I started playing the Colin Mcrae series way back when part 2 was released. I only got my hands on a demo and I quickly looked away as I was not into hardcore simulation rally games at that time. My first serious Colin Mcrae Rally game was part 3 somewhere back in 2003. The excellent and realistic car handling got me hooked instantly and the graphics on a Geforce graphics card with pixel and vertex shader capabilities were downright amazing. The crashes were realistic, the cars would get dirty with mud and snow, the sound was spot on and the physics were very well done.

The game also boasted minimal music (only in the menu screen) but even then it was quite good. The whole menu had a retro feel to it. I spent well over 6 months playing the game in different modes, challenging my friends for the best times and appreciating the great graphics. After a year, Colin Mcrae Rally 4 was released. It had all the great features of the previous game plus additional cars to drive this time around but for some reason the new handling system didn't appeal to me as much as the previous game and I was a little disappointed with that. Apart from this small quirk, the game was otherwise really good. One of the most impressive graphical features of Colin Mcrae Rally 3 and 4 was how the game treated weather effects and how rain drops would gather up on the windscreen. Not only that, but these rain drops would also be pushed up on the windscreen when the car accelerated rapidly. It was quite pleasurable driving through a heavy downpour.

Colin Mcrae Rally 5 was named Colin Mcrae Rally 2005 and was again a solid addition to the franchise. The graphics were further improved whereas for some reason the handling of the cars still wasn't as good as part 3 or maybe it was just me. After a couple of years in development, Codemasters then released Colin Mcrae Dirt. It had the most realistic graphics for a racing game in the market and the evolution engine really showed! Apart from the drop dead gorgeous graphics the handling in the game was finally improved over the previous versions and felt quite solid and realistic. The PC and Xbox 360 versions were both excellent. The game also for the first time let players race multiple vehicles on track at a time. Other additions included racing buggies, trucks, hill climb events etc. Overall, it was an amazing game and really brought this series to the masses. The evolution engine was also used for Codemaster's other outstanding racing game, Grid which was also a hit.

Unfortunately in September last year, the rally driving legend, Colin Mcrae, along with his son, died in a helicopter crash. With his untimely death, I assumed that probably the excellent Colin Mcrae rally series might also come to an end. Fortunately, Codemasters decided to continue the franchise and will be bringing out Colin Mcrae Dirt 2 sometime next year with a futher improved Evolution engine. I just can't wait! They released some renders for the game and I hope the final product would look just like the target renders (or something pretty close).

It is just heart breaking that the new Need for Speed: Undercover game had to be such a mess. It is a rushed product and is full of graphical glitches. They also completely missed out on the whole point of "Open World Racing". Why they did this is beyond me because I remember the Need for Speed series as being one of the most polished and technologically advanced franchises out there. The original Need for Speed was made by collaborating with the famous "Road & Track" magazine. Another great thing about the old NFS games (particularly 1 and 2) were the car showcases. The custom videos and information for each exotic was a sign of how much love and care the developers had for each car they had in the game. The music for the first 3 NFS games was also top notch, Saki Kaskas, the man responsible for the outstanding music made really memorable tunes for the game including classics like Scud, Gore etc. Why was he dumped for licensed music is something I'll never know. Licensed music may prove good for the fanboys but playing Mudvayne or any other modern rock/rap/techno band doesn't exactly fit the bill when it comes to creating the right mood for a racing game. The music by Saki Kaskas perfectly fit the game and used to feel great. I certainly would love to have him back on the team.

Another trend we have seen with the current NFS games is the car customization which was inspired by the movie, The Fast and the Furious. Well, I bet it has a lot of fanboys but NFS was never about having a Toyota and driving it around with turbochargers in the dead of night! NFS was about driving exotics...cars people only dream of driving in their lifetimes.

Finally the track design for the new games is utter crap as compared to the classics. They presented you with not only exotic locations but also an option which is greatly missed by me...track customization. You could choose to race at morning, dusk, dawn or night and the old NFS games also provided the option for choosing weather conditions. Abandoning that was certainly a step backwards for the franchise because those options added a lot of depth and replayability to each track. I still remember how cool it was to outrun cops in the dead of night with my front headlights busted and only the rotating police lights being some sort of guide for incoming track hazards and corners (good times). I also miss driving around in an F50 with the snowy weather on mountain tops at nighttime. It was really so relaxing. Oh and I just remembered, what happened to the awesome car interior views we had in the old NFS games? They added so much immersion to the game. Why abandon that? I remember NFS being closer to a simulation than to a current arcade-like crap state it is in now. Plowing through a roadblock in NFS 4 was also a lot harder because of the damage your car used to gather up. Plus the option of totally losing your car in the original high stakes just added so much to the tension. I hope someone at EA reads this article and realizes that driving around a Toyota in a bland city is not what is going to win the hearts of old NFS fans. They really need to go back to the roots and remake NFS the way it was about a decade ago. All I can do now is pray that EA finally realizes it's mistakes and turns NFS into the greatness it once was!

I just saw the trailer for Punisher: No Mercy over at GameTrailers.com and I couldn't stop saying to myself, "Not another darned average FPS shooter again!" Ever since the release of Half Life, the FPS genre has become a very stiff competition area for extremely high quality games. We have seen titles like No One Lives Forever 1 and 2, the AVP series, Operation Flashpoint, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty etc. With such high standards set for this genre, it only boggles my mind why some developers still opt to go with such mediocre and "half assed" attempts at making fps shooters.

Even over hyped games like Haze for the Playstation 3 recently proved to be a disaster even though it had quite high production values (it even inspired Korn to write song for it). Too bad the game had to be an epic fail after release! Anyway, if you are wondering what trailer I am talking about (in case you haven't seen it yourself), here it is...