Colin McRae Rally 4 MP Demo

Racing games provide you with the opportunity to go as fast as you want without the repercussions, unless you count losing against the AI. In the case of rally simulators, on the other hand, going as fast as you can is not always recommended, since you are rather encouraged to pay attention to the track and avoid losing control of your vehicle in turns.

Colin McRae Rally 04, as the name clearly states, is the fourth installment in the series and it brought forth an almost all-new experience, featuring better graphics, heavily improved gameplay and a realistic car handling, which makes for very entertaining and intense races. Thus, the rally championship is depicted as close to reality as possible, along with all the famous drivers that are part of it.

As always, the game includes all of the official tracks from all over the world, including Australia, Sweden and the UK, along with their respective stages. Since every turn has been modeled to be as precise as the ones found on the track, the experience should come as close to the competition as possible, without actually being there.

Before each race, the game allows you to customize certain aspects of your ride, in order to improve its performance out on the track. Hence, you can manually choose the type of tires you want to use, as well as adjust the suspension stiffness and change the gearbox ratio, in case you want faster acceleration, or a higher top speed. Naturally, in case you make some bad choices, the car behaves very strangely during the race and makes it more difficult for you to obtain a podium finish.

Lastly, the multiplayer component has been heavily refined as well, since you can now compete over LAN and the Internet, depending on whom you want to play with. The racing modes are the classic ones, meaning that you either try to get the best time across the track, or go head to head with the other competitors in all-out races.

In the end, Colin McRae Rally 04 truly innovates itself and the genre, thanks to all the elements that work together to create a refined racing experience. Because of this, the multiplayer match-ups should be just as fun, albeit the rather boring game modes might not provoke too much excitement.