As somebody who is playing with a joystick on Xbox One (sold my wheel around a year ago), I found that Dirt 4 has highs and lows in physics compared to Dirt Rally. I'm by no means a rally expert though.
Pros:
- the car now feels like it has mass;
- you can't get away with a few things you could at Dirt Rally (mainly in Sweden, where I used to win Group B races at Elite by essentially throwing the car against the snow banks at the points I felt it was right);
- the best game for console on tarmac I've ever tried, it feels just wonderful. Forza should learn with Code here.
- I liked the career mode, immersion at the right point, choice of co-driver is wise too, but there should be more options.
- some important cars added (even if it's at high costs) like the Lancer VI, which I really missed in Dirt Rally.
- Spain is AMAZING, really liked it.
- rain looks and feels way better than in Dirt Rally;
- sense of speed is also better.
- Landrush
.
- in Rally I used to disable ABS, set the brake saturation to 135% and be happy, here even with this setting, there is true punishment for slamming the brakes like a mad man. It is more realistic and makes the experience fine.
Cons:
- the car is actually *harder* to control with a joystick than in Rally because of the full wheel movement and the gain in realism is next to none, Dirt Rally was way easier on that, oddly enough (with a joystick, again). While in Rally I could go (my) 99.9% in almost every car (except the Lancia Stratos and the 037..), here I feel very restricted and most of times afraid, still have to restart a few times. With a wheel I'm pretty sure Dirt 4 would be easier like this, though. Tried gamer mode too but found it very hard to predict where the car will be and what it will do, didn't like the feel.
- too much rear grip for non-tarmac surfaces, feels like a circuit racer (the worst problem of the game I think*****);
- it got very hard to control the slides once you get the damn thing to slide, as I would expect in a regular racing game with tarmac circuits, not a rally game (even in RBR I felt I could trust the car way more while sliding... but I played it with a wheel only);
- a translation to brazilian portuguese would be appreciated but forget it if it's badly done like it was made in Dirt Rally: co-driver with several bugs, some (considerable amount of) stages on Elite and Masters being hell because it repeats the same instruction a few times in a row and then it gives the instructions way after -- five seconds? -- the corners were ran, even with the pacenotes set to "Early". Oh, and some translations terribly wrong like "override clutch" being translated to something that could be translated back to "disable clutch";
- the menus look awful and are actually way harder to work with (mainly for a beginner, if I were a beginner here I would be pretty lost with those menus) than Dirt Rally's ones.
- career is too short (though very good) and a lot of things lack any true meaning or identity;
- bug where even without the automatic wipers option on, they just go on automatically at random points, almost every stage. Without me pressing any key (is the grammar here correct? I have no idea of what I'm writing lol).
- graphics on Xbox One are way, way worse than in Dirt Rally, and it doesn't look like this on YouTube videos at all :O. I was impressed by how bad graphics looked and I'm not the kind of guy who cares too much about graphics.
- some cars even with ABS 5, big brake saturation, brake bias almost full front, you touch the brake and it tries to spin.
- the weather changes like the random fog of death appearing and disappearing way too quickly through stages, not like real life. Not to mention that AI seems to gain like 20 seconds against you out of nowhere there. Feels artificial and just bad.
That's it, I liked the game, offers good simulation balance but with the casuality I like (I can't play it every day so I gotta have something realistic but that I still feel sharp when I come back). I'd give it a 7.5 or 8 out of 10. There is pretty of room to improve though and I bought it having in mind Codemasters will improve it. Hopefully I'm right.