Dirt 2: Any way to avoid all the startup splash screens?

Question

Dirt 2 must have the most startup splash screens I've ever seen in a PC game.

Sometimes I avoid firing it up because of how long it takes to load up. Is there any way to just jump right into the action and avoid all the startup splash and jazz?

Answer 1

For most of the videos, you can just press 'Enter' to skip them. The downside is that you will have to press it several times.

You can also replace some of the videos with blank files. There is some detailed info on this in a post on the Codemasters forum.

To summarize, the video files are located in the <DiRT 2 installation folder>\video directory. If you bought the game through Steam, it will be something like D:\Steam\SteamApps\common\dirt 2\video, where D:\Steam is the Steam installation.

The replaceable files are AMD_sting.bik, ego_sting.bik, and sting.bik/sting_us.bik. The first two you can just rename or replace with 0-length files. The last two reportedly cause the game to sometimes freeze if treated the same way, so they can be replaced with a short (1-second or so) video instead.