Branches tap out a frantic drumbeat on the roof, and somewhere, paint scrapes off metal with a shriek. Foliage fills the entire windshield. This is not good.

The temptation to surrender, to admit defeat, flickers through me, but one last yank on the steering wheel shoves the car back onto the road. Adrenaline soaks into me as I weave the car back and forth to stave off the onrushing pack, then rocket across the finish line. At my triumphant bellow, everyone in the office fixes me with one of those “pipe down” stares.

Dirt, Codemasters’ latest installment of racing excellence, is full of those kind of moments of cosmic goodness and fantasy fulfillment. It forces you to — actually, it’s designed to let you — hang out on the bleeding edge of losing control, and teeter there all the way to a victory that feels satisfyingly earned. And it pulls that off with an unparalleled mix of luscious graphics, sweet handling, and a vast menu of racing treats.

The game obviously focuses on off-road action, but there’s also plenty of asphalt to be had. The career is presented as a pyramid of short races — rack up enough points in one tier, and you open the next. Winning nets you cash to buy faster cars, which you’ll need in the later events. The impressive variety and flexibility of this mode — mud, pavement, pack racing, and even big rigs! (see sidebar, page 76) — makes it an easy place to get lost, but traditional rally fans will also groove on Dirt’s Championship Mode, which lets you set up full-bore rallies replete with between-stage repairs.

From the start of it all, Dirt oozes style. We almost never notice menus, but Dirt’s Windows Vista–esque menus are damn cool. So are the menu music, the barrage of personal stats while a track loads (which include painful reminders like Longest Distance Without Crashing), and even Travis Pastrana’s helpful instructional chatter as you explore the game’s modes and options.

But them’s small potatoes. Dirt’s graphics are pretty enough to draw a crowd around your TV. It’s all there — lush vegetation, purdy lighting, and astonishing vistas like the view down the hairpins of Germany’s Ockfen or the yawning emptiness of the Australian outback. Two other highlights: the awesome after-race peek inside the cockpit as the driver celebrates or hangs his head, and the sheer carnage of the damage modeling. You’ll love watching replays just for the mayhem of windshields shattering, axles snapping, and bodywork crumpling.

Though you will wreck — a lot — the handling is entirely about almost losing control, but fighting off a brutal wipeout to crank through a surprisingly fast corner. At the default setting, Need for Speed players will find it a bit tough, while the Forza crowd will think it’s on the training-wheel side, so Dirt’s wise to offer five difficulty choices that cover the racing-gamer spectrum. Besides, if you wander off the track and get really hosed, you can always pause and hit the magic Reset Car button to try again without losing too much time — or not, if you’re all about the realism.

Really, Dirt’s only flaws are its quirky multiplayer (see sidebar, page 75) and its car lineup, which obviously focuses on real-life rally cars, trucks, and buggies, rather than the more mainstream Ferraris, Corvettes, and other traditional six-figure, dot-com fluff. To be fair, the only reason to call them “flaws” is that they could prevent many of you from buying the game. A better way to approach it would be to call them fearless, creative, yet possibly limiting design choices. So don’t let Dirt’s pointed non–PGR-ness stop you in the slightest — if all you care about is great gameplay, it’s easily one of the best 360 racing games yet.

On Xbox 360

+ Remarkable graphics and crisp handling.

+ Vast career mode with a huge variety of events.

- Standard multiplayer is M.I.A.

? But how good is it gonna feel to beat 99 real live people in a race?

9.0