Colin McRae Rally Mac Bairnsdale VIC

The arrival of a top-flight driving game on the Mac is so rare an event that it should be greeted with whoops of delight. But there are a few points that need to be considered before we crack open the champagne to celebrate the release of Colin McRae Rally Mac.

The first, and perhaps the most obvious, is the timing of its release. Coming as it does just a few months after the tragic death, in a helicopter crash, of the motor racing legend after whom the game is named, you could be forgiven for concluding that this is an example of the most tasteless form of cashing in. But in defence of Feral Interactive, the game's publisher, we should point out that in reality this is just an unfortunate coincidence. Indeed, Feral has been working on porting Colin McRae Rally to the Mac for a very long time.

Now we Mac gamers have learned the value of patience over the years. We usually have to wait a few months, sometimes even more than a year, for big name PC and console games to make it onto our platform. But this release is based on Colin McRae Rally 2005, which launched for PC, PlayStation and Xbox in September 2004.

Was it worth the wait? On the plus side, the Mac version is a faithful reproduction. There are more than 70 different tracks to race on; over 30 beautifully rendered cars to choose from, including both modern and classic rally cars; control that varies depending on the weather conditions and damage to the car, as well as the physical characteristics of the vehicle; a wide variety of different play modes; and graphics that were at the cutting edge of technology when the game was first released.

To reproduce these graphics faithfully, you'll need a cutting edge Mac. It will run on older hardware (we tested it on a 1.5GHz PowerBook G4), but you'll have to reduce the graphics settings to produce a playable frame rate. Ideally, you'll need a minimum of a 2GHz Intel processor, in a system that has a dedicated graphics card - the game will not run on systems such as the MacBook or Mac mini, whose graphics processors share the main system Ram.

Navigating around the menus and option screens feels rather too much like the original console version - the Mac has a mouse and a full keyboard, so why can you only get around using the arrow keys? Within this menu system, you can select from Challenge mode, where you can drive individual stages or multi-stage rallies; Championship mode, where you drive as Colin McRae; or Career mode, where you work you way up through the ranks of your own rallying career. You can also play multiplayer games against other players on your local network, or online using GameRanger.

All other issues aside, our main problem with Colin McRae Rally Mac is not actually an issue specific to this game, but it goes a long way to explaining why there aren't more driving games developed for our platform.

The simple fact is that trying to control the nuances of any racing car - especially a rally car where accurate throttle, brake and steering balance is so vital - using a keyboard is horrible.

Yes, there are USB steering wheels available, but the fact that there are so few driving games for the Mac means it's very unlikely you'll just happen to have one sitting around, waiting for the release of Colin McRae Rally. And if you were going to shell out for one, wouldn't you be better off opting for one you could use with your Xbox or your PlayStation, so you could also play the countless other driving games available for those platforms?

Colin McRae Rally Mac is an excellent technical achievement and has clearly been a labour of love on the part of its publisher. But the overwhelming feeling we were left with after playing it was, why bother when you can have a so much better driving experience on any games console? It's a bitter pill to swallow after such a long wait for this game, but perhaps we should just admit that the Mac isn't a suitable platform for driving games after all.

Verdict

Needs PowerPC G4 1.6GHz or better or Intel processor + Mac OS X 10.4 or later + 512MB Ram + Graphics card with 64MB VRam + DVD-ROM drive + 4GB hard disk space + Lan or broadband Internet connection for multiplayer mode

Author: Mike Hirschkorn

MacUser Online