REVIEW: Colin McRae Rally 3 for PC

REVIEW
Codemasters
Rally Racing
Players: 1
April 15, 2003
PC, PS2, Xbox

Reviewed by: Wojtek

Before I was the shooter enthusiast I am today, I played a metric ass-ton of racing games. Most of my racing games were rally racing games, with a side of Need for Speed 4. My favorite racing game to date is Colin McRae Rally 2. I don't know why but I've been on a hunch this past month to play every single Colin McRae Rally game that I missed, and here is the first review in the series.

Colin McRae Rally 3 is every bit as fun to play as 2 (even more-so), but it doesn't do so without cutting out some of the parts that made 2 engaging. The rock solid gameplay makes up for every fault that happen before before the race, so do the great environments that were lacking in 2.

The meat of the game is found in the Championship Mode. Here you take control of THE Colin McRae as you try to become to Sparco Rally Champion. It takes place over 3 seasons, each of which have 6 rallies. Each rally has 6 special stages (which are the actual competition part) and 1 super special stage (where you race against another driver). The game ends at around 8 hours, so it's perfect length. During the first season, the game will be pretty easy. The catch is that every season the difficulty increases, so squeezing out that extra second gets really important.

Before each set of 3 special stages in the rally, you will be in a service area. The service areas are a big disappointment compared to what they were in 2. In 2 you had a set amount of time (60 minutes) to tweak and repair your car, You couldn't repair every single compartment of your car, so this added another level of strategy to the game. In 3, it's all done for you. You can go into car setup and play around, but unless you know exactly which part of the car does what (I don't; it told you in 2), tweaking your car becomes a challenge. But, even the default car settings work great; I beat the game with them.

All the cars have an arcade-y feel to them; that is until you drive them on something that is not tarmac. Power-slides become your best friend as you'll be slowing down to take corners without losing control and landing in a ditch. The car will preform different on all the different surfaces you'll be driving on, be it tarmac, gravel, mud, or snow. Weather is also a variable; if it rains, tracks become more slick and harder to keep control on.

The game looked great back when it first came out. Today, it definitely does not hold up with all the latest lighting and shadow effects. The damage modeling still looks great; hubcaps and bumpers will fly off your car; my favorite was when you lost a wheel and sparks shot off and seriously impaired your driving. I think the environments (especially Sweden) look great to this day. All of them are very different from each other, and all feature their distinct type of courses. Each track is layered with much more foliage than 2, giving them a more realistic look. One of the tracks in the Sweden rally was great; it was dawn and it was snowing and just reminded me of how much I want Christmas to be here already. Codemasters regular great menu's were present here.

The pilot has gotten much more options this time, but I felt like sometimes they came to early. He would say entire sequences of turns before I even got there, and it threw me off. In 2, the voice tracks were triggered when you reached a certain part of the turn, and kept up with you. I guess they tried to go for something a little more organic. Nicky Grist, McRae's pilot, provided all the lines in his calm voice. There still isn't any soundtrack during the races, which makes sense since you have to listen to your pilot.

In the end, Colin McRae Rally 3 is a great addition in the long line of CMR games. The great gameplay combined with the not so great pre-race even out at an above average racer. I hope that in CMR4 they put back more of what made CMR2 so great.

7/10