Hands-On Preview: DiRT 5 Playground Track Editor
We recently had an opportunity to play an early preview build of the new creation suite coming to DiRT 5 this year with Playground and even in its early stages, it’s clear to see that this mode has a lot of great potential. While we have seen plenty of editing features over the years from other racers such as Track Mania and Trials series from Ubisoft, as well as from other publishers, this is the very first time that such a feature has come to the DiRT series and my early impressive are overall positive.
Personally, I’d always prefer to use such custom features using a keyboard and mouse on PC, but seeing as I don’t have a PC anywhere near capable enough, I’ve always had to make do with the console. Sometimes track and map editors are not the easiest to navigate using a console controller, but Codemasters have made the process of Playground a relatively easy one and once you get used to its navigation, you’ll be making the most out of this mode and uploading your creations in no time at all.
Once you’ve chosen from one of two available maps, including the Arizona Desert and the Cape Town Stadium of South Africa, the three available modes at launch will be Gate Crasher (a high-speed checkpoint race), Gymkhana (a mixture of race tricks, drifts, donuts and more to clock-up the best score) and finally Smash Attack (as you race through the course smashing through the objects that have been placed in the map in the fastest time possible), its then up to you to let your imagination run free to get your creative juices flowing.
Placing your checkpoints, tracks, corners, obstacles, rings of fire, loops, ramps and more, is as easy as selecting objects via the in-game menu and placing them where you please. Here you can copy and paste, rotate, tilt and more in simple fashion, spamming objects left, right and centre. It may seem a little daunting at first with all the tools on offer, but once you get used to the process, you’ll be creating courses and games with ease like its second nature.
Once you are happy with your creation, you can then upload your course for the online community to try out, rate and to see who gets the best scores on your Playgrounds. Already even in this early preview build, some of the community creations are fantastic, so I can’t wait to see the variety of creations once DiRT 5 launches worldwide and more people get to experience this deep creation suite.
Usually these kinds of modes are not my cup of tea, but before I knew it, I was losing hours into the night, loosing track of time creating to my heart’s content, which is a great early sign of the potential immersion that this mode has to offer. Sure my course will be put to shame by some of the more creative gamers out there, but Playground is a fun, and welcoming creation suite for a variety of skill levels and I can’t wait to improve my skills with a little practice.
Are you looking forward to DiRT 5 and trying out Playground? Let us know in the comments section below, and if you haven’t done so already, I’d really appreciate you smashing Like on my video and hitting Subscribe on my video. DiRT 5 will release for PC, PS4 and Xbox One on Friday, October 16th, as well as for Google Stadia early 2021. Owners of the game will also get a free next-gen upgrade for PS5 and Xbox Series X when they become available later in the year.