Review: Colin McRae Rally 2005
Score:
89%
Version Reviewed: 1.00
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Nicky Grist has a heck of a job to do. For a long time his entire professional life saw him strapped into the passenger seat of a high-powered saloon car as it monstered itself down a gravel track more suited for a tractor than a Subaru Impreza. You see, Nicky Grist is a navigator. And while that might not be as glamorous as driving, without him Colin McRae would never have been World Champion.
Nicky makes sure Colin McRae knows what way the road bends beyond the blind summit which the car is travelling towards at 100 miles an hour… sideways. Without him, he’s in the trees, upside down, off the side of the road in the middle of Cyprus. And after you’ve missed the first corner in Colin McRae Rally 2005 on the N-Gage, you’ll realise that you’ll need to pay a lot more attention to him if you want even half a chance to reach the finish line, let alone have a time that’s going to help you win a stage.
Colin McRae is an almost perfect illustration of what the N-Gage can do. We’ve got a game here that, on first glance at the graphics, could be easily mistaken for the Playstation version of the game. Yes it’s that good.
Rally Driving games are probably more interesting on consoles than they are in real life, but in both versions they need the same thing. Accurate control, the ability to control your car no matter what direction you’re pointing in, able to anticipate what’s coming up next on the course. All key things in a driving game, but Rally games are much more lifelike than your typical Ridge Racer or Mario Kart. And accurate driving games are something that the N-Gage is desperately short of in the genre stakes.
Rallies are run over stages (not circuits) and each car drives one after the other to get the best time. An actual rally is over a number of stages, and the times are added together to find the winner. The courses are usually over roads, tracks and paths in the countryside, not custom built smooth flat stadiums a la Formula 1. To pull off something like this needs a graphics engine with a high frame count, smooth graphics, and the ability to look right, You can’t get away with any clipping errors at all. It’s got to be right up there with the FPS shooter engines if the game is going to look right and feel right.
There’s a lovely moment on the fourth stage of the Finland Rally (see above), where you’re barrelling down a dirt track, and Nicky warns you "50 left 3," (that’s shorthand for ‘you’re 50 yards away from a pretty tight turn to the left’). Bang you shoot out the trees, over a field, do a ninety degree turn on the handbrake as you pass through a wall, and you’re out onto a main road. There’s such a smooth change of graphics that this sudden change actually feels right. When a game’s graphics can do that to your head, it’s winning the realism battle. And that’s a good thing. And that's before you watch the replay of you driving a Rally stage from the TV cameras around the edge of the tracks.
There’s no ‘seat of the pants’ sensations when holding the N-Gage, so any feedback on what your car is doing needs to be on-screen. Ideaworks already had a good engine in Tony Hawk Pro Skater, but Colin’s engine is even better. Just a gentle slide in the car is reflected, and the difference between a controlled slide, and a car about to skid and spin into a wall. You’ve also got different road surfaces to illustrate, and these all need to look and feel different, as well as the handling characteristics of each car. It’s all there, and every combination feels just a little bit different.
A lot of this is tied into the control system. Ever watched the in footage video of a Rally Driver? Their hands and feet never stop moving. If you had ‘in game’ footage of me playing this on the N-Gage, you’d see that my left thumb is constantly rocking the D-Pad, while the right thumb is juggling the accelerate, handbrake and footbrake keys. When you start pushing your car to the limits trying to find an extra few seconds you really do feel on the limit. You’ll need to correct your driving a lot more, and really work the brakes and throttles. Just as it should be.
This is no arcade "Asphalt GT," this is a true driving sim. The first few stages you do, I’ll guarantee that you’ll be all over the shop, barely staying on the road, wondering how you can get the car to turn. And when it does start turning, how do you make it stop turning and drive in a straight line? There’s a very steep learning curve here. The problem with a realistic game like this is that there’s no way to easy way to get you used to it. If it’s any consolation, the Finland Rally (the first one) is the easiest, full of gentle type 5 and 6 corners. After having spent time on the later circuits, when I went back to Finland, I took 20 seconds off of my best time. So you do learn as you drive more. Stick with this game and you get some excellent rewards in terms of gameplay.
There’s also the damage you cause to your car. As you go through a stage, you’ll find yourself torturing the suspension, crashing into obstacles, and generally doing all manner of things that would fail your driving test and put you Mum’s Fiat Uno into the workshop for a month. Well the same happens to your car here. Brakes degrade, you loose engine performance, aerodynamics, and the handling on the car changes again. Between some stages you get a chance to repair some damage, but you’ll have to prioritise. Or not damage the car – but that means not challenging all out for the fastest time.
One of the big worries in a game like this is what you can see out the window for your car. You’re never going to see enough to work out what the track is going to do next until your right on it. Well, that’s just about right for a real car in a forest at 110 mph. That’s why you have a Navigator, and not just nay Navigator. Colin McRae’s navigator, Nicky Grist. He’s the perfect map reader, and will tell you just how far away the next corner is, how sharp it is, and if there is any danger. And you really have to pay attention. There are some points where you’re looking to turn off the main road onto a side road. If you don’t pay attention to Nicky and watch out for it, you’ll miss it and go flying up the wrong road. And that means slamming the car into reverse, backing up and loosing a good few seconds getting back onto the right track. Luckily there’s no "you’re going the wrong feckkin way!" to embarrass you when you’re playing in the pub.
Nicky Grist’s commentary not only sets the mood, but it also answers a load of game play questions and makes the whole Colin McRae rally experience feel wonderfully authentic.
Using the N-Gage Arena system is easy, challenging, and really expands the game. Rallying is all about challenging other drivers, both in the real world and online. Log onto the Arena and you can call up a league table for each stage of each Rally. Your name will be in there (probably very near the bottom) and you’ll be able to challenge another Driver’s time. The time you’ll be challenging is shown, plus your own best time on this stage as well for comparison. Note this is only the best time you’ve set in Arena mode, not your overall best time. It would be nice if this could be shown as well. There’s also an overall league table that takes your performance in the individual stages and creates a "best of the best" table. I’m currently 31st and climbing.
Once you challenge a driver you download his timing data and race against his ghost car. The ghost car is a simple wire frame model, but I tend to have it switched off and rely on the split times spread throughout the track. Much more realistic that way, and less distracting as well. When you’ve only got ten minutes to beat the time you can’t afford mistakes. At best you’ve got three full runs along the stage to try and get that winning time and score a wedge of points. Of course if you don’t beat the time, you loose points as well. This system is pretty good at making sure you only play against people of comparable skill as you climb up the tables – it’s always a worry in online games that you meat "Mr Perfect" and get wiped out.
Summing up, it’s a damn good. The time it takes to play a stage of Colin McRae Rally is perfect, and the decent save system means taking on a Rally Championship is a delight to do over a few days. You don’t need to commit the time to sit down and do five tracks without exiting the game, but if you want a marathon session, it’s comfortable to play.
Colin’s not a mega-game. It takes a long time to learn how to handle the car, and you do need some dedication. But after a few days you’ll be in the general area and able to start progressing through the Championship. Then you’ll be ready to take your car out into the real world and challenge on the Arena. And that’s what it’s all about really. None of this namby-pamby computer AI, you want to play against real people and out drive them comprehensively.
So it’s an 89% Recommended score for Colin McRae, and you can’t get much better than that for what is, arguably, the best simulator type game we have on the N-Gage.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at