indeed.
The sexy list of cars and the multiplayer are starting to sound more inviting the more I think about it, especially as the online racing will be both perfectly suited to the arcade style and a welcome change from the diabolical online DiRT. But I don't know if I can get over its downsides, and the fact it's nothing like real rally racing with all the cars starting together, ridiculously wide roads, and countries that aren't even close to anything in the WRC. American canyons and tropical islands? Get out.
I'll have to play the demo a bit more, but we'll see...

I preordered the Orange Box yesterday, after a big mess and whole load of hassle. First Paul went on my account and ordered it for me, but when I logged on none of the games were on my games list and the package was still available to buy, Paul contacted his bank to find that they were waiting for Steam to accept his payment. I tried to order it with my Mum's card but got declined as the servers were busy with so many people preordering it to get to be a part of the Team Fortress 2 beta starting today, which was lucky as I woke up today to find that Paul's payment had gone through overnight and TF2 was available to preload. A complete waste of time getting excited about playing that though, as the beta still hasn't started and there's no word for when it will. I just hope I wake up again tomorrow to find everything good and ready to go, I desperately need it to distract me through the last three days until World in Conflict.

I'm close to getting up to date with this years WRC.
I watched the second day of the Finland stage and can quite confidently say that that's going to be the best day of the year. The Finland courses are long gently winding roads through the most beautiful forests, and these long curves make for very high speed racing, aided by the fact that many of the drivers are from Finland and know the roads well. The second day's runs were especially good because they were one some of the WRC's most famous roads, I was quickly shown that it was fame well earned. Continuing the Finnish trend of long curving high speed roads it added constant rolling crests, so every other corner had the cars in the air. Which was especially exciting for my favorite driver, Hirvonen, who seems as at home with his car in the air as he does with all four wheels on the ground, he literally powerslides through the air as he puts his car sideways through jumps in preparation for the next corner that he can't even see until he's landing on it, I'm too scared to do that on DiRT, let alone real life.
A couple of massive offs didn't fail to disappoint, and the most spectacular jump of the day was performed by our very own Brit', Guy Wilkes, when he threw his Focus so high in the air that it smegged the front corner into the ground on the way back down giving himself hydraulic problems for the rest of the race, but it was totally worth it.