Colin McRae Rally 3

Tires spinning?mud flying?Colin McRae must be back on the rally circuit again.

Huge in Europe, rally racing hasn?t made a dent in the thick bodywork of NASCAR?s popularity in the United States, but Colin McRae Rally 3 is such a high-quality game that serious race fans simply have to take it for a spin.

Tires Spinning
As always with the McRae series, the sublime handling of your car is what makes this game so appealing. In every powerslide you set up, in every spin you fight your way out of, the car performs like it?s reading your mind. The game?s eight tracks offer plenty of fertile territory in which to enjoy that responsiveness, and in this first McRae outing since the PlayStation days, the terrain is much more lifelike, 3D, and realistic. Drivers will delight in conquering its challenges.

The new Championship mode offers both new ground and new limits. For the first time, you can play as McRae and drive his famous Ford Focus, but you can only play as him, which makes the focus of the game?s only season-style action too narrow. Four-player action and single races add a little variety, but there?s no online support, and McRae is the only real-life driver in the game. Fantastic graphics make the action a treat as great lighting, dust effects, car damage, and more put on a serious show. Only the minor pop-up mars the effect. On the sound side, the audio is tightly focused on your car with excellent sound effects and co-driver pace notes, but to many, it will seem a bit quiet.

Mud Flying
Only the restrictive Championship mode and the nature of rally racing itself (one car soloing on the track at a time, best result wins) confines the appeal of McRae 3?it?s a racer?s game, not a gamer?s game. If that?s you, McRae 3 is as alluring as a gleaming, freshly waxed sports car.

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