Paul Jeffrey
Premium
Richard Burns Rally is a rally simulation long regarded as the most difficult driving experience available to PC players since the now legendary Grand Prix Legends hit the virtual racetracks.
Developed with the aid of the now sadly departed 2001 World Rally Champion Richard Burns, SCi Games released this title as a rival to the then very popular Codemasters Colin McRae Rally game.
Receiving incredibly little commercial success, despite hardcore rally fans praising the title the singularly most difficult and realistic rallying experience ever released, SCi shut their doors at the end of 2005 and basically left the simulation to die amidst a sea of rival competitors.
As the game has such a popular online following, over the next several years many industrious modding groups and individuals invested considerable time in developing and extending a simulation that had essentially become abandonware, moving the title far past the expectations of the studios' original intentions. Sadly all this development came at a not inconsequential price, the sheer volume of additional modifications and add on content could easily run into tens of dozens GB of additional downloads and leave many users simply baffled as to how to best get the game to run on home PC's.
This is where the exception Richard Burns Rally 2016 by Martin Pereyra really comes into its own. Weighing in at just 1.56GB, Pereyra has packaged together many of the key elements required to make this a one stop shop standalone game that accurately represents to 2016 WRC season. Featuring the cars and drivers from this years WRC main event as well as the supporting WRC 2 category. As mentioned earlier, RBR2016 is a standalone modification that does not require the original Richard Burns Rally software to operate.
The RBR 2016 mod has received considerable treatment from Pereyra, as the Argentine modder has not only included all the cars and drivers (plus newly reworked AI) from 2016, considerable attention has also been paid to substantially upgrading the physics characteristics of the cars as well as injecting the appropriate third party plugins to allow the game to function properly on modern PC hardware (remember the game was originally launched in 2004).
With a free download available some people may question the moral dilemma that comes with freely downloading software that formally retailed in stores when under the control of SCi Games. With SCi Games no longer in existence and RBR having long since been discontinued then its down to personal opinion on if you want to search out and download this mod. I for one hope that if people do, the RBR 2016 mod can hopefully introduce a whole new generation of gamers get to one of the most impressive rally simulations ever created. A fitting tribute to an outstanding driver.
If you want to know more about Richard Burns Rally, or wish to join up with your fellow RBR fans here at RaceDepartment then join in the discussion in our Richard Burns Rally sub forum. We have the latest news and a sizable downloads section to peruse, so head over and join in today!
Have you tried the RBR 2016 standalone mod yet? What do you think? How does it compare to modern rally titles such as Codemasters DiRT and Sebastien Loeb Rally? Let us know in the comments section below!
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