Colin McRae: Dirt 2 features five racing disciplines, all of which are playable offline (against AI bots when applicable) and online.

Colin McRae: Dirt 2 runs on an updated version of the EGO engine, which powered Codemasters' Race Driver: Grid as well.

[8] The engine, EGO, initially featured in Race Driver: Grid, was updated to better take advantage of the PlayStation 3 specifications, as well as improving multi-core processor utilization on the Xbox 360 and PC.

In addition, the features and expanse of the multiplayer component, which was often criticized in Colin McRae: Dirt as being fairly anaemic, was completely new to the series.

[9] Ken Block, a rally driver featured in Colin McRae: Dirt 2, served as a consultant throughout the game's development of the handling and physics model.

[11] It was also one of the first video games to implement the then newly released DirectX 11 graphical standard on ATI 5000 and NVIDIA GeForce 400 series chipsets.

[5] Colin McRae: Dirt 2 was an official sponsor of Ken Block, Travis Pastrana, Tanner Foust and Dave Mirra of the Subaru Rally Team USA.

[3] In February 2009, Codemasters revealed plans to release "a number of small DLC packs soon after launch which players can use to personalise and augment the boxed game".

[38] Eurogamer gave those same versions Colin McRae: Dirt 2 a score of 8/10 with their main criticisms being reserved for the lack of weather and track deterioration, and the fact that damage now has very little influence on the game, with drivers receiving a brand new car for each race.