DiRT 2 is what portable racing games should be: an acknowledgement of the format and an adaptation of console racing. DiRT 2's take on the console racing experience is to make it bite-sized: short races and quick and plentiful challenges that will occupy whatever amount of time you have.
DiRT 2's strength lies in its variety. Races are a mix of traditional lap and raid (long stretches of a single road), which breaks things up and always keeps them interesting. The developer really built a variety of course environments, providing everything from cityscapes to snow terrain, shipping docks and long stretches of desert. Environments are more than just a palette swap and each brings with it an impact to the racing course: snow courses are tight and provide hills, desert races will have lots of quick turns and open terrain and city courses keep you on your feet with quick 90 degree cuts.
The problems from the hands on preview still exist in some ways, namely the unbalanced opponent A.I. Some races the computer will be neck and neck with you, vicious and out to make sure you flip on a tight turn and on others it seems they are taking a Sunday drive through the countryside, content to languish well behind in your rearview mirror without posing any challenge. At times I felt the need to slow down, take a turn wide in order to let them catch up and give me a run at it.
The cars feel slightly better than in previous hands-on previews, where they seemingly lacked weight at times; what's here in the finished product is a slightly better handling. Even with some minor annoyances, DiRT 2 is a strong contender in the portable racing space by delivering the goods on fast and gratifying action.
