Colin McRae Rally 3 Preview

I don't think there are many players out there that haven't played a single racing or rally game in their life. Sometimes, the sharp sound of the engine pushing the edges of its capabilities is all it takes to get your adrenalin going; but if you think that these games also offer versatile challenging tracks in various weather conditions and surroundings and the unavoidable opponents, it becomes clear why so many people love playing racing games. With this in mind, it is even more so clear to see why so many racing games appeared over the years, but only a couple of them stood out, and only one of those few became obligatory for all genre fans: Colin Mcrae Rally 2. The best proof for this is that CMR2 sold over four million copies worldwide on two platforms (PC and PSX). Using its good relations with Ford, which began when they signed the contract for the first Colin Mcrae Rally, Codemaster (developer and publisher) made a great rally simulation Colin Mcrae Rally 2 (which appeared Q4 2000), with tracks set in eight countries, thirteen different licensed cars, representing truthfully this interesting yet hard sport. After the enormous success of CMR2 it was more than logical to expect the next sequel to appear in the future.

Colin Mcrae is about to join us on our screens for the third time. The game is still in development for PS2, Xbox and PC. There is still a lot of time left until its scheduled release at the end of this year, and we will do our best to introduce you to the current development progress.

Making a successful rally driving simulation requires it to be focused on speed, hardships you endure on difficult tracks and the knowledge and skill required to set the vehicle up properly for completing a certain track. Participating in a rally doesn't only mean competing against your opponents; it also means competing against the forces of nature. All this makes the game even more appealing, especially if all the elements I now mentioned have been implemented with maximum verisimilitude. Now that is the hardest thing to achieve. Colin Mcrae 3 is going to take rally simulations to the next level. The first two sequels were focused on cars and tracks, and this game will shift the focus to making the players really get into Colin Mcrae's shoes; think and act like him, work with Nick Grist and the entire Ford team just like the real Mcrae did.

To make players believe they are driving real rally vehicles, Codemasters intensely cooperates with the Ford team in implementing all technical solutions that exist on the real cars into the game, and hence create perfect car models with realistic performances and behavior. Now, what is realistic? It would be realistic that if the car hits a bump, it, well, bumps of, with a direction and intensity which depends on the speed of the car and the shape of the bump; or to get realistic damage from contacts with objects on the road; or to have that damage influence the performance of your car. They even plan to have the mobile parts of the vehicles (like shock-absorbers, which are one of the crucial elements of a rally vehicle) animated. The right choice of tires is still an important issue.

Car interior, engine and coachwork will be detailed copies of real cars. The developers are also putting a lot of effort into animating the drivers, as they should react in a certain way to each bump and turn. Just remember what the drivers looked like in the second part.

The tracks in the game will be hand-drawn, rather than taken from satellite footage like in World Rally Championship. This is a good decision by the developers, as conquering true-to-life tracks might kill the game's pace. The tracks in CMR3 will primarily be optimized for non-professional players, which will only improve the playability. The skilled players and hard-core fans probably won't be too happy about this decision, but the game has to be made playable for the majority of players who would find the other option too hard.

The main trump of this game will be its fantastic graphics. For the time being, the most has been done about the model of Ford Focus RS (driven by Mcrae), which will be composed out of 13,000 polygons (in comparison to 800 in the previous game), which will give you a practically photo-realistic model. The screen-shots clearly show what level of detail can be achieved with this number of polygons, and I believe that many of you first thought that this was a photograph. I do not have confirmation whether all vehicles will be presented in such detail, but we seldom see more than one vehicle on screen anyway. I'm pretty sure that the sixteen times larger polygon count would severely overburden the GPU. The higher quality vehicle models make it easier for players to really immerse into the game atmosphere, and assume the role of the driver of a real rally car. As it is still impossible to completely imitate true feeling of driving (as you still cannot feel the gravity and centrifugal forces act in front of your screen :), the developers strive to make all other elements as good as they get, to make up for the lack of physics.

The in-game surroundings will also be heavily remodeled; the scenery will be far richer in color and details, and there will be more particle effects. Many players would also like to see animated audience dodging the cars in the last second, but the developers are still keeping quiet about this. I suppose, animated spectators would add to the atmosphere, but they're certainly not crucial to the gameplay.

We suppose that there will also be more new vehicle setup options which would let the hard-core fans tweak their vehicles up to the tiniest of details and really enjoy the rides. The sound effects were superb in the last sequel, but we hope they will also be even better.

Even though many things are still unknown, based on what we do know, this game will shift the boundaries of rally games one level up. In the current stage of development, we can but guess what novelties are in store for us. Some important features are already known: drastically improved car models, visible damage model affecting performance, highly realistic controls, animated drivers and co-pilots, etc. and finally, here's how the developers describe their ambitions about this game: "There are two key elements in our vision about Colin Mcrae 3 - it has to keep the position as the best rally simulation on the market, and it has to let players realistically experience the role of a rally driver. If we succeed in this we will succeed in making this genre richer and moving the "best rally game" mark to the next step."

This ex-world champion has seen better days, but once the game appears, he is sure to be one of the best once again. Well, at least on the PC or one of the consoles.