Colin McRae Rally 3 (CMR3) made its debut on the Xbox and PS2 consoles a couple months ago, and now the PC version is finally here. The previous two Codemasters' Colin McRae games provided some of the best rallying action around. Was the CMR3 worth the wait?

The game features two game modes - Championship and Stages. In the Championship mode you play the role of Colin McRae, world famous rally driver, with the help of your AI navigator Nicky Grist. You take control of Colin McRae's Ford Focus RS and attempt to become the best rally driver in the world. The championship will take you through Australia, Spain, Finland, UK, USA, Sweden, Greece, and Japan. Each country has seven courses, each one with it's own landscape, whether it be gravel, snow, tarmac, or wet. It may snow in Sweden or rain in Japan (the rain effect demonstrated in the Japanese stages looks absolutely stunning). Of course, there's competition from other cars and drivers, but that's what makes it all so entertaining. At the end of the eight rallies, the driver with the most points wins the World Rally Championship.Sadly the championship mode can be played only from behind the wheel of McRae's Ford Focus.

The Stages mode lets you race on any of the tracks in any car of your choice against up to four players (split-screen on the same PC), with the person setting the fastest time on each stage being the winner. Fortunately, in this mode you aren't restricted to just using the Focus RS as in the Championship mode.

CMR3 features over 15 rally cars including the Ford Focus RS WRC, Ford Puma Rally, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 7, Subaru Impreza 22B Sti, Lancia 037, Fiat Punto Super 1600, Citroen Xsara Kit Car, Citroen Saxo Kit Car,the MG ZR Rally Car and even a tank as bonus. Of course, each car handles uniquely, some are more skiddish, while others seem tight.

CMR3 also supports full damage modeling. That means the cars are fully deformable, everything from your bumper swinging off to broken glass as you hit a tree sideways. Any damage you inflict upon your car will get carried over into the next stage, and can only be fixed one you get to one of the service points. Needless to say that your car is a mess after just twelve hours of racing. However I would say the damage model is still not completely believable.

I've played it hard for a week to find what's really changed since CMR2. No doubt, CMR3 provides some improvements in comparison with CMR2. The damage is one of the many excellent things about this game alongside the beautiful graphics. Finally, I can't really say much about the force feedback support since I didn't spend sufficient time testing the game out with a wheel. I did mostly play it on the keyboard.

However there's no LAN/Internet multiplayer mode, there's only Colin's old Focus in Championship mode, there's no setup for any car when driving in stage mode, and also car behaviour model is rather step backward. That doesn't mean that CMR3 is not bad game, only I expected a little bit more :(

Overall, CMR3 is still one of the best rally simulator for the PC on the market, especially for casual gamers, but I cannot give this game more than 75% Because if I gave this game 90%, then CMR2 should have gotten at least 120% :)  Download demo (121MB).

System requirements:
Minimum: Pentium III or Athlon at 750MHz, 128MB RAM, Supported 32MB Graphics Card*, DirectX 9 Compatible Sound Card, 3.5Gb Hard Disk Space (3Gb for game, 500Mb free after installation), DirectX 9 installed
Recommended: Pentium 3/4 or Athlon at 1.4GHz, 512MB RAM, Supported 64MB Graphics Card*, DirectX 9 Compatible Sound Card, 3.5Gb Hard Disk Space (3Gb for game, 500Mb free after installation), DirectX 9 installed

*Supported Graphics Cards: ATI Radeon 8500LE, 8500, 9000 Pro, 9500 Pro, 9700 Pro, Matrox Parhelia, nVidia nForce 1 & 2, GeForce, GeForce 2, GeForce 3, GeForce 4, SiS Xabre 400
The following graphics cards are NOT supported: Radeon 7200, 7500, Rage, Voodoo 4, Voodoo 5, Matrox G400, Matrox G440, TNT2, All 16-bit graphics cards

Note: If you want to play multiplayer (split-screen), just make sure you have another game controller besides a keyboard hooked up to your PC.