colin mcrae 2005

excellent game, apart from the graphics being slightly more blocky (but its handheld ffs) its almost idendical to the PC version, ive done a spot of rallying and watch a lot of rallying and though ive never driven cars that powerfull it seems to me to be the perfect rally sim, the cars handle very realisticly

the career mode is an excellent addition to the series, you get to start out racing classics in the mk1 escort series and some very nice hot hatches before you move up to the more powerfull 4wd series, this is a good learning curve because if you start on the 4wd races from not playing a colin mcrae game before like my brother did it can be frustrating and you could end up giving up when you constantly wrap your subaru round a tree

the damage is excellent, it really gives you an incentive to stay on the track when you get to the end of a stage and you have to repair you car, sometimes after a big crash you really get the feeling your car is limping home and your times will suffer badly if your car is damaged

my only gripe with the game is the "white out" after you stray of course, the "white out" is for when you either crash or go the wrong way, the screen flashes white and resets you to the track, this is very unrealistic since in real rallying driver and navigator errors are the main cause of a poor time, and besides that colin mcraes car doesnt magically warp back onto the track if he rolls it down a hill, or gets it stuck in a ditch its time to get out and push.

replayability is good because you often end up trying to do a stage again if you get a really bad time and once youve beat the game on a medium difficulty level you can try the advanced difficulty where damage is turned up and the game gets a bit more realistic, also there are many cars and rallies to unlock by progressing through the career mode and if you do it again on advanced you can unlock all sorts of rally classics like the lancia delta integrale, audi quattro etc

my score for this game is a 9/10