Cheap CODEMASTERS Colin McRae Rally 2005 ( Windows ) (Software) (No Operating System) Price

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Customer Reviews of CODEMASTERS Colin McRae Rally 2005 ( Windows )

Great Game, But The Path Getting To Play It Is Not Great
The good news is this is a great game. There are a great number of races and cars available. The physics relative to the tracks and cars are excellent. Although I have spent only about 10 hours playing this game, I can see many hours of enjoyment from the challenges and graphics it provides. <
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>The bad news is it may take you a while to figure out how to get it to work with the computer hardware you have. It took me several hours. This is the reason I gave it a 4 rather than a 5 star rating. Before purchasing this game you can go to www.codemasters.com and download a demo. As I have not done this I am not certain how it compares to the retail game. <
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>If you purchase this game and run into technical problems, the web site Codemasters provides does not have a menu item for technical support. You can get to a web forum with people going crazy over trying to figure out the problems they are having though. If you have problems typing the word "support" in the search box they have will get you to a form for technical support. I have no experience with what kind of response that would provide. <
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> A summary of some of the problems I encountered are given in the text below. If you are going to be using a keyboard to play this game I would suggest skipping the rest of this message. If you are going to be using a wheel, the length of the following comments might seem to be discouraging. <
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>On this I would say if you were to put in to words the steps it took to get into a car, start it, back it out of your driveway and point it in the direction you wanted to go, you would be surprised at the length of the description. Although there are a lot of details about getting the game to work they are not any more complicated than that. <
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>The computer hardware I am using: 2.4ghz Intel; 1.5 gig Ram; ATI 9600XT (128 Meg), and the old (Red) Logitech Momo Racing Wheel. <
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>For some reason the default brake/accelerator setting was set to digital rather than analog. <
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>The default dead zone for steering is set with some play. This must be set to zero. The default zero line was slightly off center on my setup, but could be moved by turning the wheel one way or the other. Doing this would not get it centered exactly, but getting it close and hitting the down arrow worked. <
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>A steering sensitivity set about 60 percent off the center line provided the best response for my hardware/preference. <
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>Changes made to the wheel setting do not go into effect until you exit the game and come back. If you would like to race with the old settings before exiting to get the new ones, the program will let you do that. <
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>Before starting a race you have to go through several menus using the left and right arrows followed by the "Enter" on the keyboard to make menu selections. During this process you might find the keyboard stops working. For me it was after selecting something other than the default car. Moving the highlight on menu selections after that point must be done by rotating the wheel left or right and back to center for each move. The handbrake rather than the enter key is used to make the selected menu item. <
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>After going though all that you might find difficulty in steering the car. I suspect this is a problem many people have attempting to steer the car with experience from the physics used by other games or what is expected from the experience of the real thing. <
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>The natural thing to do with a game like this is to attempt to drive very fast sliding sideways around the curves the first time you are out the gate. The first time you attempt to do this you will find the software does not adjust to the crazy stuff you are attempting to do, and it should not. While it might be very hard to do, driving very very slow for two or maybe three stages and keeping the car on the road will give you the knowledge about the software physics aiding in developing faster sideway skills you will be proud of. <
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> Rich <
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Bait and Switch
The game gave me about $5.00 worth of irritation which I will vent here. After buying the game which advertises 30 something cars and 100 or more race courses, you will find that you will either have to "earn" access to the majority of these or pay another $5.00 or so to Codemasters to unlock them. My only other complaint to this otherwise terrific game is that the wheel setup is hard to figure out, but eventually by trial and error it works properly. Good software should be common sense to implement instead of guesswork. I bought a Thrustmaster FF Enzo Wheel and had to get a new driver from Thrustmaster (FFB_DRV_1_0_3) so Colin Mcrae Rally 2005 would work with the wheel. Bottom line, I wasn't too happy having to spend a few hours to get things working and have to pay extra for what is advertised in the game description. One more thing, Codemasters warns you that if you uninstall the game you will lose the extras. That would mean going online again, getting the 8 codes, paying another $5.00, and then reentering them again to unlock the game features. The work-around is to save the entire game folder AND the registry settings, and swap them back in after reinstall. You shouldn't have to go through all this to make software function properly.

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Good game...
This game is challenging and fast paced. The co-driver calling out continuous verbal directions adds a whole new element compared to other visual type racing games. This game has rallies in 9 different countries with a total of 76 stages and over 30 different cars, so you can play for hours and never see the same stage. The reasons I didn't give Colin Mcrae Rally 2005 a five-star rating are: The game will not allow me to navigate the menu with anything other than the steering wheel/pedals, which didn't occur until after I configured my "wheel" for this game. This is very frustrating, since the instruction booklet only gives reference to the menu functions being controlled by the keyboard that ceases to function after configuring the "wheel", creating a trial and error button pushing malfunction-fest. This is probably a leftover of the console (game pad) to PC (no game pad) conversion. The other problem I encountered is the fact that this game has many obstacles that are deliberately placed specifically to crash you. For example, immoveable posts alongside of many roadways and also bushes that although wispy and transparent, stops the car dead while others have no effect and can be driven through. Although some may argue that this adds to the challenge, I feel that it just adds frustration. Overall, this game is very entertaining.