PR-Manager Emily Britt has been so kind to send richardburnsrally.de the latest RBR preview (V0.48 28-JUL-2004). Here are my very first impressions (please excuse my humble English):
hour 1: something is weird, either with the program or me. I must be missing something, as I drive like shit. Did I expect too much?
hour 2: Crash. Crash. And, hell yeah, crash! How am I supposed to complete only a single British stage without having to crawl? Bad program or bad driver? I can't be that bad!
hour 3: ok, ok, I went to Rally school (even though I did play RC2000, RT, LFS and probably hundred other racing games before). And somehow Richard Burns did help. I got used to the car handling and finally cooled down enough to be able to *concentrate* on listening to my CoDriver's pacenotes.
hour 4: gee, that's cool: I finally learned to drive with patience and control. Even though I still am not able to do a 'Scandinavian Flick' without injuries, suddenly there is no big problem about British forest tracks anymore. I begin to think about things that I never did care about in Rally games before. And the best: I did not have so much fun anymore since playing Colin McRae 1 (also a breakthrough title in its time).
hour 5: it's getting better and better. I won my first British Rally (on 'Rookie', of course) and am totally hooked. This program is awesome. And it even gets better the more you find out: for example to drive on snow is simply so cooool, and I did not have *any* problems on tarmac (apart from being scared to death driving with full speed through some narrow villages). MORE MORE MORE
I could go on like that for hours.
This is the best racing game I have ever played.
BUT: I found it incredibly important to use the incar or bumper cam, as the exteriour cam IMHO almost is unplayable (at least for me). I guess that's simply because you do not have the 'butt feeling' here you need to feel the track. No wonder that the arcarde people who are used to the exterior cam often do not succeed at all with RBR: no other cam is harder to play than this one. So do yourself a favour: use the incar or bumper cam.
So I can confirm from my very own experience: this game is a SHOCK on first sight for regular computer players. It is so incredibly hard that many people just looking for fun probably will not have the demo longer than 30 mins on their hard disk. But who invests some time and patience, and finally is able to shake off the "experience" from other Rally games may receive the PC Rally experience of his lifetime. RBR probably can be like hell for beginners (see my first hours), but later it feels like heaven if you hold on to it and don't give up on it too early.
I dear to predict that the pc release of RBR, even though probably having some initial start-up problems because of the difficulty, will become a fair success and, most important, will win a very *loyal* fan community, as this program is absolutely extraordinary and gives you a kind of Rally sensation no other Rally program does.
Warthog and SCI: THANK YOU a hundred times.
Finally I am addicted to a racing game again - I almost forgot how this feels.
Kai Fiebach
http://richardburnsrally.de
P.S. once I can stop playing for a little longer I will posts some more preview impressions on our German site. To see the latest pc screenshots, click on SCREENSHOTS (there will be more of them over the next days).
And yes, there is a cockpit cam on the left side and I will post a screenshot of it tomorrow. Even though this 'windscreen view' looks a bit dull compared to other titles, it offers a great track view and this is essential for a Rally game. Moreover this resembles the kind of visibility I have by daily driving. And if all that does not convince you: in this rock-hard simulator you would not have time to look down to your instruments without slowing down anyway, so the windscreen view combined with a digital dashboard IMHO is a clever solution.
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) en nog niks mee gedaan.
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Haal dan ook even de community patches voor betere graphics, nieuwe cockpits en dergelijke. op 
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Draait ook perfect op m'n amd 2400 en 9700, overal 50 tot 60 fps en alles op high. Maar je hebt ig een stuurtje nodig, een momo is ig perfect! :strip_exif()/u/76417/crop64b968678c4ed_cropped.webp?f=community)
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en k heb nie eens een ati kaart. maar een gf 4ti4200
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