Colin McRae Rally 3

as soon as you start up CMR3, you'll immediately notice that codemasters' typical slick presentation is as present as always, which quickly sparks optimism for the experience you're about to have with the game. the graphics are great for the era, with nicely-rendered environments and fairly detailed car models, plus a good damage model to boot that's even reflected in the sound (which is itself quite adequate as well). even the bootleg-"star guitar" menu music gets you pumped up (although being one of about two different songs in the game, and played at nearly every opportunity, it loses its luster pretty quickly). beneath the gloss, however, the game itself feels somewhat anemic and not quite as tightly tuned as its antecedent, which will soon become apparent once the gameplay begins and you start to get a feel for the driving itself.

the physics aren't BAD per se, but they're not great either. i was somewhat put off at first, but after playing for a while i got used to it and found them decently passable and playable - but not without several caveats. for one, the car tends to glide around like a soap bar on the dirt, and while it's not always an issue, it can be frustratingly unresponsive and random at times. in contrast, the car suddenly becomes unrealistically grippy on tarmac, TOO responsive even. but really i take bigger issue with the collision physics - it practically feels like RNG upon bumping into a wall/tree/etc whether your car will harmlessly bounce off of it (perhaps even aiding you) or cause severe damage or spin you out. bushes can either be benign or a race-ender. snow banks have what i call the "vortex effect" whereupon making slight contact with the snowbank will somewhat often abruptly suck your car in and spin it 180 degrees. this can happen in real life, sure, but it feels very exaggerated here. all in all, the physics feel a lot less natural than CMR2.0 and are basically a downgrade from the predecessor.

the different locations and stages are, for the most part, quite nice, all featuring unique visuals and a distinct driving feel to each one. the uk and japan rallies are particular highlights, featuring very fun and technical routes and a good variety in layout between all six stages. the snow in sweden makes a nice change of pace (although marred by the aforementioned snowbank issue), and the inclusion of pikes peak in the usa rally is neat. unfortunately i must give a dishonorable mention to finland, which manages to be both boring and frustrating. the stage layouts are all quite long, samey, and devoid of particularly unique features, and yet manage to all include at least one annoying section. the terrain is nearly all basic gravel throughout all the stages, and the visuals are uninspiring, being essentially just green forests and brown dirt with the occasional lake. it's a cool rally in real life but underwhelms massively here.

the championship mode has a neat presentation, with all the little pre- and post-race cutscenes, but also suffers from a number of strange decisions. most prominently, the fact that the only car you can use is the ford focus. i get that they were trying to make it like immersive like WHOA you are ACTUALLY colin mcrae!!!, but it makes all the other (fairly numerous) cars in the game feel pointless. you start out with a good number unlocked and periodically unlock more as you progress, but the only place you can drive non-focus cars is in the arcade mode. if you're like me and focus (heh) solely on progressing the "career" and have better things to do than fuss around replaying stages in the arcade mode of a merely decent 2002 rally game, the other cars just seem like a waste.

another slightly odd thing is the way the different locations are handled in the championships. each one consists of 6 locations - normal mode runs through australia, spain, finland, usa, japan, and sweden, hard replaces australia with the uk, and very hard also replaces the usa with greece. this means that fine rallies like australia and greece are only played once, while others are repeated three times over. (also on the subject of difficulty levels, even on very hard i was finishing 30+ seconds ahead of 2nd place in each rally, so go figure.)

there's a number of strange ui quirks as well. the detailed time-based tuning/repair system of CMR2 is gone - you have unlimited time for tuning, and the damage is automatically taken care of for you. the only time you can even see your car's damage level is in a sluggish, drawn-out animation before each race. likewise, the only way to see how well you're doing in the rally is at the start of each stage. checking the surface details of each stage in the pre-race menu also requires sitting through an animation. also, there's no quick restart option - which was maybe intentional, but the game seems perfectly content to let you just exit to the menu and then load your save and wait for it to load the stage over again.

CMR3 is certainly not a bad racing game, and it still plays quite decently today, but underneath its sheen you'll quickly start to realize its numerous falterings after a fair amount of playtime, and there's really nothing it does uniquely that's not done better by its direct predecessor and successor.