The first DiRT title was released just before McRae's horribly premature passing, and saw Codemasters essentially rip everything up and start again, giving the franchise a face-lift fit for the next-generation. It highlighted the tone of a series moving increasingly further from the realistic, 'pure' brand of rallying in the earlier games to a more arcade-orientated, thrill-seeking approach. Whether seduced by the bright-lights of, for example, Project Gotham Racing, or whether Codemasters were just seeking change for the sake of change lest creative stagnation take hold, DiRT 2 (yes the strange lower case 'I' is intentional) represents the consolidation of this new approach.
