Colin McRae Rally 3

Written by Michael York on 5/22/2003 for PS2  

So let’s say you are at the line, countdown begins…5..4..3..2..1..GO! You begin to burn-out on gravel and a few seconds later you are projected forward. Your first turn is a four left opens. Pretty simple turn, right? Wrong! In Colin McRae Rally 3 the dynamics of the game are so realistic that it is more geared for the sim-based rally gamer. Don’t expect this game to be for the arcade style rally fan. That four left I was talking about earlier, well turns out (no pun intended) that you slam into the bank and lose passenger side headlights and your front bumper is hanging on by a thread. I am a very big fan of rally sports and the intensity that watching it provides, in Colin McRae’s newest game the intensity is maxed.

The game itself is incredibly beautiful. The car designs, the landscapes, the cardboard cut-out spectators, all of it is beautiful. The work and effort put into this game shines like a diamond, although they cut the expense of extending the draw levels past 3 feet off the track, which does get very annoying on some rallies, especially in Sweden. With this said, the games menus are boring and not very creative. Codemasters could have used a little more money and invested in a much more creative design. It depicts small text at the bottom of the screen in a white text box and videos of in-car camera angle rally. It is CGI, not real rally videos. That would have made it a bit more interesting. Seeing the real Colin McRae in action!

Another aspect of the game that is kind of frustrating is the fact that if you get off track a little, there is no button assigned to allow the car to jump back to track. I realize the game creators wanted this game to be the real thing and just “jumping” back on track would be not be ideal for a sim-based rally sport game. Also, if you are a big rally fan like me you would also think twice about the cars. Reading about the specifications on each car, I noticed that Colin’s car, the Ford Focus, has a higher horse power and torque than any other car in the game. Now, I realize that this is Colin McRae’s game, but, that seems a bit too much. Also taking into consideration that Mr. McRae doesn’t need any more horse power, he wrecks his car enough as it is with 300 horse power. Not to mention he hasn’t won a championship since 1995 when he was with Subaru; guess he’s kicking himself for that!

I have also been playing another rally game that came out last year by Atari called “V-rally 3.” It is not as graphically advanced as Colin McRae Rally 3, but it is much more arcade based. Nicky Grist is a professional co-driver, but in V-Rally 3, it has a resident co-driver that is brilliant he has so much more personality. If you get behind by a substantial amount of time, he will begin to get frustrated and start cussing at you and yelling that “You could get a bloody double-decker bus through there.” V-Rally is a much faster unrealistic paced game and has a lot of other things to do besides campaign. You have to think about contracts and whose team is looking at you for next season and who has the better team. It also has a challenge portion where you rally through a couple different stages in different countries back-to-back. In the multiplayer mode of V-rally you can play up to 4 players taking turns. You can also do this in the challenge mode. In CMR3 (Colin McRae Rally 3) you and one other friend can play simultaneously or take turns on special stages and super special stages. For all of you who hate split screen, as do I, this game is ideal. If you like split screen, I would suggest checking this game out on the X-box. It has a four player split screen, which can be very cool! Take your pick.
When you choose to begin the championship mode and you start to get damage on your car, you don’t know that there is any. There are no icons letting you know that your car is being damaged. Once you reach the end of your race, you pull into the next starting line and if you want to find out what damage the car has, you have to wait through a sequence of text boxes to tell you what damage has been received. Keeping on the simulation based rally idea, text boxes at the beginning of each stage rather than little icons during the race seems to be more like the real rally experience.

The damage is one of the many excellent things about this game alongside the beautiful graphics. It is extremely real and almost everything can go wrong with your car. The best part for me was playing the game through the “in-car” camera angle and then my hood popping up, making it impossible for me to see unless I changed views. Once that occurs, if you get enough speed, it just rips off of your car. If you don’t like the realism of this game, then play it to see how messed up you can get your car to be! It is great fun and a tremendous stress reliever. I had hours of fun messing up my car and Nicky Grist just sits their, not saying a word. I think I would start cussing at the driver. How about you?

The Co-driver Nicky Grist, is very intricate on all of his directions and tells you three sometimes four turns at once and that can get confusing, because you just got through a hairpin left tightens. Now you are lost in what to do and he will not repeat himself. So, you have no choice but to assume he said three left when it was a right and you spin out and crash into a couple of huge trees. So, everybody, make sure you know what you are getting yourself into! This is so far, the closest game to real rally you can probably get for now. Be far, it is the leader among rally games. I’m looking forward to the future to see what rally sport games will offer.

I was extremely pleased to see that there were a lot of tracks to play on. Most rally games will give you a couple countries and like ten tracks per country. CMR3 offers eight countries and a total of 64 rallies. Every terrain is covered in this game and the dynamics of the terrains feel just like the real thing. Given that I have experienced most of these terrains myself.

On the back of the “drivers guide” you can call a 900 number to receive hints and secrets for the game, for a small fee of $1.99 per minute! So why do you suppose that Codemasters did this? Did they go over budget in the creation of the game? Does Colin need more money for his busted up rally cars? I don’t know, but I am definitely not calling to find out.

Overall, I suggest this game to the true rally fan that wants to feel what a real rally car feels like. Be careful arcade gamers, this is for the simulation-fan! This game is true to how a real car is to respond to the movements of the wheel, the traction of the tires, the braking, all of it. This game is extremely beautiful, especially with S-video. I am very pleased with the realism of this game and would suggest it to any hardcore rally fan. Codemasters, I tip my hat to you.