The developers of racing titles have a conundrum on their hands when trying to create an experience that is both authentic to appease gear heads, while remaining accessible enough for those simply looking for a fun experience they can dip in and out of at leisure. Some fall dangerously close to being bogged down by the same morass that genre counterparts Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo constantly find themselves in by placing the car as the star of the show, with recent iterations of each series appearing a tad soulless and devoid of any human element. On the other hand, any racing game that does feature a strong human element, such as the tacked-on narratives in the inconsistent Need for Speed series, will often fail to strike a balance between a solid racing mechanic and storyline. Racers with an identity crisis commonly end up leaving a chunk of the racing fan base in the dark, but thankfully, the revamped Colin McRae DiRT 2 works on so many levels by covering enough bases to keep everyone happy.

At a first glance, it could appear that the series has been accosted by the Tony Hawk crowd, with a new extreme sports veneer, killer licensed soundtrack and saccharine colour palette. If you recall the first exemplary instalment, the game was a master class of the genre, yet it still teetered precariously on the verge of being a tad soulless. Thankfully, it dodged a bullet by being such an unfettered riot to play, with an expansive career mode, fine-tuned gameplay and a slick visual style that many racers fail to match. Purists might bemoan the new look and slight narratives, but this sequel is a fitting tribute to the legend himself, featuring a slew of new features under the bonnet.

The meat of the game is the expansive career mode that tasks you with trotting the globe, competing in a variety of events across several racing disciplines, earning winnings and buying an impressive collection of vehicles. The ultimate milestones are the X Games events that pit you against other drivers in a series of events with huge prize money and fierce competition. The first thing that hits you is the new aesthetic style of the menus that places you in a first-person viewpoint as you navigate the racers area. Here you can sign up to events, set up online games, tweak your car set up and generally soak in the festival atmosphere, chock full of fans, colour and spectacle.

Another page taken from the Tony Hawk playbook is the appearance of real-world pros including rally all-stars Travis Pastrana, Dave Mirra, Katie Justice and Ken Block. Their voice acting is solid and the chatter over the menus and during races adds a welcome jolt of character and enforces the feel good vibe of the title. Along the way you can forge friendships with other drivers who will challenge you to friendly one on one throw down events where you must beat set objectives such as besting their best time on a specific circuit. Eventually, befriended drivers can be enlisted to compete in intense team events.

When starting your career, you can only compete in rookie events with lower cash rewards and a more relaxed difficulty curve. The inclusion of a levelling-up system adds another layer of depth to the tired tournament format. You earn experience points for winning races and meeting underlying conditions. For example, achieving a total drift distance of several hundred feet or overtaking a certain amount of other drivers will result in bonus EXP rewards. When you reach certain levels, new destinations on the global career map will open, individual events will be available and you will unlock additional car liveries and novelty horns.

The racing itself is incredibly slick, with the gameplay sitting within a comfortable middle ground between simulation and arcade. You really can feel every bump and texture of the track surface through the rumble feedback and through the way your car responds, delivering a truly immersing racing experience. Each vehicle feels different to the last, with very few handling precisely the same, which will surely lead most players to lean towards a distinct car of choice for each discipline. Aside from standard rally stages where you sprint from checkpoint to checkpoint competing for the best times, you can enter dominator events where every so often the racer in last event gets knocked out from the pack, gatecrasher stages where drivers must smash through deviously placed placards on the track to add valuable seconds to the clock and many more. Raid events are restricted to buggy and heavy duty truck classes set across devious off-road tracks, while Sprint races involve streamlined vehicles bombing along wide and open tracks with fiendishly placed hairpins and precarious drops. There really is something for everyone here.

Of course, not everyone will be adept at each discipline and to alleviate any frustrations, Codemasters have included the flashback dynamic from Race Driver: GRiD that allows you to rewind any fluffed corners, terminal crashes or similar slip-ups and have a second crack at the section that threw you off-course. Your current difficulty setting determines how many flashbacks you are allowed per event, but over time you should become familiar to each of the superbly designed courses and how your favourite car handles to avoid falling back on this crutch.

Visually, this is one of the best looking racers out there with each event location bearing its own distinct style and palette. From lush Malaysian rainforests and illuminated London streets, to scorching Moroccan desert plateaus and mountainous, winding Japanese trails, the wealth of locations is breathtaking, with an impressive draw distance reinforcing the epic scale of the environments. The rich visuals make the razor sharp visuals of Gran Turismo and Forza look particularly empty by comparison.

Once you have tackled the mammoth task of career mode and seen everything there is to see offline which, if you're lucky, will last you a good month or three, you can take the race online and compete in a number of disciplines with friends in local play or in ranked world tour events. Just like offline career mode, you will earn EXP for races won and objectives met which will all contribute to your online fame ranking, which represents your skill level and notoriety. To avoid the typical nightmare scenario where one irritating player ruins the experience for everyone by ramming them off the road to secure a cheap win, you can opt to play a non-contact game where all other racers are visible on track as ghosts and can be passed through, removing the threat of collisions or malicious shunts.

Alternatively you can play a full contact game and risk being rammed off into a ravine at 200mph if you enjoy the risk. Disciplines are the same as offline mode, including raid, rally and sprint events, which can be randomised when playing online or selected specifically when you search for an available lobby. Games are lag free and rattle along at the same thrilling pace as the offline counterpart.

On the surface, DiRT 2 may appear to be a punkier, streamlined and therefore more diluted experience than its forebears, but this window dressing belies the complexity and depth on offer to even the most hardened rally purist. Whatever your grasp of the genre and how highly you regard your own skill, this is a game that will invite you in and deliver an experience that can be tailored to meet your expectations or requirements. Highly accessible, expertly crafted and well presented, the only thing that might hold the game back is its open arm approach to satisfying as wide a demographic as possible. By casting its net wide, veterans may feel like they have been lumbered in with the casual crowd. For everyone else, this is as good an entry point to the series as any.

Reviewed by Dave Cook for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).