COLIN MCRAE RALLY (PS)
With the arrival of Resident Evil 2 in April and Gran Turismo in June, it was clear by the summer of 1998 that the PlayStation was enjoying a defining year in Europe. The buzz surrounding such titles was further propelled by a stellar line-up planned for the second half of the year, and only a month after GT’s release, racing fans were in for another treat. Teaming with 1995’s WRC champion Colin McRae proved a no-brainer for Codemasters, thanks to his thrilling title success and all-or-nothing racing style, and the game that resulted was spectacular.
Whilst SEGA Rally Championship and V-Rally enjoyed success combining conventional pack-racing with rally terrain circuits, Colin McRae Rally opted boldly for a more realistic, player-vs-the-clock approach on point-to-point stages. This was risky: surely racing on your own would be boring? Any lingering worries were quickly dispelled, however. The way the cars react to the slew of challenging terrains is spellbinding, whilst a myriad of weather conditions and environmental hazards are more than enough to keep you enthralled. Additionally, a finely-meted difficulty curve results in nail-biting time splits as you battle to top the leaderboard.
Colin McRae Rally presents some lovely scenic touches, usually at points they can be appreciated
Codemasters’ approach proved vastly different to the arcade-orientated efforts that had dominated the genre during the early 3D era. Delivering a whopping 48 stages across eight rallies, the onus is on balancing risk with reward, driving with measured aggression as crashes prove costly and damaging. Its environments aren’t quite as dynamic-looking as those seen in Rage Racer or Gran Turismo, with pop-in prevalent in some rallies. However, the fact the game delivers stages of up to 6km of non-repeating road, with competitive loading times, is impressive unto itself. The length of the stages ensures they aren’t packed start-to-finish with impressive architecture, but what there is tends to be smartly positioned and used to good effect. Bright red barns amid the snow in Sweden, cranes working in New Zealand’s quarries, beautiful villages in Indonesia and long-distance cargo trains in Australia. Mostly, you’ll have your eyes glued to the road, but these little cameos are very welcome. The rally cars look convincing, thanks to smooth environmental behaviour, solid hit boxes and the sporting of real-world liveries. The way cars react to collisions is lightyears ahead of V-Rally’s punishing moon physics. Damage characteristics also represent a step forward from the already-excellent TOCA: Touring Cars. Bash the rear-left of your car, and you can expect the bodywork in that area to crumple, whilst the suspension on that side might distort and alter the handling. Make sure you don’t hobble the electrics before a night stage, as flickering beams won’t help your concentration!
The rallies represent a captivating challenge, there’s no weak link among the eight. Things kick off with New Zealand’s muddy landscapes and quarries, easing the player in with gentle undulations and wider roads that allow you to get to grips with the sliding characteristics. The D-pad controls are gorgeous, and likely some of the best in video gaming, as the emerging analogue stick was soon to take precedence. The player is afforded a feel for the nuance of the slides, the limits of grip, and the distinct feel of the various surfaces.
The rallies represent a captivating challenge, there’s no weak link among the eight. Things kick off with New Zealand’s muddy landscapes and quarries, easing the player in with gentle undulations and wider roads that allow you to get to grips with the sliding characteristics. The D-pad controls are gorgeous, and likely some of the best in video gaming, as the emerging analogue stick was soon to take precedence. The player is afforded a feel for the nuance of the slides, the limits of grip, and the distinct feel of the various surfaces.
FOCAL POINT: THE MISSING FINN
Tommi Mäkinen, reigning WRC champion at the time and McRae’s chief rival throughout the late nineties, is missing from the line-up of real-world competitors. The rally legend’s absence is easily explained: on July 18th 1998, the same day as Colin McRae Rally launched on the PlayStation, so too did Tommi Mäkinen Rally. Originally released on PC in 1997 as International Rally Championship and developed by racing legends Magnetic Fields (best known for their 16-bit Lotus trilogy), TMR was in effect an opportune rebranding, with the console port handled by publisher Europress. The extent of Mäkinen’s involvement appears limited to his name and his endorsement, whilst CMR featured driving school feedback from McRae and excellent, detailed pace notes from his co-driver Nicky Grist. Nevertheless, fans of the fast Finn will be pleased to note his Mitsubishi Lancer is present and, thanks to handy driver name input, you can drum up a championship battle between the two rally legends in no time.
CMR exhibits fantastic game design, encouraging the player to learn something new from every event. To win the world title, you’ll need to become a complete driver. This means conquering the tortuous, winding gravel roads of the Acropolis rally, as well as the deceptively speedy rural woodlands of Australia. Just as you gain an understanding of one style, the game throws something new your way: Sweden’s treacherous mixture of snow and ice sees cars squirming for grip, with narrow roads and tight bends an exercise in both patience and precision.
For the tarmac hills of Corsica, you’re forced to rethink what your car’s capable of, as significantly increased grip levels allow for much quicker cornering. As you’d hope, CMR saves its toughest tests until last. Indonesia’s combination of dirt and sand will feel somewhat familiar, but the overbearing cluster of trees and lack of room for manoeuvre makes for a stressful assignment that punishes the smallest errors. Rally GB makes for a fitting championship showdown, throwing a little bit of everything the player’s way. Stages feature as many as three surfaces, fog and night-time routes, gates, straw bails to negotiate and massive gorges to avoid. The Championship is a perfect illustration of how to design a gaming experience. It’s a carefully crafted evolution that demands the player master all aspects of the experience, and doing so in such a way that each hurdle is a pleasure.
For the tarmac hills of Corsica, you’re forced to rethink what your car’s capable of, as significantly increased grip levels allow for much quicker cornering. As you’d hope, CMR saves its toughest tests until last. Indonesia’s combination of dirt and sand will feel somewhat familiar, but the overbearing cluster of trees and lack of room for manoeuvre makes for a stressful assignment that punishes the smallest errors. Rally GB makes for a fitting championship showdown, throwing a little bit of everything the player’s way. Stages feature as many as three surfaces, fog and night-time routes, gates, straw bails to negotiate and massive gorges to avoid. The Championship is a perfect illustration of how to design a gaming experience. It’s a carefully crafted evolution that demands the player master all aspects of the experience, and doing so in such a way that each hurdle is a pleasure.
Hurling the Audi Quattro around Indonesia's narrow routes is a formidable test
The evolving nature of each rally’s six stages plays nicely into its light simulation elements. Whilst it’s perfectly possible to jump straight into the game with a recommended setup, those wanting to extract more time will want to try different springs, gear ratios and steering sensitivities. Tyre choice is also crucial, and given that there are normally two stages between services, you’ll sometimes have to weigh up which one to prioritise if their profiles contrast. Unlike games that throw out numbers-dominated setup options, CMR again decides to be gamer-friendly, supplying a few options and providing short, common-sense descriptions to quickly relate the relative advantages and disadvantages of a given choice. To this day, it remains one of the most intuitive and gratifying ways of dealing with setup changes in a video game, encouraging the player to think about what lies ahead without ever bogging down their progress.
Winning the feeder category opens up the main WRC championship, and winning this unlocks Expert difficulty, allowing you to enter the championship in a range of classic motors including the Lancia Delta and the fearsome Audi Quattro. Given the frankly unhinged speeds this car’s capable of, this adds a whole new dimension to the game’s challenge. It’s wonderful, and evidence that an outstanding racer is much more than simply bunging a load of tracks and cars into a game and saying “there you go”. A quarter of a century later and despite the success of the games it has spawned, Colin McRae Rally is perhaps a little underappreciated. For console rally racers, it was undoubtedly a game changer, and the best of its kind on the PlayStation.
Winning the feeder category opens up the main WRC championship, and winning this unlocks Expert difficulty, allowing you to enter the championship in a range of classic motors including the Lancia Delta and the fearsome Audi Quattro. Given the frankly unhinged speeds this car’s capable of, this adds a whole new dimension to the game’s challenge. It’s wonderful, and evidence that an outstanding racer is much more than simply bunging a load of tracks and cars into a game and saying “there you go”. A quarter of a century later and despite the success of the games it has spawned, Colin McRae Rally is perhaps a little underappreciated. For console rally racers, it was undoubtedly a game changer, and the best of its kind on the PlayStation.
OTHER AMAZING NINETIES RALLY RACING GAMES REVIEWED