Your usual racing sim has taken a turn as of late, most games now seemed to be jumping on the 'street’ aspect of racing where you can customize the latest mini with those monster wheels you’ve always dreamed of and where you can race around your local supermarket car-park at 110mph. Sticking to a tried and tested formula is the latest title from the Colin McRae franchise. If it doesn’t have all the latest gadgets and gizmos for you to max out your car with, what does it have? Irrepressible realism, real world tracks, oh and some guy who insists on telling you about ever corner and turn... don’t you just hate backseat drivers?



Mr. McRae has had an upgrade it seems - since the last incarnation at least. You start off by playing as the man himself - Colin McRae - who has just signed up for a 3-year championship contract with the Ford Rally Sport. Also featured are fully licensed cars (over 15 of them) that you can race around 56 stages in over 8 countries from the UK to Japan. You also get the pleasure of Nicky Grist’s company, who will assist you in every which way, so you had better get used to his voice. Believe me - you will hear it a LOT.

Graphically the game has been stepped up. It’s now built upon directx9 and the Ford Focus model has around 14,000 polygon counts, compared to 800 for the last game. Also crammed into the boot is dynamically affected landscape that reacts to in game actions, more aggressive AI and real world damage control. It seems like a lot has been implemented into the latest title from the McRae franchise than the usual name change and graphical upgrade, that does not necessarily mean its going to be a good game - but then again it does not mean it will be a bad one either.

I would be the first to admit it, I don’t know anything about rally sport or even pretend to know. The basis of what I draw my expertise on lies on two things, a car and a driver - that’s all I know and really all I want to know. I don’t know if that would influence my feelings towards the game, but I suppose for someone who liked rally sport they would rate the game higher than someone who didn’t, or on the flipside they would be able to spot how favorably the game compares to its real life counterpart.



Each level pretty much starts the same, you see a few of your peers drive off into the dust eagerly awaiting your turn. When it does come to your turn (with the help of your co-driver) you have to navigate your way through some really tough terrain and tracks that I would be lost driving a bulldozer through. Each car is rendered accordingly with such realism and stance, even when you car starts to get damaged (and trust me it did) the graphical aspect holds up well trying to render round the latest tree dent. The terrain and actual levels themselves are very nice crafted, from the vegetation that surrounds you and in some cases comes right at you, even the dust particles that fly from your tires as you do your 5th 360 degree spin in a matter of minutes.

As you take your car round the world you encounter a lot of different surroundings and levels that in some games tend to look the same or have a tree different here and there, but that’s not really the case for CMR3 Codemasters did a good job of making sure that every level has its own unique flair to it that evolves it from the last giving you the impression that you are battling the elements in foreign countries and not just lying in a ditch in your backyard somewhere. There are a few hitches that occur when you for some reason spin off and land about 50ft from the track (not that it happened a lot to me) you are greeted by the friendly bushes and trees that look like they are cardboard cut outs. I know that a few games suffer from this flaw and really what’s the point in making them look realistic when you don’t see them very often - but when you do tend to see them it kind of brings back the thought that the game is not really as good as realistic as you once thought.



The implementation and thought put into the Nicky Grist character is excellent as well, being that I am not really what you would call a rally buff I don’t know if the voice is actually his and for all I know it could be a man the found wandering around the streets, but I will take their word for it. As you progress round the track, Nicky warns you of your path ahead - you also get the usual onscreen prompts telling you which way to go and so forth. To me it sounds as if Nicky is speaking in half-gibberish but I can make out the odd 'turn’ and 'ahead’ whilst its not the most helpful of assistants in the world to have it does, in a weird way, bring the rally experience to your PC - as I imagine the game could be quite boring if you didn’t have someone screaming in you ear when you miss the last turn.



As you might of expected there is not really a musical score as such that accompanies CMR3 as it wouldn’t really fit into the tempo of the game and of course you wouldn’t be able to hear Nicky over it, and that’s what’s really important - at least to me anyway.

Gameplay is overall what really matters and it’s where CMR3 really delivers, the mix of smooth graphics and high octane driving makes it the pinnacle of driving games.