2012 - Day 4 - Colin McRae

I actually loved watching Colin McRae drive. You know who he is? He was/is a World Rally Championship legend. Years ago, and I mean alot of years, like 10.. or Jesus, could it be around 15 years ago a Colin McRae game was released. I loved it. You could set the kind of tyres you wanted, the gearbox ratio, basically everything that would make the car go faster and better on the kind of road you were on. So if I was racing in England with lots of tarmac I would have a set up that would give me slower acceleration but more speed with certain tyres but if I was on the twisty dust roads of Africa I would have a quick acceleration but with less speed... you get the idea. Fast forward to today, Dirt 2 is the great great great grandchild of Colin McRae. I can say that definitely it is no where near as fun as the first one was. Sure the graphics are photo realistic, the car damage is incredible, and I can play my friends anywhere in the world - but it simply not as fun as the first one was.

Colin McRae - Legend!

It always happens. I remember my brother learning to play poker from an encyclopedia - not wikipedia - a book! We played it, it was good fun. Then after a while I played it a different bunch of people who changed their personalities when the cards were brought out. Seriously, the turned into men. Their expressions changed. They spoke differently. Basically they turned into tossers.

This is what success does to things. Not always, but in alot of cases success turns people and things into tossers. Colin McRae was class, fun, cool. A while later the franchise needed a facelift. It lost the fun element and turned very serious. Thats why also I laughed my ass off when I was looking at my daughter play Dirt 2. She was not taking it really seriously at all, she was crashing into everything, going over the edge of the road, playing it very not correct. And it was hilarious. It brought the fun back.

Colin McRae died in a helicopter crash in 2007. I was sad when he died. It was the end of an era or racing around the same time that I stopped really watching Formula 1.