colin mcrae rally Archives - Intensive Gaming Diary

Living Colin McRae Rally 2.0 Again (and Again)

Posted on October 30, 2026 by Viljami

Colin McRae Rally 2.0 was released in 2000 for PlayStation 1 and also for PC. I really don’t remember if I played this rally game before I got to try and play the first Colin McRae Rally game. There is something very special about this game that keeps me coming back to it. I keep starting a new career and suddenly I realize that I have spent already one and a half hours playing it. What could be the reason for this? Let me try to explain it to you my dear reader.

There is a lot to play in Colin McRae Rally 2.0. You get to drive in 8 different countries. One country has 8 stages and some of them come with an additional special stage. You can choose your difficulty level from easy to intermediate. When you beat the game with intermediate you unlock the expert mode. The expert modes’s championship gives you 8 countries now with 10 stages and also a special stage on some countries.

Handling of the car is made as precise and you can succeed in this game without a wheel and a pedal. You can apply different settings to the car. You have only limited time to tune your vehicle. So, you should apply well working settings for your car before the first stage of a country so you won’t loose all of your time. The settings can be a bit difficult to figure out. If you are like me and want to go to just driving you can try to search the best settings for every country online. I bet you can find the best settings. I figure this isn’t any sort of cheating at all.

There are many surfaces from more demanding, like snow or wet mud, to some more forgivable ones, like tarmac or dry gravel. The physics of Colin McRae Rally 2.0 work very nicely. You do get to control the car with your game pad but don’t just think it would be easy to handle your car in this game. There is a lot to learn while you keep playing the game.

Some of the appeal that I do have towards Colin McRae Rally 2.0 can be explained with the effect that pure nostalgia can at times give you while you are playing some retro game. I was 15 or 16 years old when I faced this game for the first time. I also had it for PC and also for PlayStation 1. The PC version gave a bit better graphics while the PlayStation 1 version provided a better game pad support that made it smooth to control the car.

I told you about how much the game can offer in terms of content. However it does take only six hours to beat. There are six cars that you can choose from when you begin playing. You can unlock some more vehicles as you progress in the game.

We are looking at probably the best rally game that was ever made for PlayStation 1. It has been some time already that I played the next Colin McRae Rally game, Colin McRae Rally 3. It is a very good sequel to Colin McRae Rally 2.0. It was released some years after the second game. It was released for PC, original Xbox and PS2. If you like rally games I think you should also play the third game.

The series of good quality rally games that begun from these games that were released back in the end of 90s and beginning of 2000s went on to become an even more legendary. We have seen many more rally games. We have seen also some games that have taken direct influence from these games. If you like this type of games you should check out Rush Rally 3 and Old School Rally. They are indie releses that focus on an experience quite similar to Colin McRae Rally and Colin McRae Rally 2.0.

Waiting for Forza Horizon 6

Posted on May 14, 2026 by Viljami

Forza Horizon 6 will be released 19th of May this year (2026). It will be available at the launch for PC and Xbox Series S/X. There have been some very unofficial discussions about this game getting released also for other mainstream gaming consoles. This just seems to be the viewpoint today. There might be such things as exclusive releases soon as every PlayStation title seems to be getting released for PC and now also for Xbox.

So, what I have been up to lately, one might ask. Mainly I have been working and keeping myself busy in that way. There seems to be less time for video games as I get older. However I have played some games and this blog post deals with that part of my life now. I have played Crash Bandicoot 4, Doom – Dark Ages, Half-Life 2 and also more and lately Dirt 5 which seems to be a nice racing game to start to get ready for Forza Horizon 6.

Dirt 5 was originally released in 2020. It isn’t the newest game that has been developed by Codemasters but it still remains as a part of this legendary series of racing games that might even been started by Colin McRae Rally already back in the end of the 90s. There have been many great games in this series. I especially want to mention Colin McRae Rally 2.0 and Colin McRae Dirt 2. Those might be the best games out of this series.

Dirt 5 has a lot to offer. I have already spent a bit over 7 hours playing it. You get to drive with several different vehicles and there are several types of driving you will get involved in during playing. There are many camera options to choose from. You can set the camera to the surface of the road or then set it to display the whole car from the back. I chose to set the camera so that I can see the whole car I am driving. This makes it somewhat easy to play Dirt 5. You do have to control the vehicle precisely. I have played this game with a game controller. I really don’t know how a driving wheel and pedals would make the game seem to feel like.

Dirt 5 is a nice racing game in overall. It is almost unfair to make a comparison between the earlier games in this series because they are just so good as racing games. If we put it into this perspective Dirt 5 is a good game. There might have been some issues early when the game was released but I think that in 2026 this game is still a fun one to play. It has received the “metascore” of 79 out of 100 on Metacritic.

I originally picked up Dirt 5 just some weeks before the upcoming release of Forza Horizon 6. It currently has a price tag of 21 euros on the Xbox store. So, it is a cheap game that can help you to better deal with waiting for Forza Horizon 6. This time I bought a game as a digital copy. Although I decided to order Forza Horizon 6 as a physical copy. There will be a long installation process since the game takes a bit over 130 GB of space from my Xbox Series X. Do remember that there is also a PC version available.

With having already made the purchase I am waiting to get my hands on the new Forza game at next Tuesday. Today I am having a day off and I am currently enjoying it an drinking some coffee while I type this post that you are soon able to read. I really have nothing else to say right now. So, until next time my dear readers.

The Pure Joy of Rally Driving

Posted on May 20, 2025 by Viljami

We have seen many rally games that you can play on Xbox Series X. Out of three first games in this series of Dirt rally games Dirt 3 is compatible and fully playable on the latest Xbox console. It was released in 2010. So, its been a while.

I have now driven in Dirt 3 for a bit over ten hours. You can see the number of hours from this rally game’s stats that can be accessed directly through the menus of the game. As you might already know you cannot track your time that you have spent while playing an Xbox 360 game title on the Series X. Luckily we still can have stats provided by the game itself.

These aren’t my first touches to this rally game. Actually it’s quite far from it. I first got into Dirt 3 back when the only video game console that I had hooked up to my television back in the day was PlayStation 3. I was eager to play this game. I bought it as soon as it was released. I remember buying it for something like 60 euros. Games really used to cost much less in that moment.

This was also the first game that I played with a wheel and pedals. The game can also be operated with a game pad. The latest sessions I’ve had with this game I have utilized solely the controller. The difficulty level can be adjusted. You can aim for a more realistic and harder style of driving. The options are broad.

I have played Colin McRae Dirt and Colin McRae Dirt 2 also. It is a bit sad that out of these very fine rally games Dirt 3 seems to be the only one that is compatible with Xbox Series X. As I checked if this game would be available digitally from Xbox Store I found that it is not available. The only option, if you want to play it on your Series X, is to get yourself a physical copy. The game doesn’t really take so much space on your hard drive.

It is also today very easy to run also this game in an emulator. So, you don’t have to check every Xbox 360 title to see if they are actually compatible with your Xbox Series X. There is actually a list available online that presents this information. You can find it easily utilizing your favorite search engine (DuckDuckGo?).

Running Xbox 360 games on an emulator requires a heavy PC setup. I for example couldn’t get the Xenia emulator to run on my current PC. I am going to buy a new PC soon. This is because of the forced Windows update from Windows 10 to Windows 11. It can also be an option for you to install Linux. It depends very much of the software you need to run on your PC. Games, today, can be played with a Linux operating system. Even the newest ones. I actually think that most Steam games do run on Linux.

I have lots of music production software that I am not so sure if it can run on Linux. Mac really isn’t an option for me. I need a Windows 11 PC. There is some music software available for Linux and lots of this software is free or “open source”. It is just a hell of a job to set things up in Linux. I am not confident with this. A part of me would like to enjoy the freedom of Linux but something tells me that I need Windows 11. This means that I have to spend lots of money for a new computer since my current PC isn’t compatible with Windows 11.

Anyways, thank you, if you are actually reading this. I hope you enjoy this blog. Dirt 3 is one heck of a rally game. I hope you find it satisfying if you end up acquiring it in any way. You can play Dirt 3 on an emulator, like Xenia, with your own Xbox 360 console or the way I played it (on Xbox Series X).