Colin McRae Rally 2.0 Review

One of the most interesting moments in my driving career was when a friend of mine bought a small rally Renault a couple of years ago... Boy, was I stunned at the sight of what that little cart could do! I never even got to drive it, but I sure had some terrific rides in it. You can't compare those heavy behemoths to a car like that, especially not in city traffic. Anyway, thanks to those several of months (yup, you sure got that right... it took him that much to fuck the car up) I started to get interested in this sport...

Well, in fact I did hear about the 32-year old Scott named Colin McRae-a a lot earlier. Possibly because he was the youngest Rally World Champion in history, and that he only had success after success after that...

The first obvious novelty in Colin McRae 2.0 is the Arcade mode, which will let you race against several opponents on wider tracks. This is a real arcade mode, as you won't have to take care how much you crash, because it simply won't affect your little car. Apart from that, the game features the standard Rally mode which deserves far more attention, as it is the best way to get acquainted to all the charms of crazy, semi-off-road racing. Unfortunately, there will be no opponents in this mode, just you, your co-pilot, and your car. That is precisely why you have to give 200% effort and 300% concentration because fighting against yourself and against the clock is the hardest thing. If you make one tiny mistake, you can kiss your good results good-bye. You can only imagine how hard it was to play the game here in the ActionTrip offices, being constantly interrupted by some weirdoes who kept talking, asking things and coming behind my back to see what the game looks like, showing me pictures of barely dressed Alley Baggett and stuff... I had to take the CD home to play it in a somewhat more peaceful atmosphere.

There are altogether 13 cars from Peugeot 206, Mitsubishi Lancer, and Toyota Corolla to Colin's Ford Focus, but you'll only be able to use six of those at first. All vehicles have been licensed, so I suppose that their characteristics are true to life, but that most vehicles produce roughly the same noises. The excellent damage model will make the glasses slightly crack, and then burst into pieces, your hood will start opening and flapping around when it gets too loose, one side of your rear bumper may fall down... And when your exhaust pipe gets totally messed up, you'll hear cracking as the flames start to appear on its end... Once you totally demolish the car it will become much slower and harder to control. (Un)fortunately the cars are capable of sustaining quite a lot of damage, so you'll have to try real hard to totally destroy your car. You will be able to mend all accumulated damage between stages and possibly upgrade and tweak-up your car.

The controls are relatively good. There's that great feeling of sliding when driving a 4x4 vehicle. On the other hand they over-did it a bit with the sliding, so you won't notice any difference in sliding on different terrains, even if you do know terrain data (for instance: 80% gravel, 20% mud). I figure that the rear part of the car does tend to slide in sudden turns, but I do think that it would act differently depending on the terrain. The irritating thing is that it even slides when you're not driving at full speed, and you'll have a feeling that you're on ice, or driving a hovercraft rather than a high-friction car. When the terrain gets slippery, all this becomes even worse, so it all comes down o knowing your beds (and ways to pass them) well.