Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: rally

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.

Colin McRae Rally 3 vs 2.0 – Which One Is Better?

Posted on by Viljami

I played Colin McRae Rally 3 for a while. It made me think how much it reminds Colin McRae Rally 2.0. The game that I mentioned first was released for PlayStation 2 while the game that I mentioned after was released for the first PlayStation. Is it fair to make such a comparison? I think that the answer is yes. Maybe 2.0 is a better game? Would 3 be so much better just because of the more powerful hardware of PS2? You can also consider that with Colin McRae Rally 2.0 the developers had a gaming system like PS1 that they were already familiar with and could also develop a good game for. Also Colin McRae Rally 3 was released early in the considerably long life cycle of PS2.

I have to say that Colin McRae Rally 2.0 was and still is one of my favorite games that was ever developed for PS1. I think it just deserves its status as a great game. It could just be that it is also better than a game from same developers that was released on a more powerful gaming system year or two later. What makes 2.0 so great? It has everything to do with the physics modeling, the way you get to fiddle with the car settings and also the pure and satisfying game play that it has to offer.

Sure, the graphics aren’t that good. Still, I think 2.0 offers the best that PS1 can provide when it comes to the quality of the graphics. Can you honestly say that CMR 3 offers graphically everything that this more modern hardware of PS2 can offer? The answer is probably not. If we think about some PS2 games that look amazing graphically this rally game isn’t going to be mentioned.

We could solve this matter purely by looking through Metacritic and check how are the grades of both of these games. We can also check what the reviewers are writing about these two games. Critics are saying that Colin McRae Rally 3 deserves a grade of 86 while 2.0 receives a grade of 83. Also the users are saying that 3 has a score of 7.6 and 2.0 has a score of 8.6. In the comments Colin McRae Rally 3 is said to be one of the best rally games ever made for PS2. That same can also be said about Colin McRae Rally 2.0. You can say that it is the best rally game of PS1.

Is this basically just a comparison of PS1 and PS2. It looks very much like that. I think it is also a matter of how well you can utilize the hardware of the console you are actually developing the game for. Codemasters had more time with PS1 and developing CMR 2.0. They had spent less time with PS2 when CMR 3 was released.

My favorite out of these two is Colin McRae Rally 2.0. It has more settings to mess around with and the overall control of the vehicle is more comfortable. You also get to drive with several cars while with CMR 3 you only get to experience this one car. These are the most important thoughts that made my mind about this little debate.

Maybe it isn’t necessary to try to decide which one of these two is a better as a rally game? They have been created both by Codemasters. Basically they are both rally games but as games they are very different. The sum these thoughts up for me personally I have to say that I like both of these games. I just happen to like the PS1 game a whole lot more. So, my final thought of this blog post will remain to be this: “Colin McRae 2.0 seems to be a more comfortable and better as a rally game than Colin McRae 3 is”. And still…they are both very good games.

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.