Colin McRae Rally 2005

colin mcrae rally 2005 is yet another iterative installment of the series (being more similar to 04 than 04 was to 3), and it had the potential to be the pinnacle of the pre-dirt cmr series. given that it's working off the framework of 04 but with more content (more cars, stages, a new location for the first time, and an all-new career mode), as well as more time to polish, surely it'd be the best series has to offer at this point, right? not quite. why? answer's simple:

they fucked up the physics.

well, actually the answer's kinda both simple and complicated. the physics are host to numerous faults that were not present in the previous game, which i can and will shortly proceed to describe in detail - and yet, once you've played the game for a few hours, you kinda just get used to it, and it feels very manageable. seriously, when i first started the game i felt like my rating could've been a full star (or more) lower, but by the end i quite enjoyed it.

anyway, about those physics - essentially, it seems like they tried to casualize the physics from 04 and find a middle ground between cmr4 and 3. they are more realistic than 3, but the cars feel significantly more floaty and weightless than 4 while also being less grippy. the reactions of the car are once again wily and random, much like in cmr3, and basically you're now spending more time reacting than acting. cars behave WEIRDLY on uneven surfaces - greece is a good example, where all the ridges in the gravel trails feel strangely rigid, with the bumps occasionally pushing the car around like wall collisions. damage reactions are still inconsistent, maybe even more so - crashes sometimes do major damage and other times the car just harmlessly bounces away. the pace notes don't even feel accurate, like they were made with cmr4's physics in mind but they got changed at the last minute and now you kinda just have to learn to ignore them and make your own interpretations of the turn markers. but like i said earlier, after some time with the game you just get accustomed to all this and the many problems actually start to fade into the background.

presentation-wise, the ui is very similar to cmr4 but with a few stylistic changes, and the graphics are not much different either, which doesn't really bother me but it does start to look a bit behind for 2005. there are some nice touches though, like better environmental detail and some really nice lighting effects. it's the first time playing one of these games that i thought "hey, thats actually pretty" on more than one occasion. for some reason the car sounds are a bit more dull this time. they're not all BAD per se, but it feels like they used to have more bite and growl and RAWR to them but here they kinda just sound like brrrrr vrrrrrr. i do like the environmental sounds though - things like rain and thunder sound quite nice.

as for the stages, the recycling of routes from the previous games has become increasingly prevalent, which is hardly surprising. its not all bad though - there's still some new material, and they've brought back elements from cmr3 that weren't used in 4, so it's not totally repetitive. also, each rally now has 8 stages as opposed to 6, and the time of day and weather are no longer tied to the stage and will vary each time you play a stage, so despite the reuse, there's actually significantly more variety in this game than its predecessors. on top of that, there's also the brand-new addition of germany, and while it isn't a stand-out rally, it's certainly fun and on par with the rest.

the biggest changeup in this game's formula, however, is the addition of the career mode, in which you progress through a tree of themed events requiring you use certain a car class, which will reward you with "driver rating" to unlock more events as well as the opportunity to earn upgrades for cars using the same testing minigame system that was introduced in the previous game (this time with unlimited attempts, despite the game claiming you only have two??). and it is a VERY welcome change of pace from the growing monotony of the championship format from previous games that makes cmr5 feel significantly more worthwhile. (there's also a championship mode where you play as colin mcrae and it's structured exactly like any championship from cmr4. it's kinda pointless. the career mode is really the only thing that matters.)

while the core of the career mode isn't all that different - in essence, just being a number of (generally) smaller championships using different cars - it just feels a lot nicer to have a sort of progression system, working your way up through faster classes and more difficult events and unlocking new vehicles as you go along. the different events requiring you use different cars adds a very nice element of variety, and ensures that the car lineup feels significantly less wasted. there are events for your standard 4wd cars, 2wd cars, 4x4s, 90s cars, group b cars, and even classics, and the gameplay feels a lot less stagnant for it. the difficulty still leaves something to be desired, though, being no harder than the previous games, and most events are still pieces of cake as long as you can drive.

colin mcrae rally 2005 feels like a very complete package, and the amount of additional content and features added over its predecessors are very much appreciated. however, taking into account all aspects of the game, the issues with the physics can't go ignored, making it sadly a sort of tradeoff with cmr04 and preventing it from becoming the clear essential of the early 2000s cmr era.