CODEMASTERS Colin McRae Rally 2005 ( Windows )

Discount Price: $10.16

Features:

• Over 30 featured cars, from the Volkswagen Golf MK5, Toyota Celica GT-FOUR, and Alfa Romeo 147 GTA to the Lancia Stratos, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VIII, Peugeot 206, 205 T16 Evo2 and the distinctive VW Beetle RSi
• 4-wheel drive, 2-wheel drive 4-wheel Classics, Super 2-wheel, Rear Wheel, Distinctive and 4x4 classics
• Non-linear Career Challenge, with over 20 individual rally events and over 300 stages
• Race in 9 international locations, with 8 stages each in the UK, Sweden, the US, Finland, Australia, Spain, Greece, and Japan
• Incredible detail, as individual damage models recreate everything down to paintwork scrapes and post-crash dazed visual effect

Customer Reviews:

Great Game, But The Path Getting To Play It Is Not Great [Posted on 2005-04-25]
The good news is this is a great game. There are a great number of races and cars available. The physics relative to the tracks and cars are excellent. Although I have spent only about 10 hours playing this game, I can see many hours of enjoyment from the challenges and graphics it provides.

The bad news is it may take you a while to figure out how to get it to work with the computer hardware you have. It took me several hours. This is the reason I gave it a 4 rather than a 5 star rating. Before purchasing this game you can go to www.codemasters.com and download a demo. As I have not done this I am not certain how it compares to the retail game.

If you purchase this game and run into technical problems, the web site Codemasters provides does not have a menu item for technical support. You can get to a web forum with people going crazy over trying to figure out the problems they are having though. If you have problems typing the word "support" in the search box they have will get you to a form for technical support. I have no experience with what kind of response that would provide.

A summary of some of the problems I encountered are given in the text below. If you are going to be using a keyboard to play this game I would suggest skipping the rest of this message. If you are going to be using a wheel, the length of the following comments might seem to be discouraging.

On this I would say if you were to put in to words the steps it took to get into a car, start it, back it out of your driveway and point it in the direction you wanted to go, you would be surprised at the length of the description. Although there are a lot of details about getting the game to work they are not any more complicated than that.

The computer hardware I am using: 2.4ghz Intel; 1.5 gig Ram; ATI 9600XT (128 Meg), and the old (Red) Logitech Momo Racing Wheel.

For some reason the default brake/accelerator setting was set to digital rather than analog.

The default dead zone for steering is set with some play. This must be set to zero. The default zero line was slightly off center on my setup, but could be moved by turning the wheel one way or the other. Doing this would not get it centered exactly, but getting it close and hitting the down arrow worked.

A steering sensitivity set about 60 percent off the center line provided the best response for my hardware/preference.

Changes made to the wheel setting do not go into effect until you exit the game and come back. If you would like to race with the old settings before exiting to get the new ones, the program will let you do that.

Before starting a race you have to go through several menus using the left and right arrows followed by the "Enter" on the keyboard to make menu selections. During this process you might find the keyboard stops working. For me it was after selecting something other than the default car. Moving the highlight on menu selections after that point must be done by rotating the wheel left or right and back to center for each move. The handbrake rather than the enter key is used to make the selected menu item.

After going though all that you might find difficulty in steering the car. I suspect this is a problem many people have attempting to steer the car with experience from the physics used by other games or what is expected from the experience of the real thing.

The natural thing to do with a game like this is to attempt to drive very fast sliding sideways around the curves the first time you are out the gate. The first time you attempt to do this you will find the software does not adjust to the crazy stuff you are attempting to do, and it should not. While it might be very hard to do, driving very very slow for two or maybe three stages and keeping the car on the road will give you the knowledge about the software physics aiding in developing faster sideway skills you will be proud of.

Rich

Since the review above was written the following comment follow.

Having played every racing game on the planet I would give this one the highest rating. That said there are a few items of importance relative to this topic worth considering. To fully enjoy a PC racing game you have to have a wheel.

Demand drives both the quality of software and hardware related to any product. As such the demand for racing games relative to the FPS (First Person Shooter), or RTS(Real Time Strategy) has been quite low. As the efforts of people to create something new in this environment with version 3, 4 and 5 might fail a return to racing might occur.

Until that happens if you are into racing games and want to buy a wheel for racing you would be well advised to buy one that was developed during the time the demand for racing games was anticipated to be high.

The Microsoft Sidewinder wheel with force feedback, no longer being produced, is an excellent product. Logitech while it thought there was going to be a demand for racing games produced the Momo Force Racing Wheel.

Logitech replaced the Momo Force with the MOMO Racing Force Feedback Wheel. I have not used this product, but just looking at it on the show room floor it looks like a big step backward in quality. Just the idea of going from paddle shift to cheap handle shifter on the side is an indication of the lack of reality the designers and marketing people have about how the software with this type of product works.

As demand and sometimes the perception of what demand is going to be, improvements to hardware and software appear. Hopefully the demand for racing software will increase and provide a market for better products for people interested in racing products and software.

Best graphics, 8 countries to race in, and smooth play. [Posted on 2005-09-18]
I've tried several rally style games. There aren't enough of them out there, but this is the best I've tried. I bought 2 of them and set up a steering wheel on each of 2 computers so I can race my boys. I'm very pleased and am hoping beyond hope that Codemasters releases another version to keep up with the developments in computing power.

The scenery is superb, the replays are vivid and look more like watching ESPN than a computer game. There are 8 stages in each of 8 countries and quite a myriad of cars. Of course, you've got to prove yourself to unlock all the cars and stages. If you race a full rally though (8 stages) then you can see even the unlocked stages. Personally, I've only unlocked a few, but it's been thrill all the way.

I highly recommend this one.

The Greatest Rally Sim Ever Made [Posted on 2005-09-24]
Clin Mcrae rally 2005 is the greatest rally game ever developed. I am a CMR fan and have all from 1 to 5. I am a rally fan at heart and thus have bought and tried many other rally sims on the market but none come close CMR especially the latest one 2005. I have read other reviews by some people encountering difficulties, thus I will begin in my defense of the game.

Geting codes and unlocking all the options is not fun. If you are a hard core racing sim person like I am you want to to unlock new stages and upgrades etc with kick ass fast times not cheat codes plus it gives you a greater feeling of achievement and thus if you were getting sleepy at 3:00am and was deciding to go to bed after posting a blistering fast time the sleep is gone and another stage follows.

The game play and the scenery is fantastic. The car handles more or less like a real rally car would not that I know how a real rally car handles but after street racing you get to know how a car should handle going through a corner at 90mph. Some time must be spent in setting up the steering wheel not in terms of getting it to work or to drive the car but to find a handling seting that suits your driving style thus the dead zone and steering sensitivity are entirely up to you to match your style of driving. I use a mocrosoft sindwinder with force feedback. I have used the force feed back logitech as my friend has one and so did I and in my opinion it does not compare to my sindwinder but that is only a personal opinion. When buying a steering wheel only buy logitech or microsoft as I have found other steering wheels require you to get drivers to work with certain games, these two do not thus the headache is saved.

In order to race even if you want a quick race it will take a few clicks to get there but hey you have to select car, and a stage therefore a few clicks is nothing. My only thing with the game is that after you select pass career and championship in the main menu screen then most of the navigation control will default to the steering wheel if you are using one but in my opinion after you learn the button corresponding settings (select, back etc) that is just the same as using the navigation keys on the keyboard.

All in all I must say Codemasters have done an exellent job on this one.

WOW! What a fantastic game!! [Posted on 2005-12-28]
This is a great game. The graphics are spectacular and the sound is great. The only things that should be improved upon:

1) The crowds of people are a joke. They should have just eliminated them. They ruin the graphics when you see them.
2) The in-car view is the most realistic way to drive, but the cockpit is poorly rendered. Why? Look at a flight sim like IL2 Sturmovik and that's how a cockpit should be done - it looks real..
3) Changing the view angle and taking screenshots in replay should be easier.
4) When you hit a tree at 60 MPH...the car should stop working not just show damage.
Overall, a great game and my #1 played game now...and I have a lot of games...


Other than these 2 quibbles, the game is a blast. I'm playing with a gamepad but will get a wheel to enjoy it better. The best part is watching the almost real replays after you race

Quality game [Posted on 2007-12-22]
Personally i think this is the best of the CM series. Would not require much of your PC's overall strength and would deliver amazing quality and smoothness. What is really interesting is the improved physics that would respond to your car choice, setup, and environment.

On the other hand, did not like the overall sounds.

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