May 25, 2011 13:15 GMT  ·  By

Quite a lot of racing games have appeared lately, ranging from full on simulators like Gran Turismo 5 or Need for Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed, to arcade ones, like NFS: Hot Pursuit. Now, Codemasters has just released its own take on the racing genre, through the new Dirt 3 title.

After the extremely well-received Dirt 2, the team at Codemasters really had its work cut out, trying to keep the great mechanics and feel, while adding new events in order to keep things interesting.

Did the UK-based studio manage to properly follow up its last Dirt racing game? Let's have a quick look.

The first thing you notice when you boot up Dirt 3 is that Codemasters has once again infused a unique visual style to the menu interface, this time swapping out the lines or cubes seen in Dirt 2 or Race Driver: Grid, with triangle-shaped objects, which can unfold in order to showcase different things.

While it's quite unique, the interface is still top notch and manages to really impress players.

You have a few different choices in terms of events, ranging from quick, single-player races to multiplayer ones or the full-pledged Dirt Tour, which acts as a story mode, encompassing various events, from regular races to rallies or Gymkhana, the special discipline in which players need to go through an industrial playground in the most stylish way imaginable.

Dirt 3 isn't just for hardcore racing fans, as the game has multiple difficulty settings, which allows you to tweak things like driver assists and their intensity, damage, either cosmetic or full, and plenty of other things.

The cars behave pretty realistically, and you can't go through the races with your finger on the accelerator, as it will no doubt end with you crashing into other racers, fences or bits of the scenery.

If you do crash, Dirt 3, just like any recent Codemasters racing title, has a nifty little flashback feature, which allows you to rewind time to before the error was made and try to prevent yourself from crashing once more.

Judging by the very first impressions, Dirt 3 is a gorgeous looking racing game that might offer a bit of everything to players, no matter their skill level.

Dirt 3 is now available for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Here's a quick race gameplay video we've recorded: