MOBILE GAME REVIEW

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Colin McRae Rally 2005

Is Colin McRae, a Subaru Impreza WRX and an empty country lane a recipe for success on mobile phone

by Mike Abolins

The nature of 'difficulty' is something of a black-art in the world of games. Whilst everyone agrees it's important that a game offers some challenge so that a genuine satisfaction can be achieved from mastering it, exactly how much of a challenge to offer is rather less straightforward. Experts in this sort of thing (which we hasten does not include us), often suggest something called a 'difficulty curve' which in a perfect world should gradually arc up from a low-base allowing players to master the basics through an increasingly steep angle which will thoroughally test their new skills.

In true rallying style however, the Colin McRae series has always adopted a more direct line through the challenge corner, in it's attmept to simulate the tough rally experience it tends to start it's engines at 'tricky' and accelerating rapidly into 'bloody difficult' before reaching 'nigh in impossible for humankind'.

This is as true for mobile as any format. Hence, the frustrations which dogged CMR 2004, leaving many players (including ourselves!) to abandon it early having repeatedly failed to win the stage, once again raise their ugly head. Whilst CMR2005 thankfully no longer requires you to finish first in order to progress to the next rally, you'll more than likely find yourself perpetually wallowing at the bottom of the leaderboard looking up at apparently superhuman opponents.

In Colin McRae Rally 2005 however the difficulty isn't only reserved for the player. The developer too has taken on a Herculean rtask in trying to cram in as much as possible from a full 3D PC and home console game into the humble handset. The result is something of a mixed-bag. While the developer's boasts of 3D graphics are over-inflated, you'll notice immediately from the screenshots that Colin McRae Rally 2005 resembles its bigger PC and console brothers a lot more closely than CMR 2004 did. Offering two viewpoints (cockpit and chase cam), there's a tangible sense of speed when you're pelting across the Australian outback or the winding roads of England in top gear, with amusing arcade physics resulting in some impressive airtime over the jumps. How often you're able to make it into sixth gear, though, is another matter entirely because CMR 2005 has one of the most absurdly flawed control systems we've encountered in a mobile game. Using your phone's joystick or keypad, there's absolutely no degree of fine control at all. Of course, PCs and consoles have analogue input devices (the further you push the joystick on an Xbox or PS2 controller, the sharper the turn, for example), something that's lacking on a mobile handset. Consequently you end up going sideways through even the gentlest curve, more often than not culminating with a jarring halt as you hit a piece of the incredibly repetitive scenery. The same lack of finesse also dogs the brakes and accelerator, if you decide to turn the auto-accelerate feature off.

Whilst progress can be made if you're doggedly persistent, ultimately the answer to the question 'but is it actually worth it?' won't prove too dificult for most of us.

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