Colin McRae: DiRT 2 on Playstation 3 Hands-On Impressions.

From the solid handling, to the impressive damage modelling and quirky presentation, we're itching to try out more.

The first thing we noticed about Colin McRae: DiRT 2 was the interesting colour palette. The game has a rather quirky, pseudo-cartoon look to it. It's hard to put into words without seeing it with the eye, but it has a dusty, bright and colourful palette that really pops on an HD screen. The closest thing we can compare it to is Motorstom crossed with LittleBigPlanet — though we're not sure that's the best description we've ever written.

The game opens in a trailer room which acts as the game's central hub. For example, walking over to table-top map gives you access to the game's single-player racing campaign. We were able to select from tracks in Baja and Morocco. You're guided through the menus by a friendly - if not somewhat patronising - voice, who explains simple mechanics for the uninitiated. Upon confirming your track selection you're first-person protagonist will be scooped outside to select a motor and then you're in the game. It's all rather fluid, with the presentation designed to give you all the details you'll need before the race kicks in.

Gameplay is really, really solid. The cars seem to handle very well, sliding across dusty tracks and crashing through water. The game can be a little unforgiving, and that's why there's a replay mode incorporated that lets you quickly rewind a bad corner allowing you to try it again without penalty. It's a really clever idea; the limit of times the "power up" can be used maintaining the difficulty but making the game accessible at the same time. If you do manage to crash before rewinding though, everything feels heavy, hard-hitting and is replicated nicely via the game's damage system.

Car models are really well rendered, although some of the advertising textures on the cars seemed a little low-res. Hopefully they were just place-holders in the demo we played because, although nit-picky, they could ruin the look of really well modelled vehicles.

Online play seems rather intuitive. It's accessed via another area of the trailer park, this time a pin board that lets you pick a few options and jump straight into a matchmaking scenario. It took us a few minutes to find a game but we found the net code to be rather solid once in the game, barely lagging and providing an even competitive racing environment.

With the core areas of gameplay and graphics clearly already in place for Colin McRae: DiRT 2, we're just looking forward to getting our hands on the full product next month and really ploughing through it. From what we've seen, this is most certainly a racing game to consider sticking on your pre-order list.