First off, the basics: DIRT is still a rally game at heart, and unlike Sega Rally, its preference is for simulation rather than arcade-style thrills. The majority of races are held against the clock with no other on-track opposition, although there are hill climbs, head-to-head races, and competitive races as well. Your chosen difficulty level has an impact on the amount of time you have to finish each race, as well as the level of damage that your car will take. No matter how many crashes you subject your car to on the rookie level, your vehicle will always be able to finish the race. The main modes of play are the career and championship modes, but there will be a multiplayer mode and a host of unlockable features to hold your interest as well.

As you start the game, you're presented with a simple white expanse, and the main menu buttons float tantalisingly at the front. Options are presented clearly, while American pro race champion Travis Pastrana explains each of them concisely. If your first inclination is to dip into the career mode, the camera flies through the space to a pyramid-shaped events list. This organisation means that there are more races at the easy level and fewer at the harder difficulty. Once you've chosen your event, information on the race type and vehicles can be flicked through like a virtual Rolodex, allowing you to see if you have the money and experience to enter. Finally, in a slightly pointless but characteristically classy touch of design, you can use the right analogue stick to pivot the camera around the 3D menu system as it adapts with all the depth-of-field visual effects we've come to expect these days.

The modelling of trackside details is just as spectacular. Instead of the static models used in previous games, barriers now bend and buckle just as much as the cars themselves. Likewise, tyre walls now collapse realistically to reveal individually modelled tyres, while flimsy tape barriers tear if you career through them. Perhaps the nicest touch, and one we wouldn't even have noticed unless told about it, is that the broken tape will gently flicker in the wind, which doesn't really matter if you're spending most of the race at over 80mph, but you certainly have to admire the attention to detail.

DIRT will have a tough job matching up to the previous entries in the series, but from what we've seen, Codemasters seems more than up to the challenge. The new race modes and vehicles make a welcome diversion from straight rallying while also staying true to the series' rally roots. The game also has plenty of new ideas to bring to multiplayer, and while this mode may well split fans down the middle, we can't wait to test our skills against so many people. DIRT is set for release in June on the Xbox 360 and PC, with the PlayStation 3 version to follow a few months afterwards.