You’re barreling through the backwoods of a Michigan rally too fast to risk a glance at a map, much less the speedometer. Your co-pilot announces upcoming turns — until you lose traction and skid off into an arboreal abyss. Some racing games seem determined to reduce motorsports to rigid mathematics; Dirt 3, on the other hand, underscores those wonderfully desperate moments when you’re on the verge of completely losing control.

The scenery is pleasing enough, whether you’re fighting the glare of the Kenyan sun or thundering through the rainy murk of an abandoned smelting plant, but the real star of the show is the outstanding handling simulation. While some games make you feel more like you’re taming a bull than driving a high-performance sedan, here every flex of throttle finger and flick of steering thumb translates smoothly and naturally to your ride. As you throw stadium trucks off waterlogged jumps and wrestle against ruts in super buggies, you’ll occasionally just plum forget you’re holding a controller at all.

But while the vehicles feel incredibly natural, the surfaces they scoot across aren’t always entirely convincing. Snow makes its first appearance in the series, but it feels more like slightly deeper sand than the slick menace millions face each winter. Transitions that should be jarring, like the sudden change from mud to tarmac, pass beneath your tires with little hubbub. You’ll never feel entirely secure even on solid asphalt, so the excitement level doesn’t take too big a hit. However, you’ll definitely want to experiment with disabling assistance options such as stability control to find the danger zone that’s right for you.

Fortunately, Dirt 3’s events are more dynamic than its surfaces, and the game offers more than twice as many routes as Dirt 2. Serpentine point-to-point sprints pit you against the environment, while frantic bump-and-jump circuits put the rubbing back in racing. Flashbacks let you rewind time if you botch a turn, and the new Gymkhana courses challenge you to rile up a fickle crowd by pulling donuts and drifting through gates. You can even take time off the tour to cruise around the Battersea Power Plant completing simple stunt missions and hunting down icons.

That British landmark-turned-playground is also the setting for reasonably entertaining online Party Mode events. Chase down and infect rivals (by crashing into them) in Outbreak, capture and collect flags in Transporter, clear out cardboard robots in Invasion, or just Joy Ride all over the joint. Only the chaotic tumult of Cat and Mouse mode takes this silliness out onto other tracks, but you can always challenge your pals to more traditional competition in customized rallies, rallycross laps, and so forth.

Sadly, a few anarchic diversions are a poor substitute for community. Other racing games (Shift 2, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit) boast always-on news tickers that rub your face in friends’ progress; here you have to go hunting just to find leaderboards. But while Dirt 3 takes surprising steps backward in terms of social networking, thereby limiting its addictiveness, it’s still the best way to head off-road without winding up in the hospital.

On Xbox 360

+ Outstanding handling; exciting routes through beautiful and diverse locales; Gymkhana.

+ Customizable difficulty and flashback do-overs; enjoyable online multiplayer.

- Some surfaces lack credibility; poor leaderboards and social integration.

? Why do floating golden pyramids obscure every car preview?

8.5