Pro racer Ken Block’s world rally car is hardly a tame machine. There’s enough grunt there to loosen your bowels if you were to hop in the cockpit and stomp on the noisy pedal. Still, when Block’s amusing himself in the off-season, making YouTube videos that have more views than the entire population of Sweden, he needs something with a little more bite. Enter the Gymkhana-spec Ford Fiesta, which spits out a ridiculous 850 horsepower and is your primary weapon for assaulting Dirt 3’s brand-new trick-based mode.

This monster’s designed for drifting, which is convenient given that the vast majority of Gymkhana tricks involve controlling the car in a slide or donut. Our playground for the day was a small portion of the expansive DC Compound, set in and around London’s derelict Battersea Power Station. In free-ride mode there are several challenges to complete, tied to locations or props in the compound. It’s amusing enough just to tool around and test the limits of the vehicle, but if you manage to clock all of them, the game will furnish you with a completion time. The areas themselves are designed to have a flow between challenges, so if you identify the correct route you can complete the entire course in one tire-boiling run.

And these skill-testing challenges are a real test of car control — it’s no mean feat to slot a car sideways underneath two trailers, and while doing a straightforward donut is easy enough, it’s much harder to do it around a lamppost. Fortunately, the Fiesta that we test-drove is beautifully tuned to be hurled into outrageous slides and behaves just as you’d expect it to if you’ve ever sat rapt in front of one of Ken Block’s videos. While this area of Battersea had plenty to occupy us — particularly if you invite some friends to play — apparently there are even more interesting obstacles afoot as you begin to explore the compound. We even heard talk of a corkscrew loop that, if nothing else, should cause some spectacular accidents. As with any element of Dirt 3, you’ll be able to output your slickest moves and biggest crashes to YouTube merely by pressing Y during a replay.

Of course, the grumbling purists who hated the brash Dirt 2 will be pleased to hear that you’ll also be able to blast through the freakishly fast gravel stages of Finland in a raucous Audi Quattro. It’s very much a return to classic, Colin McRae-style stages — albeit with far more visual fidelity — and the perfect place to test our mettle against the more lively physics engine. Novice players will definitely want to take advantage of the driving aids because going out in these cars with the stabilizers off requires absolute focus.

As a combination of both the new and old faces of off-road racing, Dirt 3 looks set to unify hardened McRae fans and those who were attracted by the fireworks and pageantry of Dirt 2. And what a place for them all to gather — a gorgeous, glamorous celebration of chucking cars around.