And, for the occasional quick fix, there are Instant Race and Time Trial options as well. If you don’t want to commit to 10 years of driving then the Championship mode offers a more straightforward challenge, with 20 races that duplicate the official 2017 season, with the option of choosing between modern and classic cars. The main Career mode now takes you through a full 10 years of racing, with a Pro Career option that ramps up the difficulty level and also requires you to complete qualifying sessions as well. There are also research and development skills – almost like a strategy game – that allow you to improve engine performance as well. You can drive cars from the Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull, Renault and Williams teams, and the Career mode now stretches through 10 full years, allowing you to develop team skills as well your own individual racing skills, in order to improve performance in vital areas such as pit-stop times and repairs. And while the format of the game remains essentially the same – with both a Career mode and Championship mode available to test your driving skills – the 2017 edition really goes to town and provides a wider, more varied range of teams, cars and tracks for you to choose from. The format of the game is similar to the 2016 edition although, of course, it’s been updated with the 20 official circuits from the 2017 season.

There’s also a Hillclimb mode, which requires extra powerful cars in order to reach the top of challenging hill tracks, such as the famous Pike’s Peak in Colorado.

Alternatively, you can choose Rally mode, which challenges your speed in individual races on a variety of tracks and weather conditions. The main Championship mode allows you to drive through a series of races in order to earn prize money so that you can upgrade your car. There are three game modes to provide variety, as well as 40 different types of car that you can drive. You can even drive through Hell itself – which, apparently, is a well-known rallycross track in Norway. Dirt Rally boasts that it lets you race on “the most dangerous tracks in the world”, ranging from the rain-swept roads of Wales, to the rocky hills of Greece.

The Dirt series, however, is a bit more like the Fast And Furious films – it’s all about the high-speed action and the thrill of hurtling around corners and over hills with the pedal permanently pushed to the floor. Games such as the F1 series take a rather serious approach to racing, concentrating on realistic reproduction of racing tracks, terrain and weather, as well as the handling of your car in order to really test your driving skills. System requirements: macOS 10.13 or later, 2GHz dual-core processor, Nvidia 650M (1GB), AMD Radeon M290 (2GB) or Intel HD 4000

Company: Feral Interactive Where to buy: Steam (£24.99/$29.99)

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