Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: rally games

Living Colin McRae Rally 2.0 Again (and Again)

Posted on 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 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.

Old School Rally

Posted on by Viljami

Old School Rally is something for you if you like games like Colin McRae Rally and Colin McRae Rally 2.0 that were originally published for the first PlayStation. The driving feel is very much like in those classic retro games. You get actually to control your rally car using just your plain original gamepad. This seemed to be the norm way back. The gamers actually didn’t have so many driving wheels and pedals. The graphics weren’t as realsitic but yet these games just had something special in them.

I bought my copy of Old School Rally for Nintendo Switch for a bit over 30 euros. It think the precise price was 32 euros. It is a physical copy. The game is also available for PS5 also as a physical game and also for Steam as, of course, a digital copy of the game. With this same purchase I bought Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection. I tried briefly also this compilation of some earlier Mortal Kombat games. It was fun to play the first MK game like it was meant to be played in an Arcade. I got as far as trying to beat Goro. Then I had to give up for that session. Maybe I’ll try again later.

Old School Rally is really nice to play if you are familiar with CMR PS1 games. There are some differences. The cars aren’t official ones. They are fictive manufacturers and models. You also don’t get to fiddle with car settings actually at all. The damage that the car takes does affect the controllability of the car. If you damage your car greatly the driving becomes more difficult although not impossible. Car has breaking and steering functions although I don’t get to see under the hood so much and I think it isn’t actually required. My notes here are based solely on plaiyng this game. I haven’t seen the source code. This isn’t an open source release after all.

Breaking seems to be the critical fact when it comes to how you can handle your car. It isn’t, in my opinion, as accurate as was with CMR games. You also don’t get to fix how the breaks work. Other abilities of the car are the ability to accelerate and also the highest speed you can reach. Also, there aren’t any other competitors. There isn’t a series to compete in. Instead you get a record time that you have to beat on each stage.

Graphics are a bit fuzzy but I think they work just fine considering the clear comparison to CMR games. Actually, if you think about it, the CMR games are already almost 30 years old. This fact brings for me and also for a lot of other older gamers a huge amount of nostalgia. There is actually a lot to play in Old School Rally. I did spent over ten hours playing the campaign of this rally game. The How Long To Beat website states that it takes eight hours to finish Old School Rally.

I could share some tips for a beginner. Try not to completely wreck your car. Try to break in time with the corners. Don’t break too late or too slightly. Figure out which car to buy or not to buy. If you totally wreck your car during a stage consider retiring from the event and starting over. You can easily end up with a broken car trying to desperately beat the record time. This can be almost impossible. At times I found myself in this loop of repeating a stage. The driving is in Old School Rally more difficult with a broken car.