Great racer let down by some small niggles.
The presentation is fantastic. The courses are really beautiful, especialy for such an old game. The lighting effects are also really something special. The way the light passes through the trees & bounces off your car is a great videogame sight. Most the courses are set off road (obviously) & theres foliage as far as the eyes can see. The car models are also spectacular.
Which makes it all the more upsetting that the framerate stutters in replays & when theres a lot going on screen. Theres also some slight screen tear & visible draw in. But none of this actualy affects the racing so its not too bad. It just ruins the slickness of the rest of the package.
Sorry to go on about the graphics for so long but it really is a great site & is very refreshing form all the drab greys we seem to be getting this gen.
The sound is also worth a mention. Through a good sound system its one of the best audio treats ive heard. The sound of crashes can make you whince even when you're not looking at the screen, the engine noises are great especialy when driving next to walls or in tunnels. It just bounces the sound around, its just brilliant. But as the presentation is let down by some slight niggles so is this. One niggle in particular - the American voice on the menu & the American co-driver. Grrrrr. Its so annoying, I almost turned the sound off completely.
Then the racing - its a lot more arcadey than any other Colin Mcrae released. The emphasis is purely on sliding round corners as fast as possible. It still requires a lot of breaking but its mainly a foot down adrenaline rush. & when you are driving down a small offroad with trees each side of you, it really does feel incredibly fast & is exhilarating.
But like the rest of the package, its not without its problems. Mainly the fact that its no longer focused on rally stages. We now have CORR, Rallyraids, Rallycross, Hillclimb & Crossover. These all include other racers on the same track except Hillclimb. The problem is apart from Hillclimb, the stages for these events are pretty dull & there is only a couple of tracks for each of them. You are also forced to drive big 4x4's that are way too light, slow & generaly not fun to drive. It really could have benefited from keeping simple & focusing on Rally events IMO.
All in all though the good outweighs the bad, the single player structure is really well thought out & the difficulty can be pitched perfectly to your level. It's a great racer thats well worth a go.