I admit that I don’t know all that much about racing in
general and therefore even less about Rally racing. For whatever reasons,
NASCAR has never held that much appeal to me. Maybe going around and around in
circles just doesn’t do it for me. However, I’m learning more about Rally
racing and it seems pretty darn interesting. Rally racing is a bit different
than the typical racing that most Americans are used to. Instead of the pretty
controlled tracks of NASCAR, Rally racing throws you basically into the heart of
nature where you race between trees, fields, through snow, dirt, mud, etc. It’s
kind of like driving through a hurricane (with occasional snow). So how well
does Colin McRae Rally 3 (CMR3) present a racing genre with such diversity?
Quite well, actually. I may not know that much about racing, but I do know a
fun game when I play one.
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| The weather turns nasty. |
CMR3 for the XBox is a little different because the goal of
the game is to be more of a racing simulator than an arcade game like RalliSport
Challenge. This is not a good thing or a bad thing; it just kind of depends on
what type of game you enjoy. I may tend to lean more toward “arcadey” than
realistic, but you may go the other way. Either way there is a lot to like
about CMR3.
CMR3 has two main modes: Championship and Stages.
Championship is the more detailed area and so I’ll talk more in detail about
that later (Get it? I’ll talk in “detail” about the “detail” area! Hmmm,
sometimes the jokes are just for me…). But first, let’s go over the Stages
mode. It is just as it sounds. You race a single rally stage from any of the
unlocked stages in any of the unlocked cars. You can either run the race by
yourself or have up to 4 other players. In the multiplayer modes you can either
race simultaneously against the other players, or you can alternate racing in
full-screen mode. Simple as that…
The Championship mode is where things get more involved.
You play as Colin McRae through a 3-year contract with the Ford Rallye Sport
Team. This is only a single player game. One little odd thing about the
Championship mode is that you must be Colin. I thought it would have been nice
to create my own driver and work him through the ranks. But just as everyone
wants to be MJ, Kobe or Duncan in NBA games, I guess rally junkies want to be
Colin. Oh yea, and you will be driving the Ford Focus RS WRC; so don’t even
think about wanting a different car (of course you can always go to the Stages
mode and pick from over 20 other cars). Each year in the Championship consists
of racing in eight different countries. Each country follows the same format of
3 days of racing. The first day is called the Shakedown Day. This is a day
dedicated to tuning and tweaking your car to the exact configuration that you
feel will give you the best chance to win. It is in the Service Area that the
true grease monkeys will feel right at home. The Service Area gives you seven
different sections of your car with which you can “monkey around” and some of
the areas have a couple of sub areas. For example, when optimizing your
suspension you can modify the springs, dampers or the anti-roll for the car.
After you have made your adjustments you get to take the car for a spin and see
if you’re happy with the configuration. If not just head back in and tinker
some more. But don’t feel intimidated by all of these options - more often than
not the default settings for your car at each rally are very acceptable, so no
need to worry that you’ll end up with snow tires on a gravel course.
Following the Shakedown is the Rally event itself. The
Rally is divided into two days. Rally Day 1 involves three special stage
races. These races are just you against the clock. That is, you run the course
alone trying to get the fastest time. The stages are run one after the other
using the same car. So if on the first stage you smash your windshield, you no
longer have a windshield for the next 2 stages. The next opportunity you have
to fix your sled is at the beginning of Rally Day 2 that starts you back in the
Service Area. Once you make the needed repairs, and you’ll need to, you head
back out for three more Stages. If everything goes right you get to run in the
“Super Special Stage” that pits you not directly against the clock but against
another driver. After this it’s off to another country and you start the whole
process over again. So if we do a little quick math here, we have 8 countries
with 7 stages in each country for a total of 56 stages. The box claims there
are 64 stages, so I guess there are 8 more hiding out there somewhere…
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