![]() ![]() Unfortunately, this aspect of the real-life motorsport doesn't translate properly to the game. One of the more unique aspects of real-life rallying is that you're only allotted a limited amount of time at various points along the course to make repairs to your car. Why even include an individual rally mode or time trials for stages if you're going to prevent players from using them until they compete in the championship mode? Even the rallies are but a shadow of their real-life counterparts: The stages have been truncated into bite-size nuggets, many of which can be run in less than a quarter of the time required to finish in real life. In time-trial mode, you can check out all the stages of the first two and only the first stage of two others in Monte Carlo and Australia. Until you compete in a championship season and finish sixth or higher after the first two rallies in New Zealand and Greece, only two of the eight events are open as individual rallies. Why would choosing a higher difficulty level rob you of the ability to drive the cars listed in the novice class? Worst of all, the only way to gain access to the additional cars is to take home the first-place trophy in a full championship season.The same problem applies to the various rallies themselves. Adjusting the difficulty setting trims the car selection down even further. Then there are the cars themselves: Besides the game's almost complete lack of technical specs for each ride, only eight cars are available when you first begin. All it would take is a snapshot and a short biography and racing history to let rallying greenhorns know that yes, these are real drivers, and yes, they're good. But it doesn't do a lot of good to cram all these features into a game if they're hidden from the user or if no effort is made to bring rally newcomers up to speed on a motorsport they're interested in but know little about.įor example, if you're unfamiliar with rallying, you'd never know that your competitors in Colin McRae Rally are actually supposed to be computer-controlled versions of real-life drivers. It certainly helps that you get to compete against real-life drivers like McRae himself, one of the sport's top talents and easily its most well-known personality, as well as many others. Fourteen cars are included in the game from real-life rally teams like Ford, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Toyota, Renault, Seat, Volkswagen, Audi, and more.Įven if it isn't based entirely on an authentic event, the variety of courses and cars would seem to be a good foundation on which to build a great rallying sim. Colin McRae Rally features eight of those rallies: New Zealand, Greece, Monte Carlo, Australia, Sweden, Corsica, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom. Instead, it's based loosely on the World Rally Championship, a series of 14 individual rallies scattered across the globe from China to Argentina. Unlike other rally simulations, Colin McRae Rally doesn't attempt to re-create a specific real-life event like the Network Q Rally or Mobil 1 British Rally Championship. Add in the vagaries of snow, ice, and rain, and you've got the makings of some of the most intense gear-slamming, mud-slinging, power-sliding races ever devised. And the courses are some of the most brutal you'll find in racing: The routes are riddled with bumps and ditches, they frequently cross streams and creeks, and they are often hemmed in by massive banks or potentially dangerous trees. ![]() Opponents don't race at the same time but instead take off from the start line in one-minute intervals. Rallying is basically a race against the clock over a series of courses known as stages. But the lion's share of the blame goes to questionable design decisions, a skimpy manual with little background information, and an intermitent crash bug that's most likely related to the lack of any updates to make the sim compatible with today's video cards and processors. Part of the disappointment can be attributed to the game's dated technology and the recent release of the superb Mobil 1 Rally Championship. Though it's among the world's best-selling and most widely played rally sims, you'll probably come away feeling that it really wasn't worth the wait after all. Now, more than 18 months after its release in Europe, US gamers finally get a chance to put Colin McRae Rally through its paces. They've ranged in quality from the excellent Mobil 1 British Rally Championship and Rally Championship, to the more mediocre Sega Rally Championship and Boss Rally, to out-and-out silly games like South Park Rally. ![]() Despite the fact that rallying probably ranks alongside beach volleyball and lawn-mower racing when it comes to television coverage in the US, we've seen a steady stream of rally games over the past few years. ![]()
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