The irony here is that Colin McRae no longer competes in the sport that the game is based around, having been dropped like hot shit at the end of last season. These days he can pick and choose his events at will, and this year competed in the Le Mans hour endurance race. He also had a stab at the gruelling Paris-Dakar rally, during which he suffered what he described to as 'probably the most uncomfortable six hours of my life,' stranded in the desert at the mercy of bandits in fear of 'my virginity'.
As he explained, 'It wasn't the helmet on my head they were after. One positive aspect has come out of the experience though, in that the very same vehicle he drove - the Nissan , Pickup-Dakar - will appear in the new game, apparently at McRae's behest an unlikely story, but it makes for a good press release. The game's development team have done a great job in modelling the car and setting the handling.
It's an excellent vehicle to take out on the new game's different road surfaces, and makes for one of the most entertaining elements of my preparation for next year's event. You never actually race against another car, the closest being the Super Special Stages, the glorified Scalextric tracks that complete each rally.
Plus, there are now only three camera views: external, bonnet and cockpit, the latter boasting some superb rain effects on the windscreen. The career mode aside, all of the available cars can be driven on all of the stages, although they are effectively nothing more than time trials, as the only thing to aim for is the fastest record. This is made slightly more exciting by a new-fangled graphical representation of the time and distance remaining, which at least gives you something to race against.
On paper, it may sound like a backward step, but the fact remains that it is still an utterly gripping driving experience, either as Colin in the Focus, or in any of the other featured 1 cars.
This is performance gaming at its best, requiring Zen-like levels of concentration to shave crucial seconds off your time. Dullards may complain about the arcade handling guess what, it's a game , and yes, you can bounce off the odd tree, but what's the alternative? To have the game over in three seconds? The cars may occasionally feel like they're rotating about a fixed axis something that is being rectified in 04 , but when you're tearing down a country lane, clinging onto the road by the skin of your arse, it doesn't really matter, and hours can simply slip away.
So, is it a massive leap forward from CMR2? But have I got eyes like piss-holes in the snow from playing it nonstop for a week?
Yes I believe I have. As part of the new-fangled career mode, a lot of emphasis is placed on tweaking the car. Between rallies, adjustments can be made to tyres, gearbox, chassis, engine and so forth, and the modifications tested over a short stretch of track, with the results shown on a special graph.
For those who don't know a camshaft from a camisole, it's not that daunting, and if all else fails, the default set-ups generally work fine.
But if you do find a particular set-up that produces a faster time, it can be used in the actual rally at the press of a button. Aside from the cool music, the first thing I noticed when starting this game is the simplicity of options and gameplay.
Usually these types of games have a ton of features for tweaking your car and seem to expect you to know how to do this. That's fine if you customize rally cars for a living but can be annoying for the rest of us.
It was nice to just be able to hop in and race without having to mess with configurations. If you're into customizing, don't fret ' you can still modify to your heart's content in the Championship mode.
The Championship mode and Stages mode play more or less the same except in the Championship mode you can customize your car, any damage inflicted will carry over to the next leg of the course, and you can unlock new tracks, cars, and items.
The gameplay itself and the controls are great. I found the game to be a little more forgiving than Rallisport Challenge and it seemed like I had better control. I also really liked that the different courses are on different types of roads ' some are dirt, some paved, some are ice, etc. I didn't notice much realistic damage to the car unless you really did a number on it say goodbye to your hood.
The pace notes were written and recorded in the game by Colin's navigator and co-driver, Nicky Grist. If you don't understand what Nicky means when he says something like 'three right into four left over crest'? You can also use the visual on-screen cues to alert you to what kind of turns are coming up. The multiplayer comes in the form of either split-screen or turn based depending on the type of course you run.
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