Richard Burns Rally is a 2004 rally racing sim developed by British studio Warthog Games (not their first take on the genre) and published by SCi Games. As its name implies, it was developed with feedback from the famous British rally racer, Richard Burns
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Upon its release, the game had a mixed critical reception and it was a commercial flop and both the publisher and the developer were soon bought out by other companies, making the game Abandonware just few years after the release. Despite this, an extremely dedicated Cult Following has been able to keep the game alive through Game Mods and the Abandonware status has attracted new players over the years. Thanks to this, the game has managed to earn respect as one of the best and most realistic racing simulations around.
Tropes featured in this game:
- Cool Car: Not an overly wide range of cars to choose from (in the vanilla game, at least), but they're all your standard Present Day badass rally cars.
- Drives Like Crazy: Averted, when compared to other rally games. You very rarely have to push the throttle to its limit, since your car already has much higher acceleration than normal passenger cars. Therefore, you simply need to appropriately "ration" your speed according to the terrain and surroundings of the current stage. There's really no sense in trying to complete a stage by going at break-neck speed.
- Driving Stick: As in any good rally game, you can choose between either manual or automatic transmission. Manual requires some practice, but is more sensitive and can reward you with better control over your vehicle and better stage times.
- Game Mod: The fanbase is responsible for a lot of them and they're usually of very high quality. One of the most notable of these mods is RSRBR.
- As a matter of fact, Warthog did release some tools for modders to convert cars to the game, in response to efforts from fans who reverse-engineered RBR and developed plugins and tools for it.
- In-Vehicle Invulnerability : You can't kill yourself, but if your car crashes particularly hard, you and your co-driver will become alarmed, yelp, groan and wave your hands a bit for a few seconds. Sure, you can't die or injure yourself, but at least you get an appropriate reaction from your crew.
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Nintendo Hard: Hoo boy...firmly on the hard end of realism. The roads are usually quite narrow, handling physics are portrayed down to minute details, speed is not always of the essence and the countdown to the stage only uses voice acting and NPC gestures instead of visual icons. Still, it's rather easy to play if you have a bit of patience, fast reflexes and some basic experience with other rally games. It's generally better to play with a driving wheel, but more skilled players can easily drive stage after stage via the keyboard. - Some Dexterity Required: Finesse of the wheel and pedals is a MUST if you wish to push a rally car to the limit. Act too rough with any of them and you'll lose control of the car-with disastrous results.
- Subsystem Damage: Anything from the car's body to suspension can be damaged while driving, all of which affect your driving in some way.
