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If you’re in the market for a racing game, there’s usually a few titles that stand out from the competition. Codemasters have made an excellent series with the Colin McRae Rally games, which began in 1998 with the first PC release. The second iteration was excellent, and with the third release this year Codemasters wanted to move onto the next-gen consoles, but it had its faults and limitations. This fourth release addresses many of these problems, like improving the physics engine, which made the cars feel too light, and the lack of cars, tracks, etc. So the question is – is this the definite rally simulator for the XBOX? It’s not exactly a new world of racing or anything, but it’s clearly a great racing sim, and I’ll tell you why.
At the start menu you’ll find most of the modes you’d expect, like Championship, Rally, Stages, Quick Race, Options, Extras, High Scores, and XBOX Live. I’ll be elaborating more on Championship later, but first let’s take a look at the rest. The entire game is split into a number of rallies, which normally take place in a certain country, like Spain, Sweden, Australia, etc. In the Rally mode you choose the rally you want to participate in, but this time you can play in rallies that for instance have a lot of jumps, ones with a lot of tarmac, ones with a lot of gravel, etc. In Stages you can be more specific, because here you select a country and then play on any of the stages you’ve unlocked in the Championship mode, then select a car, and head out. Quick Race is similar, only everything is random. In Extras you basically get to watch videos of other Codemasters games, and the videos you’ve unlocked in the Championship mode. In my opinion Codemasters could’ve put more thought into this specific section, but with the number of unlockable cars and tracks I guess it’ll have to do. XBOX Live is fairly self explanatory, and is obviously a great addition to the multiplayer part of the game.
Championship mode is largely the core of the single player part of the game, and you might be surprised at how long you can keep playing it. When looking at the grand scheme of things rally cars can be divided into a number of groups. In this game you have four wheel drive, two wheel drive, group b (very powerful cars with difficult handling), and expert (restricted to cockpit view only, reduced on-screen display, extreme damage setting). In four wheel drive you’ll find cars like the Subaru Impreza WRX 44S, the Ford Focus Rally car, the Peugeot 206 Rally car, and a few more. These beasts are typical in today’s rallies, but they aren’t as easy to handle as two wheel drive cars. In that category you’ll find cars like the Ford Puma Super 1600, the Fiat Punto Super 1600, the Volkswagen Rallye Golf, and more. While the four wheel drive cars rate in at about 310HP the two wheel counterparts are at about 200HP, but they’re by far easier to drive, so the choice is up to you. In Group B you find the truly fast cars, with for instance the Audi Sport Quattro Rallye at 550HP, the Ford RS 200 at 420, and the Peugeot 205 T16 Evo2 at 480HP.
You won’t be able to race with all these great cars right off the bat, so you’ll need to win tournaments of increasing difficulty. These tournaments take you through a number of locations, like the rainy and slippery countryside of Japan, the slick tarmac of Spain, the excessive gravel of Greece, the dense muddy outback of Australia, and more. Each of these locations has a number of stages, normally diversified by throwing in jumps, rain, snow, etc. When driving you’re very likely to damage your car in one way or another, so when you’ve finished every other stage you get to do repairs. You have 60 minutes of allotted repair time, and repairing for instance the exhaust may take 13 minutes, while the body may take 18 minutes, so it’s important to be selective so the vital parts of the car are okay. Secondly, when you’ve finished all the stages in a country you get to unlock new and improved parts for your car – a feature that’s actually both useful and to some extent fun. These upgrades may be a new and more efficient motor, wet tarmac tires, or new brakes. Unlocking for example the improved brakes requires you to quickly drive to a certain point on a stage and brake, again and again. Unlocking a new type of tire may require you to finish a stage within a number of seconds, with the tire wear meter maxed. Getting these upgrades is important, because they shave off seconds from your lap time, and that’s just something every competitive driver wants.
One of the big differences between Colin McRae Rally 4 and your average arcade racing games is that here you’re the only one on the stage, just doing your best to drive as fast as possible. The “easy to learn, difficult to master” game design rule applies to this game in a major way, because doing well with the automatic geared 4WD type of cars in a third person mode isn’t too difficult, but when you turn on manual gearing and use the cockpit view with some of the more powerful cars you’re likely to be in for a solid challenge. The default difficulty is set at a nice level, so when driving you’re allowed to make a few errors, and still be able to finish with a good lap time. It would’ve been nice to see a difficulty mode that adapted itself according to your skill level, but even without it the game is just about as challenging as you want it to be – and that’s great.
A racing game may have a lot of great features, but what makes or breaks it is essentially how the cars “feel”. Colin McRae Rally 3 was a nice enough game, but the cars just didn’t feel right. More specifically, the cars didn’t have enough weight, and they’d skid excessively. This time Codemasters hit the nail on the head and got the car feel just right. It’s just awesome how all these fairly diverse cars have unique looks, sounds and feels. The cars have substantial weight, have a great sense of speed, and handle much better than in the third iteration of the series.
As a simulator Colin McRae Rally 4 would also need to sound realistic, preferably without heavy techno beats and insane map readers. Octagon Music provides the music played in the menus and the video sequences, but when you’re playing you’ll only listen to the calm voice of your map reader, the gravel hitting your windshield, and maybe to the sound of bushes underneath your car. The sounds also change radically depending on whether you’re inside or outside the car, and they never stop sounding authentic. The only thing it seems to miss is the sound of water hitting the windshield, but besides that I don’t think a rally game can sound much better than this. It could’ve been nice to at least have an option where you could turn on some background music (possibly music you stored on the XBOX hard disk), but it’s not something you really miss in a simulator like this.
CMR4’s graphics is as you’d expect an improvement over the past game, but not a huge one. The cars look very good, and the levels are quite good as well. Some of the earlier levels look a bit dull, but they get more interesting once you’ve played a bit. The most impressive graphical feature would have to be the reflections on the cars and the tarmac when wet, and the windshield effects when you’re in the cockpit view. Graphically the game looks good – not incredible, but far from bad. Arcade racers are usually prettier because they can throw in more effects and such at you, but here it seems like more thought was put into making the scenery seem similar to their real-life counterpart. Driving through the UK you’ll find towns, woods and tractor fields. In Sweden you’ll find huge snow clad forests, a house here and there, and the occasional village. In a few of the stages the colors do get rather bland and lifeless, but it’s usually done as an effect to build upon heavy rain etc.
Multiplayer in Colin McRae Rally 4 is tons of fun, and besides the typical modes you’ll be able to play the game over the Internet with XBOX Live, but that service hasn’t reached Norway yet, so I can’t make any further comments about just that feature.
Conclusion:
Making a rally sim that’s fun for both beginners and veterans alike is no easy task. Codemasters had a number of snags they needed to iron out of their rally formula, and it seems like Colin McRae Rally 4 gets just about everything right. Cars, upgrades, tracks, and more can be unlocked. You’ll race through a number of diverse countries, with a host of new and old cars. The car selection is by far not as spectacular as the one in games like Gran Turismo 3, but I can say for sure that the car feel is awesome, even with a regular controller.
CMR4 is also a good looking game, with excellent sound effects, and enough multiplayer fun to keep you going all through the night.
