Codemaster's Colin McRae games - almost without exception to date - are very good. So whilst Gran Turismo has been adopted by critics and gamers alike as the yardstick by which all other tarmac racers are measured, it’s a rather different situation when it comes to the gritty, green stuff: quite simply, for the past four or five years, the annual Colin updates have been where it's at. Few other rally games have previously succeeded in nailing the true sense of what it feels like to drag one and a quarter tonnes of metal, glass and rubber across sludge, mud, and dirt at ninety miles per hour (in PALGN's mind, only the arcade and Saturn versions of Sega's sublime Sega Rally can match it in this respect). In the past, challengers have fallen and flopped: the V-Rally games more often than not suffered from floaty handling, the rally mode in the Gran Turismo series suffers from being only a small part of a much larger and much more ambitious racing game, and so on.
Naturally, there have been challengers to Colin's exalted position in gamer's hearts, and 2004 has sprung up a surprise, heavyweight challenger in the shape of Warthog's quite excellent Richard Burns Rally, a new critical darling that seems to be doing the business at the tills as well, thanks very much. The ball is in Codemaster's court, and Colin McRae Rally 2005 - due for release on Playstation 2, Xbox and PC this September in PAL regions - is their return shot. At first glance, the changes on offer from predecessor Colin McRae Rally 04 seem almost superficial: pleasingly, the menus retain their icy, minimalist chic from last year's game (see the media section to the right of the page for shots) and the game itself will be instantly recognisable to previous players of the franchise. From the menus to the racing itself, this is a pretty game for sure - squint hard enough and you could be looking at the real thing - but there's little to indicate that this year's instalment has made a significant leap forward over Colin 04 in terms of visuals: PALGN remains unconvinced that Colin 2005 is ready to match the glossy grandeur of Gran Turismo 4.
This isn't necessarily vital obviously, and it's probably more significant that the (already best-in-it's-field) damage engine has been further upgraded, meaning even the lightest of touches can scratch your vehicle's paintwork. There's also the usual selection of panels and components that can be twisted, deformed and removed to your liking (or not), revealing the mechanical components of your car. Continuing this trend of tweaked aesthetic improvements is the interactive scenery of the new stages. In other words, if you push too hard and hit a tree, you'll see it shudder from the impact and drop leaves from the branches, a big improvement from the 32-bit days when PALGN would career and clip happily through solid tree trunks on their way to another haphazard victory. Collisions also result in a 'dazed' effect, where your vision will be blurred for a short period from impact.
Which is all terribly nice, but where's the innovation? Well, Codemasters clearly like the concept of making players build a career from scratch, as the single-player modes in their recent TOCA titles attest. Thus, Colin's been given the career treatment as well, resulting in the new multi-discipline career challenge. It's here that you'll start out in the lower leagues of club rallying, honing your craft in over 20 different classes of rally events including Challenges, Cups, SuperCups, Shields and Championships until - yes, you guessed it - you'll be racing against old Col himself.
Now obviously, despite the 300 tracks, 30-odd cars (for the obsessives, these include the Volkswagen Golf MK5, the Toyota Celica GT-FOUR, the Lancia Stratos, the Alfa Romeo 147 GTA, the Alfetta GTV Turbodelta, the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VIII, the Peugeot 206, the 205 T16 Evo2 and the VW Beetle RSi) and smattering of championships and competitions, there's nothing like a little human competition. Which leads us to what is undoubtedly the biggest and most exciting new change that Colin 2005 is set to introduce. For as the sub-title to this article implies, Colin fans are going to be given the chance to race each other online. Anyone who's sampled the teeth-gritting, toe-curling dual emotions of joy and tension that a human-on-human Colin McRae contest can inspire should now be grinning from ear to ear at this stage. Codemasters could have simply stuck with scoreboards and the odd downloadable track and still have kept the rally nuts pleased, so the promise of full online rallies involving eight human competitors means we could finally have a worthy off-road accompaniment to Project Gotham Racing 2's superior online road races.
24th September 2004 is the date then. Potential obstacles may loom in the imminent future for the series - the aforementioned Richard Burns Rally for one, and there's also the not-insignificant problem of the eponymous Colin retiring at the end of this current rally season - though Codemasters will undoubtedly cross those bridges when they come to them. Besides, until then there's the small matter of delivering the best rally experience possible. We'll see you online.
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