CODEMASTERS Colin McRae Rally 2005 ( Windows )

by Codemasters

Product Features

• Over 30 featured cars, from the Volkswagen Golf MK5, Toyota Celica GT-FOUR, and Alfa Romeo 147 GTA to the Lancia Stratos, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VIII, Peugeot 206, 205 T16 Evo2 and the distinctive VW Beetle RSi
• 4-wheel drive, 2-wheel drive 4-wheel Classics, Super 2-wheel, Rear Wheel, Distinctive and 4x4 classics
• Non-linear Career Challenge, with over 20 individual rally events and over 300 stages
• Race in 9 international locations, with 8 stages each in the UK, Sweden, the US, Finland, Australia, Spain, Greece, and Japan
• Incredible detail, as individual damage models recreate everything down to paintwork scrapes and post-crash dazed visual effect

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0006L4DV0
• Media: CD-ROM
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #20,201 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #92 in Video Games > PC Games > Racing & Flying

Product Description

Colin McRae Rally 2005 pummels you in over 300 stages of the most intense driving action around. Drive multiple vehicles from 4-wheel drive, 2-wheel drive and more. The new bonnet-cam and improved chase cam gives a real sensation of speed and undulation. It's the most complete and rewarding rally experience available! Online head-to-head rallying for up to 8 players

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good game..., February 22, 2005

By 

Snowbound "DamageInc." (Central NY) - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: CODEMASTERS Colin McRae Rally 2005 ( Windows ) (CD-ROM)

This game is challenging and fast paced. The co-driver calling out continuous verbal directions adds a whole new element compared to other visual type racing games. This game has rallies in 9 different countries with a total of 76 stages and over 30 different cars, so you can play for hours and never see the same stage. The reasons I didn't give Colin Mcrae Rally 2005 a five-star rating are: The game will not allow me to navigate the menu with anything other than the steering wheel/pedals, which didn't occur until after I configured my "wheel" for this game. This is very frustrating, since the instruction booklet only gives reference to the menu functions being controlled by the keyboard that ceases to function after configuring the "wheel", creating a trial and error button pushing malfunction-fest. This is probably a leftover of the console (game pad) to PC (no game pad) conversion. The other problem I encountered is the fact that this game has many obstacles that are deliberately placed specifically to crash you. For example, immoveable posts alongside of many roadways and also bushes that although wispy and transparent, stops the car dead while others have no effect and can be driven through. Although some may argue that this adds to the challenge, I feel that it just adds frustration. Overall, this game is very entertaining.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Bait and Switch, March 8, 2005

By 

dellyjoe - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: CODEMASTERS Colin McRae Rally 2005 ( Windows ) (CD-ROM)

The game gave me about $5.00 worth of irritation which I will vent here. After buying the game which advertises 30 something cars and 100 or more race courses, you will find that you will either have to "earn" access to the majority of these or pay another $5.00 or so to Codemasters to unlock them. My only other complaint to this otherwise terrific game is that the wheel setup is hard to figure out, but eventually by trial and error it works properly. Good software should be common sense to implement instead of guesswork. I bought a Thrustmaster FF Enzo Wheel and had to get a new driver from Thrustmaster (FFB_DRV_1_0_3) so Colin Mcrae Rally 2005 would work with the wheel. Bottom line, I wasn't too happy having to spend a few hours to get things working and have to pay extra for what is advertised in the game description. One more thing, Codemasters warns you that if you uninstall the game you will lose the extras. That would mean going online again, getting the 8 codes, paying another $5.00, and then reentering them again to unlock the game features. The work-around is to save the entire game folder AND the registry settings, and swap them back in after reinstall. You shouldn't have to go through all this to make software function properly.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Game, But The Path Getting To Play It Is Not Great, April 25, 2005

By 

Richard S. Pasma (Upland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: CODEMASTERS Colin McRae Rally 2005 ( Windows ) (CD-ROM)

The good news is this is a great game. There are a great number of races and cars available. The physics relative to the tracks and cars are excellent. Although I have spent only about 10 hours playing this game, I can see many hours of enjoyment from the challenges and graphics it provides.

The bad news is it may take you a while to figure out how to get it to work with the computer hardware you have. It took me several hours. This is the reason I gave it a 4 rather than a 5 star rating. Before purchasing this game you can go to www.codemasters.com and download a demo. As I have not done this I am not certain how it compares to the retail game.

If you purchase this game and run into technical problems, the web site Codemasters provides does not have a menu item for technical support. You can get to a web forum with people going crazy over trying to figure out the problems they are having though. If you have problems typing the word "support" in the search box they have will get you to a form for technical support. I have no experience with what kind of response that would provide.

A summary of some of the problems I encountered are given in the text below. If you are going to be using a keyboard to play this game I would suggest skipping the rest of this message. If you are going to be using a wheel, the length of the following comments might seem to be discouraging.

On this I would say if you were to put in to words the steps it took to get into a car, start it, back it out of your driveway and point it in the direction you wanted to go, you would be surprised at the length of the description. Although there are a lot of details about getting the game to work they are not any more complicated than that.

The computer hardware I am using: 2.4ghz Intel; 1.5 gig Ram; ATI 9600XT (128 Meg), and the old (Red) Logitech Momo Racing Wheel.

For some reason the default brake/accelerator setting was set to digital rather than analog.

The default dead zone for steering is set with some play. This must be set to zero. The default zero line was slightly off center on my setup, but could be moved by turning the wheel one way or the other. Doing this would not get it centered exactly, but getting it close and hitting the down arrow worked.

A steering sensitivity set about 60 percent off the center line provided the best response for my hardware/preference.

Changes made to the wheel setting do not go into effect until you exit the game and come back. If you would like to race with the old settings before exiting to get the new ones, the program will let you do that.

Before starting a race you have to go through several menus using the left and right arrows followed by the "Enter" on the keyboard to make menu selections. During this process you might find the keyboard stops working. For me it was after selecting something other than the default car. Moving the highlight on menu selections after that point must be done by rotating the wheel left or right and back to center for each move. The handbrake rather than the enter key is used to make the selected menu item.

After going though all that you might find difficulty in steering the car. I suspect this is a problem many people have attempting to steer the car with experience from the physics used by other games or what is expected from the experience of the real thing.

The natural thing to do with a game like this is to attempt to drive very fast sliding sideways around the curves the first time you are out the gate. The first time you attempt to do this you will find the software does not adjust to the crazy stuff you are attempting to do, and it should not. While it might be very hard to do, driving very very slow for two or maybe three stages and keeping the car on the road will give you the knowledge about the software physics aiding in developing faster sideway skills you will be proud of.

Rich

Since the review above was written the following comment follow.

Having played every racing game on the planet I would give this one the highest rating. That said there are a few items of importance relative to this topic worth considering. To fully enjoy a PC racing game you have to have a wheel.

Demand drives both the quality of software and hardware related to any product. As such the demand for racing games relative to the FPS (First Person Shooter), or RTS(Real Time Strategy) has been quite low. As the efforts of people to create something new in this environment with version 3, 4 and 5 might fail a return to racing might occur.

Until that happens if you are into racing games and want to buy a wheel for racing you would be well advised to buy one that was developed during the time the demand for racing games was anticipated to be high.

The Microsoft Sidewinder wheel with force feedback, no longer being produced, is an excellent product. Logitech while it thought there was going to be a demand for racing games produced the Momo Force Racing Wheel.

Logitech replaced the Momo Force with the MOMO Racing Force Feedback Wheel. I have not used this product, but just looking at it on the show room floor it looks like a big step backward in quality. Just the idea of going from paddle shift to cheap handle shifter on the side is an indication of the lack of reality the designers and marketing people have about how the software with this type of product works.

As demand and sometimes the perception of what demand is going to be, improvements to hardware and software appear. Hopefully the demand for racing software will increase and provide a market for better products for people interested in racing products and software.