It was probably the most accessible Colin McRae game to date without compromising on complexity. There's a huge amount of QoL improvements, and you can pretty much set the game up to your taste, from a hardcore simulation to an arcade racer. Plus better physics engine allowing for more destructible environments and more realistic collisions, and new disciplines with off-road vehicles. It should really be the best game in the series.

The only issue for me is the way it looks, but it's a huge issue. There's a vignette filter and an over-abundance of bloom. A stylized look like this can work in some games, but not here. It just makes every track look like it's taking place in scorching heat, and kinda makes the entire experience unpleasant. I'd rather play more flawed games that look better.

It's a shame though that we still can't get a mode with background music like the arcade mode in CMR 2.0. In this game there are 3 modes, and they all kinda play the same, which isn't really a bad thing, since the reason for it is that you can customize your experience to an equal amount in each of those modes, but it does make you question why they exist in the first place.

In addition I had a strange issue with controls here. Not gonna blame the game for it, it's probably on my end, but sometimes the car would outright refuse to steer or have like 2-3 second delay to button presses. Not sure what's up with that. I hope I won't have such a problem with the sequels.