DIRT is pretty good buit i still think Forza 2 is better ! ! !
Graphics: One look at this game and your in love. They're better than almost all of the competition. The cars are detailed to a degree of insanity which is to be expected given that each one supposedly took 40 days to make. The environment around you may not look quite as good as the cars but it's still a cut above the rest. The graphics really make this game stand out from other racers.
Realtime damage/carnage: I had this one race where I piledrived a subaru impreza straight into a stop sign. In most games the car would stop, a scatched texture would appear on the bonnet and the sign post might wobble or fall over. In DiRT I could watch the front of my car crumple into a jagged V around the pole, the wind shield explode outwards and the sign post literally fold over and get ripped out of the ground. My car continued another few meters before a message informed me that my cooling system had just kicked the bucket and my engine wasn't far behind. Needless to say I didn't make it to the finish line. Once the race ended I could the watch the whole ordeal in slow-mo from different angles. That is some class next gen sh*t right there.
Gamemodes: There are 6 ones available - Rally, Rally Raid, Crossover, CORR, Hill Climb, Rallycross. Although the way you play is subtly altered in each mode the central objective (come first) is not. Even though "wreck your opponents car" isn't strictly "rallying" it would have been welcome in my opinion.
Vehicle Handling: This has had some mixed views. It's arcadey but realistic at the same time. In my opinion it wasn't meant to be either, it was meant to "feel right" and in my opinion Codemasters got it just right
Multiplayer: Alright, this is the only area DiRT isn't great. People who were looking to thrash someones buggy on a dirt track will be disappointed. You can only rally/hillclimb for starters and even though you can race against 99 different people at once you cant see or hear any of them. Every checkpoint you pass give the details of other peoples times at that checkpoint. Sadly a missed opportunity
All in all DiRT is still my favourite racer but it could have been a tiny bit more