This game is excellent. I had great fun progressing through the levels and buying new cars etc. I never tried fine tuning the engines or anything, so can't comment on that.

The game looks supurb, it really showed off my graphics card (Nvidia 8800GTS) to its full potential and it was actually quite pleasant just driving some of the rallies to admire the scenery. It also ran fine on both XP and Vista, though Vista was a bit choppy at the higher settings.

There are lots of car types to use, and different terrains and race styles. One of my favourite styles pitted you against one other driver on the same track at the same time, but on different routes. Basically, they split the track down the middle and you each have to stay in your own half. So you can race unhindered but get to see where your opponent is etc. The closest analogy I can think of is that olympic cycling event where two cyclists go round the circuit and try and catch each other.

Some people have said they had problems controlling the car. I don't see how you can have problems. I used the keyboard and it was really simple. Basic cursor key stuff with a few extra buttons. I don't know, perhaps they are playing the game at the highest skill level? All I can say is swallow you pride and play it at an easier skill level.

Great fun. The only downside is that once, for some reason, the game decided that my save file was corrupt, and I had to start over. Other than that, the game is supurb.

GRAPHICS:
Ok, I had read all the reviews about needing a very high spec pc and although my pc isn't super duper I thought it would probably work ok like all my other high spec games. I bought my pc about 2 years ago, then it was very good, (7600gs 256mb, 500gb sata, 2gb ram, pentium 2 core duo). Now that is quite good I think. However at 1240 by 1024 at the lowest detail settings it still only gave about 4fps with a steering lag of about 1.5 seconds (my formula force ex steering wheel works perfectly with other games) i decided to turn the graphics down a notch or two. I ended up at the lowest possible setting, still with a notisable steering lag! Even at the lowest setting it still looks sort of ok, but not great at all.
VERY DISSAPIONTED

PLAYIBILITY:
I had the first colin mcrae games on my ps1, the game (although old) was very fun, the handling was great and the menu was top notch. On dirt though, the handling is BIZZARE!!! on dust the back wheels have no grip but the front wheels feel like they're super glued to the ground, the slightest twitch of the wheel sends the car into a 360. But then sometime its the other way round. The steering lag i mntioned earlyer doesn't help either. Also the menu system, although inovative, takes forever to navigate. Like when exiting a race
first you select pause,
then you select exit,
then it asks you if you want to retire or quit to main menu,
then it asks you if you sure you want to quit to main menu,
then it spends 5 seconds saving
then it spends 5 seconds telling you that its saved.
This may not sound to bad but it takes time inbetween each of these steps and after a few races get EXTREMLY ANNOYING.
It's like the game hasn't been thought through by anyone who has any concept of T...I...M...E
The sound is decent though on some cars not great, miles better than the rest of the game.
It is also rather odd in the way the car exelerates (though this might be to do with the graphics). From a standstill the car excelerates normally to about 50mph, then sundenlly, like you've hit a hyperspace button, the world flies backward and it feels like your travelling at the speed of sound, although on the dash it says your only going at 65 mph. I know its not a sim but seriously, this is a bit odd even for an arcade racer.
VERY DISSAPIONTED

OVER ALL:
This game is probably ok for someone who has all the time in the world and doesn't like any realism and enjoys spending ??1billion on a computer with 16 processors, a 500TB drive and a 60 GB video card. If you don't have this however, really this is not going to work for you.
No S-E-R-I-O-U-S-L-Y, IT WILL NOT WORK WITH ANYTHING BUT THE VERY LATEST GAMING COMPUTER. If you don't have the very latest ??1billion gaming computer, it WILL NOT WORK!!!!!!

VERY VERY VERY DISSAPIONTED



*edit: on fun I meant to put 2 stars but now it won't let me
FUN: 2 STARS

Game is excellent in my opinion. Some of the negative feedback isnt justified.

Yes, you do need a very powerful graphics card but on my 8800 GTS framerate is in the 40's with all graphic options maxed out at 1680x1050

Handling takes getting used to I admit but it's just sensitive thats all. Using a joypad I have completed the whole game with no problems.

On the downside there are a few minus points though.

1) Your saved games can get corrupted (even after the patch) so I'd advise to make a backup of the file.

2) The game really taxes your graphics card and if you're overclocking too much the game will crash or lockup regulary.

But anyone with a high end GPU shouldn't miss out on this.

First, the moans:

I didn't think I would mind, but the American accents really are incredibly annoying! I eventually had to turn the speech off. This is supposed to be a Colin Mcrae game after all... (And I love Americans, honest!)

The hardware requirements are ridiculous. My PC has an E6850 3GHz cpu and a factory-overclocked 8800gt graphics card and I still couldn't run it smoothly at the max settings. I tried various combinations of lower res/lower detail and never really got a decent framerate allied with acceptable appearance.

There was something wrong with the car handling. A light touch on the brakes and the car stopped almost immediately. Conversely, floor the accelerator and the car felt sluggish, and there was little or no wheelspin. Never really managed a good sliding turn.

No sense of speed. The speedometer could be reading 70 or 80 mph, and yet it felt like the car was doing 20 or 30. Some of the races felt like they were being conducted in slow-motion, almost as if they were underwater.

To get to an actual race required wading through page after page of menu screens, and a change in the graphics options almost always needed the game to be restarted (Rally 04 accepted changes on the fly).

The game crashed. Just once, admittedly, but I've played Rally 04 for hours and hours and not once did it go belly-up.


Now, the praise:

The scenery was quite nice.

The realistic damage to cars and trackside objects was welcome.


So, overall, if the programers had paid a bit more attention to car handling and 'feel', and a bit less to flashy, cpu-hungry graphics this could have been a decent entry in the Mcrae series. But they didn't. And it isn't.

This game will, without you consent, install "hidden drivers"
These starforce drivers are not compatible with a lot of computers including mine.
When you report your problems to Codemasters you will not get any help at all, as they wont admit there is a problem with this Russian software.
These drivers will stay on your system after uninstalling game and you will need a special tool to remove them.
Leave this game alone and any other games that use "starforce"
Ubisoft have ditched starforce and its time Codemasters did the same