Colin McRae Rally 2005
As with previous games in the series, Colin McRae Rally 2005 is presented as a realistic rally simulation, with players participating in rallies consisting of 70 stages spread over nine countries. There are over 30 cars available. There is also a revised graphics and damage engine that enables paint scratches on the car, and a new 'career' mode where the player starts out in the lower club leagues and works their way up to compete with Colin McRae in his 2004 Dakar Rally Nissan Pick-Up. In 'Championship' mode the player takes the role of Colin himself competing in six rallies using any 4WD car. The game's graphic engine allows for more realistic damage effects, like broken glass and doors falling off, and a blurred vision effect if the player comes into contact with a hard object. The damage system has similarities to the Destruction Derby one, as a damaged radiator will stall the car, and make it need to restart the engine. A slight level of customization is the ability to put your name and nationality on the window.
Colin McRae Rally 2005
Without the Colin McRae Rally series, rally racing would be virtually unknown in the United States. Well, technically, this extreme version of motorsport is simply ignored by the vast majority of American racing fans. Nonetheless, the Colin McRae series has managed to find a niche in the American gaming market with a consistent string of quality games that satisfy off-road racing fans and gearhead tweakers alike. Colin McRae Rally 4, released a scant seven months ago here in North America, was notable for its improved graphics, nominal online features, and, possibly best of all, budget price. Colin McRae Rally 2005 ups the ante--if only a bit--with improved online play, an interesting career mode, and the same solid driving model fans of the series have come to love.
Before we get to the new features, let's take a look at what hasn't changed. Most importantly, the driving model that fans of the series have come to depend on is still rock-solid in CMR2005. It chooses to err on the side of driving simulation, as the series has always done, which means the game is not a simple pick-up-and-play experience for those new to the series. If it's your first time in a rally car, you might be surprised at how demanding the cars can be to drive. Expect to spend large amounts of time offtrack in muddy embankments and playing kissy-face with the numerous trees that line the courses. This is rally racing, after all, where no road surface is taboo: Smooth asphalt, muddy gravel, and even frozen ice are all fair game, sometimes all within the same race. The experienced driver knows how to tackle each surface to get the most out of his or her car.
The vehicles in CMR2005, of which there are more than 30, have a tangible sense of weight that is especially noticeable when making jumps. There are no floaty physics here, as the cars require a tremendous amount of speed to get airborne and quite literally slam to the ground when they land--the sense of suspension trauma is noticeable and thrilling, especially when using the cockpit view. Once you gain some proficiency with the cars, you'll find your fingers constantly flicking across the Xbox controller, making minor adjustments subconsciously in an effort to keep your car moving forward as quickly as possible. Car control in CMR2005 is a delicate dance between steering corrections with the left thumbstick, throttle and brake adjustments with either the two shoulder buttons or the right thumbstick (the former being preferred over the latter for optimal car control), and subtle, timely gear shifts with the X and A buttons to keep your revs as high as possible. If you don't like the default controller configuration, the game lets you customize each button on the controller.
Though the best-known rally cars are the highly tuned 4WD models--the Subaru Impreza WRX, the Lancer Evolution VIII, the Peugeot 206, and the Ford Focus, among others--CMR2005 has a great number of classic and lesser-known rally cars, including 2WD models such as the VW Polo, the Citroën Saxo, and the VW Golf GTi; classic models such as the Ford Escort Cosworth and the Toyota Celica GT-Four; and oddities such as the Mini Cooper S and even a Nissan pickup based on the model McRae himself drove in the 2004 Paris-Dakar Rally. Notably missing from the game's car list is the Toyota Corolla, a model that found a good deal of real-life rallying success in the late 1990s.
Diverse car selection means little without a lot of different tracks to drive all the cars on. Here CMR2005 delivers in spades, with nine rally events available: UK, Sweden, Finland, Australia, Spain, Japan, Greece, USA, and the newly introduced German course. Each event includes eight drivable courses, though certain stages must be unlocked. While the majority of the stages are the type of traditional point-to-point circuits so familiar to rally fans, certain events include a Super Special course, which is essentially a complicated enclosed course in which two rally drivers compete head-to-head for supremacy. These SS courses can play an integral role in the outcome of a rally, as they give you an opportunity to take on your closest rival "in person" in an effort to pull out a win.
While the individual stages change from one version of CMR to the next, the characteristics of each rally event have remained true-to-life throughout the series. As in previous versions, the Finland rally event in CMR2005 is blindingly quick, full of harrowing hairpin turns in dense forest, full-throttle gravel straights, and some of the most dramatic jumps in the world. Greece, on the other hand, is a test of endurance both for the driver and the car. Heavy gravel, narrow roads with precipitous drop-offs, tire-eating stones half-hidden in the roadway, and absolutely atrocious road conditions, all hallmarks of the real Rally of Greece, are represented with dramatic flair in CMR2005. Rally driving in Sweden means running on combinations of mud and ice, dealing with snow embankments that can easily swallow your car (and add seconds to your time), and negotiating the slick surface of an iced-over stream, all while peering through your windshield during a driving snowstorm.
All in all, the courses in CMR2005 are varied and exciting, employing a wide spectrum of surface types and weather effects to provide you with a huge test to your video game driving skills. Some course features, such as the snowbanks on the sides of the Swedish stages and the lip at the edges of particular Greek courses, are a bit too forgiving, allowing you to effectively "bump" off them to take tight turns without scrubbing off too much speed. There probably should be more damage done to your car when executing these types of questionable driving techniques, but for the most part, CMR2005 turns a blind eye to them, sacrificing some realism for a good deal more fun. Conversely, odd roadside obstacles such as hay bales and street signs, and even amazingly dense bushes, can bring your car to a standstill quickly (and pile on the damage in the process). While certainly not realistic from a physics standpoint, this at least teaches you to keep an eye open for roadside obstacles, and do everything you can to avoid them, no matter how innocuous they might seem. The only major complaint with the tracks is the short distance of each rally stage. As mentioned, most stages take anywhere between three and four minutes to complete, some shorter, some a bit longer. This is in stark contrast to some of the behemoth tracks real rally drivers face in competition, which generally average nine miles in length and are sometimes much longer. A few tracks of this type would be a welcome addition to the CMR series, if only because it would require that much more skill, concentration, and preparation for success.
Most races are won in the pits, so goes the old motorsports axiom. While this is not entirely true, it nonetheless applies to CMR2005. Because conditions vary so widely from event to event (and indeed, from stage to stage), correct car setups are critical to your success as a rally driver. Like previous installments in the series, CMR2005 lets you adjust a number of different aspects of your car before hitting the road, including tires (the choices of which change depending on the event), ride height, springs (suspension), antiroll bar, brake bias, steering, and gearbox. As you might expect, each adjustment you make can have a dramatic effect on how your car performs once you're on the road. As such, it's important to make the right modification for the right situation. Fail to give your gearbox a push in the top end and you'll be puttering down the straights in Sweden far too slowly. If you don't soften your suspension enough, the harsh course conditions in Greece or the US will eat your shock absorbers alive.
Colin McRae Rally 2005 includes several gameplay modes to choose from: a challenge mode, in which you can race individual stages or full multiple-stage rallies; a championship mode; and an all-new career mode and online racing mode for Xbox Live. Championship mode allows you to take on the persona of the Flying Scot himself, Colin McRae, as you fight for the right to call yourself world champion. There are two difficulty levels, normal and advanced. On your way to the championship trophy, you'll visit all the different rally locales on the schedule, looking for podium positions and the attendant points. At the end of the season, the driver with the most points earns the title.
Colin McRae Rally 2005's answer to this question is unique, achieving head-to-head competition with the arcade racing convention of multiple cars on the same rally course. You can race against up to eight other Xbox Live players, but the twist is that you are racing only against brightly colored ghost cars. As you negotiate a course, you will overtake, or be overtaken by, your opponents, who may pass directly through you as you race. Surprisingly, despite the bright color palette, the ghost cars aren't really that distracting, because they fade in brightness the closer they are to you. Even when racing a car neck and neck through a series of tight turns, you'll be only vaguely aware of its presence, and it's rarely distracting enough to mess up your drive. What is distracting, however, is the lack of a codriver by default in the online mode. It's a disconcerting choice, as you're so used to hearing the codriver's voice in the offline game and counting on his instruction in order to drive at the limit. Thankfully, there is a menu option to return your trusty pace-notes reader to his seat. 041b061a72