Simply the best! (Colin McRae Rally 2 (PC))

Member Name: Technical Tobes

Product:	Colin McRae Rally 2 (PC)
Date:	10/03/01 (477 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Realistic controls & graphics. Addictive!

Disadvantages: Restrictions on available tracks on different difficultly levels

The original was great, this sequel is even better! If you’re into rally games, or even just racing games in general, this is a must have to your collection.

The game comes in a DVD style case (much better than having a massive box) with a fairly brief but informative manual, or though you probably won’t need it.
I bought my copy from Amazon.co.uk, who for some reason, decided to give me TOCA 2 as well!! (for free I might add). It costs £30 but I used a £5 voucher from joining LineOne to get it cheaper. Bargain!


/###/ REQUIREMENTS /###/

The game can be installed either in entirety for quicker access (650MB), just a minimal install (5MB) which runs from the CD, or, somewhere in between!.
You will need a fairly powerful PC to run this game, particularly on the video card side of things, my G400MAX on a 550Mhz PIII struggles to say this least so I’m gonna need to upgrade my video card to play with any kind of detail on.

- Minimum specs are (a joke!)… P233, 32MB RAM, 8MB Video card
- Recommended… PIII 500, 128MB RAM, 32MB Video card (v.good one)

Having said this though, it is certainly playable on my system, even at higher resolutions, the main problem being is at a higher resolution it has a tendency to slow and jerk when going through a section with say lots of trees or something -usually a critical moment!

The game will run on any Windows operating system with DirectX V7.0 or above, i.e. Windows 95/98, ME, NT & 2000. I’m running it on Windows 2000, although I’d imagine for the ME, NT & 2000 operating systems, you will need the latest video drivers to avoid problems in that department.


/###/ THE GAME /###/

Colin McRae 2.0 supports multiplayer, 2 players split screen or up to 8 over a network or the internet and only one CD is required which is nice or them!

The game can be played in either Rally or Arcade mode&
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Rally mode has the following types of game play…
- Championship - Single Rally - Single Stage - Time Trial - Challenge
They’ll all pretty self-explanatory except for the challenge; this is basically a head to head challenge using random cars on the special (i.e. head to head) rally circuits.
Arcade has the following types of game play…
- Championship - Single Race -Time Trial

The difficultly level (Novice, Intermediate or Expert) plays a big part in what stages / races are available, for example… In Novice mode, each rally has only 4 stages (1 day), intermediate has 8 (2 days) and expert has the full rally.
The difficulty levels have been set well; Novice is pretty hard to not win the championship, intermediate being a good challenge, while expert is almost impossible to win! I have to say, that I don’t like this restricting of stages available as really, you want to play the full rally at any difficulty. Expert is simply to hard for 99% of the population and so 99% of the population will never play a 3rd of the tracks available.
The arcade mode has a similar structure, whereby you have to win Class A in intermediate mode to access Class B (and thus more tracks).

The menu system of the game is basic but functional, although I found some problems when trying to setup the keys, it seemed to freeze for about a minute or so and has done a few times – this maybe just a problem with my setup though, e.g. a conflicting program being run in the background or something.

Detail levels and on-screen display during racing are highly configurable and you can choose how much information is displayed on screen, e.g. splits, lap times, position etc. which is very useful for playing split screen – where you will want to free up screen space!
The co-driver talks you through the stages and on screen indicators are also shown giving details on c
orners & obstacles – ignore at you peril!
At the end of each race, the game gives a complete replay, although you can’t fast forward, rewind or save the replay (a shame).

After every two races during a rally (and at the start), you get the chance to make adjustments (i.e. suspension, brake balance etc) and repairs to your car. You only have 60mins to make repairs / adjustments so there is a limit to what can be adjusted / repaired. This makes trying not to damage your car too much during the stages a priority as damage seriously affects the cars performance.
Most people will be happy not making adjustments (using the defaults) as it does not make a big difference to handling and if set wrong can make it worse!

Player profiles can be setup so that you can have several players in the game, all with their own personal best times etc.
The high score board is comprehensive and holds championship results all the way down to individual stage best times, all sectioned by difficultly level and arcade / rally modes.

There are ‘cheats’ that can be gained by winning the arcade levels, the first adds the ability to fire at cars & blow them off the road. In reality these usually back fire on you and make it harder (since the computer cars have the ability too), so it’s just as well they can be toggled on & off!


/###/ THE CARS /###/

There is a good selection of cars to choose from, with even more being unlocked as you win rallies, the basic selection is…
- Ford Focus - 4wd, speed: {#####---}, weight: {#######-}
- Mitsubishi Lancer - 4wd, speed: {#####---}, weight: {########}
- Toyota Corolla - 4wd, speed: {#####---}, weight: {#######-}
- Peugeot 206 - 4wd, speed: {#####---}, weight: {######--}
- Subaru Impreza - 4wd, speed: {#####---}, weight: {#######-}
- Seat Cordoba - 4wd, speed: {#####---}, weight: {#######-}
As you ca
n see there is not such a difference in performance on paper and, to be fair, on the tracks, however, when you get good at it and push to the limits you’ll soon find some cars are much easier on the handling than others (the 206 is a good’un!).
The following cars can also be made available, whether by winning rallies or simply entering a cheat…
- Lancia Integrale - 4wd, speed: {######--}, weight: {#######-}
- Ford Sierra Cosworth - rwd, speed: {###-----}, weight: {#######-}
- Mini Cooper S - fwd, speed: {##------}, weight: {#-------}
- MG Metro 6r4 - 4wd, speed: {######--}, weight: {#####---}
- Lancia Stratos - rwd, speed: {#####---}, weight: {####----}
- Peugeot 205 Turbo 16 - 4wd, speed: {########}, weight: {#####---}
- Ford Racing Puma - 4wd, speed: {#####---}, weight: {######--}
- Ford Escort mk1 - rwd, speed: {##------}, weight: {#-------}
As you can see, the 205 represents the fastest car available – but only if you can control it, as with most of these cars, it can be a challenge dealing with their handling characteristics, particularly the rear and front wheel drive cars! Good fun though!


/###/ THE TRACKS /###/

There are 8 tracks that make up the rally championship, these are…

Finland - gravel & mud tracks, usually dry / sunny conditions.
Greece - 100% gravel, very dry / sunny conditions.
France - 100% tarmac (nasty corners!), usually dry / sunny.
Sweden - snow & ice tracks, often snowy, occasional blizzard conditions.
Australia - gravel tracks (big jumps!), very hot & dry conditions.
Kenya - gravel, tarmac, mud, usually very hot & dry or torrential rain!
Italy - 100% tarmac (tricky!), often cloudy, usually dry conditions.
UK - tarmac, gravel & mud, typical UK weather (i.e. rain & fog).

The tracks are roughly in order of difficultly, Finland being probably the e
asiest while the UK rally being by far the hardest due to the bad driving conditions, slippery and tight corners, obstacles to negotiate.
I also find the Swedish rally fairly easy as I like the big power slides you can do on ice, the Australian and Kenyan rallies are probably the most exciting as they are both fast and have big jumps in them (and the weather is usually good).
I find the tricky part about some of the tracks (UK being the worst), is the navigation. Often on these tracks you will go from tarmac to mud etc but it’s often very hard to tell when the turn is and you frequently end up driving straight into a barrier before realising that you should have turned hard left or something. These tracks need a lot of practise go get right!
The 100% tarmac tracks are by far the hardest (bar the UK) as there is usually no room for error and tight turns, so whereas on tracks like Sweden or Kenya you can quite easily cut corners and power slide slightly off-road, with these theirs either a wall or a 200ft drop! Thus damage control of your car becomes a priority, which makes it very tricky, and a bit of a gamble to push to the limits.


/###/ PLAYABILITY / VERDICT /###/

Colin McRae Rally 2.0 is a brilliant game, the cars (i.e. controls) handle beautifully and the intermediate difficulty setting is set spot on to make the game a challenge, i.e. not too hard, not too easy.
The graphics are superb (if demanding) and the weather is variable and realistic, even to the extent that it often changes during the race and sometimes the pre-race weather reports are slightly wrong!
The arcade and challenge games give a good and fun option for casual play, especially multiplayer which should mean this game never gets relegated to the back of the cupboard!

Any faults??

Well, there are a few faults, albeit nit picking ones…

I don’t like the fact that the full rallies are only available in expert
mode, difficultly levels are one thing, but cutting the game down for each easier level is quite another and unnecessary in my opinion.

The computer players never (unless forced – i.e. you ram them off the road!) seem to make a mistake, they just go faster the higher the difficulty level. The computer players always seem to finish with barely any difference in times between them. This means, come expert level, if you make one mistake, e.g. go wide off the road or something, this is the difference between 1st and 16th position! A little unrealistic in my opinion, I watch the rallies on TV and you frequently see, even the best drivers make a boo boo. In real life, it is quite possible for a driver to go off the road, get pushed back on and still finish in a high position – something that’s impossible with this game, hence why expert level is not so fun (unless you really are an expert!).

The options to save, or fast forward & rewind replays would have been nice.

Maybe just my system, but the game has a habit of pausing for no apparent reason (it’s not loading) for a number of seconds, usually on the menus – particularly after you’ve just selected a menu option. Quite irritating.


Overall though, a darn good game, a must have!


Thanks for reading, thanks even more for rating and my humble gratitude for any comments!
Tobes.

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