Ain't Yer Daddy's CMR.
But that has become the problem. I thought I was getting, essentially, the next chapter in the CMR series.... But as of this review, I've crashed enough dune buggies and driven so many big rigs up a hill that I realize this ain't yer daddy's CMR. Actually, it'd rather appeal to yer daddy than appeal to a rally racing fan (given that your father is less worldly than you and isn't already a rally fan).
This isn't a rally game.
It's hard for me to say it, but it's now obviously true. I've owned and played every entry in the CMR series since its second inception on the PC. It was a somewhat hardcore WRC-style rally game series that was one of the few I'd say I didn't find fun but enjoyed nonetheless. It's about the challenge of flinging an Impreza through mud and gravel and snow at 160 kph and not destroying the car, all the while knowing that someone else is not only succeeding at that very task but doing it in record time.
There are stages of this nature in DiRT, and they're fantastic. But they're interspersed among the garbage truck (yes, garbage truck) races and big rig hill-climbs.
So, in order to finish career mode and race those rallies, you'll have to wade through the muck of boring and sometimes uncontrollably out-of-control racing types (9 times out of 10, I had to restart one dune buggy race because within the first 15 seconds, the AI racers would swerve over to me and lock my wheels up, forcing me to turn sideways and go off-course, into a wall...nothing I could do differently to avoid that).
In the U.S., DiRT does not have Colin McRae's name in the title, but his name does appear in the game as a racer on the rally stages. I suppose this should indicate that this isn't a CMR game at all.
R.I.P. to Colin himself, and now R.I.P. to his video game franchise.