9. DiRT Showdown
It might not have appealed to DiRT purists, thanks to the move away from simple rally racing mechanics, but Showdown proved that the DiRT team could make more accessible driving games focusing on a hyper-actively fun driving experience, and drawing in influences from all of the best games of the genre to create one glorious but somehow fresh feeling Greatest Hits of Driving compilation. Showdown is the wildest DiRT game yet, dropping the realism a little in favour of a more purely entertaining drive, and offering a number of brash modes and quite consciously plugging the arcade racing gap that has appeared since race gaming became predominantly about realism. And even though some may suggest this was a marketing decision too far, destroying the legacy of former DiRT games and throwing in as many explosive race modes to appeal to the notoriously fickle modern gamer, under the hood the game is a sublime achievement. There might be an awful lot of superchargers attached, but the engine of the game is very impressive, offering a slick, assured foundation for the lunatic flourishes.