Builds on an already good foundation
 Feb 13th, 2001
Advantages:
Amazing game play, couldnt stop playing for hours at a time
Disadvantages:
none
Recommendable:
Yes
Detailed rating:
Gameplay/Playability
Graphics
Sound
Value for Money
Longevity
more
  JamieMckeen
About me:
Member since:11.01.2001
Reviews:103
Members who trust:12
Review rated by 9 Ciao members on average: very helpful 
This review received a counterstatement by a party concerned
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Colin McRae Rally 2.0's primary focus is on the World Rally Championship, which distinguishes it from Rally Championship and Rally Masters. The title comes from the featured driver in the sim, a thirtyish Scotsman who, in 1995, became the sport's youngest ever World Champion. Nicknamed "The Flying Scotsman," Colin McRae, his car, the Ford Focus WRC, and his co-driver, Nicky Grist, are featured in the game. Unfortunately for Grist, and for anyone who tries CM2, his calls are relayed in a voice so muffled they can't be understood. His voice projects so poorly it's as if Grist were intended to be nothing more than background noise. Fortunately, signs with arrows bent in the appropriate direction serve to sufficiently warn drivers of the severity of upcoming turns. If you're new to rally racing, the drivers operate in all kinds of weather and in the dark of night and light of day. And like the U.S. Postal Service, they always deliver -- excitement in the case of rally racing. No matter the time of day, season, or danger, spectators regularly line the roadsides waiting for a close-up glimpse of their favorite drivers. If you've ever watched this stuff on cable TV, you know that sometimes people are too close. I've seen rally cars slide in the mud around a turn and literally flip over into the lap of some poor fellow sitting in the grass eating fish and chips inches from the road. Talk about dying to see one's hero!
Colin McRae Rally 2.0 represents the sport well, although play modes are more limited than in Rally Masters. You can choose from among Single Rally, Single Stage (of a rally), Time Trial and Challenge. The first three modes ought to be obvious. Challenge mode is actually a head-to-head race on parallel
tracks (beginning in Japan). It's a knockout tournament, not unlike that in NFS: Porsche Unleashed. Lose and go home. Win and advance to the next round. For each round, the car that you drive is chosen randomly. Fortunately, the computer opponent will drive an identical car. With the exception of an arcade mode that allows you to race against other vehicles, Challenge is the only mode in Colin McRae Rally 2.0 in which other cars will be visible. This makes Colin McRae Rally 2.0 (and the older Rally Championship) much less interesting than Rally Masters. The scenery or environment graphics in Colin McRae Rally 2.0 are also less visually stunning than both RC and RM. Oddly, the cars in Colin McRae Rally 2.0 are better looking than the competitions'. External shots of your rally car in Colin McRae Rally 2.0 are truly impressive. Spider web-like cracks in your windows can become holes -- at least in the windshield -- big enough for a driver's helmeted head to fit through. Drive inside the car, and you can see the bonnet ("hood" for my fellow Americans) of your beaten up rally racing machine loosen and flop up and down in front of you. Bang up your car enough and bumpers come loose and hang. Curiously, you can see a shattered windshield from external views as clear as day, but drive from inside the car and there is no damage.Another area in which Colin McRae Rally 2.0 excels is force feedback implementation. Colin McRae Rally 2.0 provides the best force feedback of the Big Three rally sims. This is an area that is critical, in my view, to suspending disbelief and squeezing every ounce of enjoyment out of an auto racing sim. If force feedback is second-rate (Rally Masters) or non-existent (4 X 4 Evolution) it will detract heavily from my evaluation of the game.
With a Logitech Formula Force wheel and pedal rig I could feel every rock, twig, bump, and hole that Colin McRae Rally 2.0 has to offer. I could feel the exact moment when my tires left a gravely surface for a smooth one, and knew instantly when my rear tires had lost all grip or even contact with the road. This kind of tactile feedback is critical for the virtual driver to know what corrective action to take and the instant to take it. Colin McRae Rally 2.0 excels most of all in the area of automobile driving physics. Here Colin McRae Rally 2.0 outshines the competition by light years. While Rally Masters has an arcade but fun driving model, and Rally Championship has a driving model that defies description, though it is certainly not realistic, Colin McRae Rally 2.0 is a driver's game. You've seen that Volkswagen commercial that says on the last screen "Wanted: Drivers?" Well, you need to be a driver's driver to tackle Colin McRae Rally 2.0. This is the only racing game in which I felt it absolutely necessary to place my right foot on the accelerator pedal and my left on the brake pedal. Why? It helps me to work them together, like a church organist, as I rocket around CM2's tracks.
A light tap on the brake with a simultaneous jerk of the wheel oh, say, sixty feet from a 90 degree turn, followed immediately by judicious but deliberate application of the accelerator pedal, and I can pull off a slide so perfect -- weight distribution, understeer and oversteer accounted for -- that would make The Flying Scotsman proud. The driving experience in Colin McRae Rally 2.0 gives you goosebumps. You can fly around the tracks, which are attractively set in Italy, Sweden, Greece, Australia, Kenya and other countries, for a total of 90 new international rally tracks. There is a breathtaking sense of speed in this game that is superior to Rally Masters and Rally Championship. You can't take your eyes off the screen for a second -- forget about scratching your nose -- for fear of losing the feel of your car at a critical moment. But the bottom line is that Colin McRae Rally 2.0 drives like a car is supposed to drive, whether it's spinning its wheels on snow, gravel or mud, or burning up tarmac.
Another blue ribbon for Colin McRae Rally 2.0 is the depiction of weather. It's dynamic, not unlike the weather in Grand Prix 3. It may be overcast and dry at the beginning of a rally (or of a stage), drizzly enough a quarter of the way through to start your wipers, and pouring near the halfway mark. It can be dry again at the end. No other rally sim (that I am aware of) offers this feature.
An important quality that separates the wheat from the chaff, or in this case the simulations from the arcade racers, is the effect of damage on a car's handling. Here again, Colin McRae Rally 2.0 shines. If you've got damage to the differential or axles or steering or brakes you will experience it in the increasingly sloppy and challenging handling of your car. Crisp turns and slides in an undamaged vehicle become frightening adventures in a beat-up car. You'll know what I mean when you are unable to turn out of the way of a tree that you could have evaded in a car with less damage. Gameplay allows you to repair your vehicle approximately every two stages. You are allocated a number of minutes for repairs. You relinquish a certain number of those minutes if you fix the steering, gearbox, suspension, turbo, electrics, exhaust, drive shaft, axles or repair body damage.
Before you go off to race Colin McRae Rally 2.0 allows you to tweak your car's setup by moving sliders to adjust gears, suspension, tires, power ratio between front and rear wheels, brake bias, brake power and steering. I found this feature to be vastly superior to that offered in Rally Masters, CM2's most recent competitor. Not to be overlooked, however, is Colin McRae Rally 2.0's arcade mode, which allows you to race against up to five computer opponents on the same track. As a simulation freak, I took this option lightly until I tried it. It's actually fun! Although once you get the hang of your car's handling you should be able to dispatch the computer drivers rather easily, even at the Expert level of difficulty.
For this auto racing buff, Colin McRae 2.0 clearly takes the checkered flag among rally racing simulations.
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13.02.2001 11:15
A brilliant review of what sounds like a great game. If Ciao handed out crowns for premier opinions, this should certainly have earned one of them.