Colin McRae Rally 2005 review

The Colin McRae series has been knocking around for a while now and it has been steadily improving in terms of simulation accuracy, graphical quality and general playability. The latest offering promises to get one step closer to perfection in each of these key areas whilst still being accessible to the novice rally driver.

Spot on

Codemasters hasn't really learnt from its successes and failures in the Colin McRae series and although the company has made a real effort to create a game that capitalises on the best bits of the previous games and smooths over the rough patches there's a feeling of a franchise standing still.

Creating a worthwhile career mode and increasing the number of cars and tracks is aways going to meet with approval but improving the physics engine and giving everything a bit of a tidy and a clean is what really makes the difference. You can see the effort that has gone into these aims but at the same time this feels in many ways too similar to the previous two games.

Double Edged Sword

The game is certainly more challenging than previous incarnations and even compared with Microsoft's rival RalliSport Challenge game. The co-pilot spits out the directions thick and fast and in a series of three or four turns at a time making it very difficult to remember and time them correctly.

Although Colin McRae may call itself a rally sim it doesn't quite convince in this. The handling tends to feel rather light and leans towards an arcade approach. There's nothing wrong with this in principle, what is wrong is that the company continues to market the game as a simulation. The handling is tougher to get to grips with than RalliSport Challenge but not as difficult as the more convincing WRC4.

The single player game throws you straight into a long rally competition and, for most, you'll need to race this a couple of times before you get to grips with the cars handling and dynamics. Experienced rally drivers will doubtless pick this up in no time but everyone else might find the initial learning curve tricky.

Engineers wanted

In the single player game you enter a series of races across the world. You must complete each countries offer before moving onto the next one. This makes the rallies rather long but it provides a decent amount of depth.

Between stages you return to the virtual garage where you have 60 minutes to repair your car. You have a series of attributes such as engine, wheels and cooling system to spend the minutes on and, depending on how badly damaged it is, each one takes a different amount of your allocated time.

You can also adjust the set-up of the car. You can adjust the usual suspects such as brakes, tires and suspension and they can be adjusted for the road and weather conditions ahead.

Sitting Pretty

Colin McRae 2005 is undoubtedly a good looking game in some respects. The presentation is the best so far, with detailed, great looking car models. The damage that the car suffers is reflected in it's appearance accurately and with some restraint. You will see the bonet fly off if you drive into too many trees but it takes some doing.

The only real gripe is with the scenery. The artists working on this title obviously expect you to spend more time watching the car than the scenery. This also has a knock on effect for the feel of the stages. The actual stage components are good, but someone the whole isn't the sum of the parts. For example, the excellent trees don't look as though they are realistically planted into the scenery.

The stages tend to be too closed and winding with no open tracks and too many obstacles on the turns. After the first few courses these problems detract from the atmosphere of the game. There's no sense that the character of real rallies, such as the open fast Finish event, has been captured in the same way WRC4 achieved.

I Can't Hear You

The sounds are detailed and accurate as you brake and accelerate. The ambient sounds of the crowd and also their appearance is less impressive but you won't spend too much time watching or listening to them.

The co-pilot is always calm and provides useful information on the upcoming turns. The only problem I had with the co-pilot was that he delivers the turns rather quickly and in batches. This makes it difficult to remember the last turn of the group when you get to it. However the co-pilot calls are the one aspect in which this game is better than its Sony rival.

Play to win

Colin McRae gives you several play modes to choose from. The main single player focus comes from the career mode but solo racers also have the choice of time trials and one off championship races. You can play multiplayer in split screen or up to 8 people in system link or Xbox live.

In Live your opponents are sen as ghosts on the course which prevents problems with stage racing with multiple players. The single player game could provide up to about 25 hours of play if you make the most of the career mode. The multiplayer mode extends this by putting you up against an even stiffer challenge.

The Live implementation allows you to choose a quick match or an omnimatch. The latter here allows you to choose parameters for a game and find one that meets your requirements and if you can't find one you can always create your own.

The Circle is Complete

Despite learning some if the mistakes and successes of the previous games in the series, Codemasters hasn't quite brought it all together in this latest instalment. Many of the elements are there - it's just that so many other franchises have moved on and this one has remained rather static.

The graphics and sound have been brought up to date and polished. With some better stage design the game could have looked spectacular. However the depth-of-field effect used in replays is awful and makes a pretty good looking game look like a blurry mess at times.

The single player career mode has depth and variety and should last you for a long time to come. The online game also works well allowing you to compete directly with your opponents instead of just providing on line leader boards.

It's hard to know who the game is marketed at though. The hardcore fans know that the game isn't a sim, yet the marketing of the game as a sim may put of players of similar games such as Rallisport Challenge 2. CMR2005 is a competant and at times exciting game, but it has two better rivals in Rallisport Challenge 2 for Xbox owners and the excellent WRC4 on PlayStation 2.