| When you get round to
starting the full season you will notice that you can only compete
as Colin McRae in his Ford Focus. This is a slight disappointment,
as you will have to use the single race mode to use the other
cars. For some the Ford Focus isn't the best car for the job,
although it isn't bad at all. You will also have a choice of
Normal, Hard and Very Hard difficulty levels. The easiest of
these is obviously Normal which is not that easy, you may win
a couple of rallies in your first season, probably USA, which
is definitely the easiest of the lot and Finland which consists
of plenty of jumps and tree lined dirt roads. I started the
game and went straight into the championship mode and finished
second overall on the normal difficulty setting. You will also
notice that depending on the surface of each rally different
teams will do better than others, the Citroen team are very
fast on the tarmac stages, while the Mitsubishi team seems to
do well on snow and ice. This offers a good amount of realism,
as there isn't a car in the WRC that is great on all surfaces.
Well maybe with the exception of Peugeot.
The first season takes place across six
countries with seven stages in each with two service areas
where you can fix broken parts on your car. Six of these stages
are Special Stages which are your basic, rag the car down
the road or dirt track as fast as possible; the last stage
is know as a Super Special Stage, set in a stadium where two
cars race on the same track starting at different points,
but the tracks are designed in such a way that both cars tend
to race pretty much next to each other for the whole course.
Each stage has four check points that will give you a split
time so you can see how far on or off the pace you are.
As in previous CMR you can tweak your car to make small performance
gains by adjusting brakes, chassis, suspension, gearbox, tyres
and steering. There are a massive number of combinations available
that will affect your cars performance. For people who might
not understand the workings of a car or people that just can't
be bothered the game will set a comfortable default for each
rally.
Each country and sometimes each stage can
offer massively different driving conditions. They vary depending
on the weather, time of day, country and nature of the individual
stage. Some stages can switch from thick mud to tarmac in
a matter of seconds and this can really catch you out. Checking
out the stages on the single race mode can be very rewarding
when it comes to entering the championship mode.
You will become aware of all the technical parts of each stage,
where those nasty trees are that you catch every time and
which way to aim over the large high speed jumps. It also
helps you to get used to the cars handling, which is absolutely
fantastic. If you do have a slight mishap at 90mph you will
get to see the superb damage effects. The car can be damaged
all over which means damage can become a real factor in the
race if your not paying complete attention; it doesn't help
if you're a bad driver either. Damage can have severe consequences
on the cars handling and performance, your gearbox can start
to fail, your turbo can break giving you very little power,
tyres can blow out making steering difficult, suspension can
break and wheels can even come off - in a worst case scenario.
Experienced players shouldn't have a problem with the first
season; on the normal difficulty level it should be a breeze.
As mentioned before different teams will do better than others
depending on the surfaces so if you do cock up a rally, you
can usually get away with it. The first season does one very
important thing; it unlocks loads of cool extras like special
tyres for mud and other surfaces that will make the single
race mode a lot easier.
Graphically CMR3 is very good; the rain
effects are brilliant, especially when you are using the in-car
view. It's good to see that a better job has been made of
the visuals than those of TOCA Race Driver. Unfortunately
there is some pop up lurking, but it isn't anywhere near as
bad as TOCA Race Driver. The trees and bushes lining the tracks
are not too good; they look a bit too much like cardboard
cut-outs, but from a distance the trees look pretty good.
The best looking things in CMR3 are definitely the cars and
the weather effects. The car detail is great, the Focus reflects
the light very nicely and throughout the stages the car gets
covered in mud. If your rear bumper comes off you will notice
it's nice and clean where it once was. The disc brakes glow
and the exhaust rattles and shakes with every rev of the car,
it all looks perfect.
Unfortunately, to totally appreciate the effects you have
to be viewing the game from inside the car, which is a bit
of a shame as driving properly is a really hard task from
this view.
The sound is great, when you're ragging
your Ford Focus around the engine sounds great but maybe a
little weak and wimp'ish at times. The rasp of the exhaust
is also a nice touch. The best sounding car in the game is
definitely the Subaru WRC, it's very close to the real thing.
One very important aspect if the sound are the pace notes,
these are not just for effect, to do well in the game you
will have to listen to Grist's shouting "60 3 left, 100
6 right" etc. On some stages your view will be obscured
by trees so at times you will have to listen to the pace notes
as you can be hurtling in to a blind corner with just the
notes to rely on.
Colin McRae Rally 3 has virtually everything
you would want in a rally sim, its handling; damage system
and realistic feel are untouchable. Some of the visuals could
have been better but when you're playing you really won't
have time to notice these small flaws. Most of all though
CMR3 is fun and it is an essential purchase for any rally
fan and definitely worth checking out even if rallying isn't
your thing. Brilliant!
9.0
out of 10
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