The best rally game ever!
Let's start with it. CMR 2005 it's absolutely the best rally game ever made, many people may not agree with me, but based on the thousand of rally game I have, including DIRT, CMR 2005 wins, hands down!
There is only one big flaw in this game if you are playing it on the PS2 version, the game needs the whooping space of 4MB on your memory card! Eek! That's right! Half of the size of a memory card, you should buy a MC exclusivy for this game, but I'll be honest, this shouldn't hold off you for playing this game. The loading/saving time are very fast even for that amount of space the game needs!
After watched the original intro, we finally arrive in the main menu, and that's where new things show up: the new career mode. You race to the top, in different classes on different tracks. The career mode is splitted up in "tier", for gaining higher tier you have to win the bottom races of the pyramide. Winning races will gain you points essentialy for unlock new course. Almost every car in career mode can be upgraded through an original (but already showed in Colin 04) testing track where you have to complete different tasks: for example, if you want to unlock the upgraded suspension, you have to test them in a "jumpy" track in Finland, filling up a bar till its maximum and finishing the race before the time runs out.
Championship mode let's you race in the shoes of sir Colin McRae, taking part in a usual rally competition around the 8 country.
Challenges mode will bring you to a fully customizable rally game, you can pick up your car and your track and race it, you can even choose weather and time of the stage like Colin 2.0, very nice!
The game has a nice selection of cars: 4WD, 2WD, Group B and many others, and it features even the fantastic Mini Cooper S from Colin 2.0! All of them can be unlocked as you progress in career mode.
The country featured in the game are: Germany, Sweden, Spain, Australia, Greek, Japan, USA, and UK. Variety doesn't lack here. The cars act very realistically on each surface: driving on the snow will make your car slide quite too often, driving on the tarmac will make your car fast and easy to control.
Colin 2005 boosts and incredible graphic for PS2. Cars are made with dozen of details, with a realistic real time damage: you can rip EVERYTHING off the car, from doors to the exhaust pipe. Damage are not just graphical, but they harm the car's performance, you can even lose a wheel if you drive carelessely, and almost the time it's game over.
Enviroments are really beautiful: there are a different selection of texture on each surface, far draw distance and lot's of effect like cars getting dirty if you drive on the mud, snow or whatever. But the best effect absolutely it's when choose the pilot cam during raining stage, you can see drops bouncing on your windshield, moving depending on your car's speed and wiped out from your wipers. It's stunning!
Luckly Codemasters now have made obstacles a little less "heavy", now a sign can be ripped off if you drive fast.
Sound in CMR 2005 is quite awesome too. The cars sounds DIFFERENT, I mean, they didn't use the same sample on every car, but there's a difference between a Ford and a Subaru. During race, there's nice enviroments sound, like birds tweeting, leaves moving or the crowd bursting with round of applause and yellings. Nicky Grist it's your co-pilot, and manage to give a realistic feeling.
There's even online play, too bad that now it's completely abandoned. There's still two plays mode, but I'll prefer avoid that, as you get a split screen game with less framerate and dumbed down car graphic/damage (maybe the PS2 couldn't handle all that).
Ignoring the 4 MB for saving and the lousy multiplayer mode, CMR 2005 it's the king of all rally games! Even now, when we have DIRT 2, CMR 2005 still manage to overtake his successor with style, providing a fun but not hard challenge. Rally fan should buy this game NOW, and newcomers can give it a try, because the game worth it!