Clean and pristine aren’t welcome here

Wouldn’t it be great if every speeding ticket you’ve ever gotten added up to something cool? Colin McRae: DiRT 2, Feral Interactive’s Mac OS X port of the off-road racing game, tallies the results of your high-speed antics to open up new locations across a variety of event types, including Rally, Trailblazer, and Land Rush. You can even create a character to guide through a lengthy race career.

So what makes DiRT 2 different from any other racing title available for the Mac? The surprising answer is time travel. In the event that you make an epic mistake and destroy your vehicle during the race -- not an uncommon occurrence in these tense battles -- you can hit a key to activate the Flashback feature and spin back several seconds before the crash. The number of available Flashbacks varies depending on the level of difficulty you choose going into each race, so you must use them sparingly.

Clean and pristine aren’t welcome here

Codemasters and Feral really did their homework on how to present a realistic rally experience; the outstanding 3D vehicle models blend perfectly with a variety of racetrack settings (including deserts, forests, and cities). Plus, a terrific particle system seems to kick up just the right amount of dust and grime, and lovingly rendered sound effects meet a hard rock soundtrack and strong voice acting to round the game out nicely.

Once you’ve racked up some progress on your own, you’ll probably want to earn some bragging rights online -- and DiRT 2 supports multiplayer gameplay via the popular GameRanger application. Simply install GameRanger, set up an account, and you’ll be able to host or join games on the fly. This worked smoothly during testing, though the number of multiplayer matches seemed thin at times, and the browser wasn’t quite as robust as what I’d expect from an integrated option.

DiRT 2 does have a few areas that warrant improvement, but luckily none are deal breakers. The game’s tracks appear to take a lot of wear and tear, but none of it affects the gameplay. Similarly, vehicular damage -- while visually impressive -- also has little effect on the races. Perhaps a patch could make these elements more meaningful in the heat of the race, but DiRT 2 is still a lot of fun regardless.

The bottom line. Even if racing titles aren’t usually your thing, it’s hard to ignore Colin McRae: DiRT 2’s loud, flashy style. With strong fundamentals, tons of rewards and unlocks, and the ability to build a career from scratch and tinker with various vehicles, this is a game that’ll draw you in and keep you cruising for some time.