Tweaking options include choosing the tires and the gearbox, tightening the suspension, and adjusting the brakes. Interestingly, semi-automatic as well as manual and automatic transmission is available. Because parts wear down over time, there is a car inspection after each stage. Inspection I say? Where else in a rally game have you seen this before? This means that you are NOT allowed to proceed to the next stage if, for example, your brakes only function at 20% of their capacity. You usually will have to undertake repairs in the service area before you progress, costing you precious time; the limited window you have to make repairs forces you to make strategic decisions about what to risk, particularly if you have abused your vehicle by driving it into the ground earlier. For those racers looking for extreme realism, the creators of the game introduced with a patch the ability to make some physichs tweaks by altering an external file, the NASCAR Heat way. It is possible to achieve the realism level promised for Richard Burns Rally where one frontal hit of a tree results in the total engine breakdown and of course, an abandon. After racing, you may watch, edit, and save your racing experience using what is without question the most multifaceted video replay interface I have seen. There are more than 20 internal and external viewing modes, with some of the outdoor perspectives positioned at less than an ideal angle.

I was reading the other day the article written by the someone from SCi regarding the upcoming Richard Burns Rally. They say: "We have approached this aim with three fundamental design goals in mind � a realistic handling system, realistic wear and a damage model that actually affects the handling of the car". That's nice, but these features were introduced years ago in RC. The damage model is excellent and is nice to see that any part of the cars can receive dents. Damage is not just caused by collisions but also by normal driving, as virtually all parts of the car degenerate from wear-and-tear. The specific elements that increase damage are when your engine is revving high and overheating, when you are driving at high speed over rough surfaces, when you change gears a lot (you may often lose second gear), when you are exposed to water splashes and rivers, when you use your brakes a lot in a short period and they increase in temperature, and when your wheels spin a lot trying to get traction on the road surface. More important, one system affects another - if cooling/exhaust is damaged, the engine will loose power. The tires, as with everything else on the car, will be damaged. If you are unlucky, this might result in a puncture to one of them. All is not lost though as you do carry a spare wheel (renewed after each service area) which can be changed, although this does take time. I believe this was only seen in CMR3, almost four years after RC. Speaking of punctures and the road surfaces that may cause them, here's what SCi tell us about RBR: "Richard Burns Rally uses a very different map generation technology to other rally titles. (...) The ground surface in our game is build up by texture-mapped polygons � each texture has its own material map. This means that on any given piece of track, we can realistically model a variety of ground textures � from different depths and states of gravel, grass, rock etc." Again, this has been done before in RC - take a look at the screenshot and see for yourself. And yes, you can hear and feel the car both rumbling over the rough surface and loose some speed while the tires loose grip.

This is clearly a racing simulation, not an arcade racer. The realism is exceptional, with everything seeming exactly like the real British Rally Championship. There are even actual Forestry Commission Ordnance Survey maps to help you navigate. The arcade mode in Mobil 1 Rally Championship is obviously a throw-away, a token nod to those who are not simulation aficionados: it is extremely disappointing, as it does not give those used to arcade racers enough simplification in what it takes to be a successful driver, and in any case many of the roads are so narrow that the thrilling passing moves common in arcade racers are out of the question.

When you do rally racing, you have to get used to a totally different sense of time and distance. The shortest stage takes two to four minutes, most average 10 to 15 minutes, and the longest is between 20 and 26 minutes. So those whose virtual driving experience consists of short bursts of conventional racing excursions will need a lot more endurance and long-lasting focus here. It can also get a bit lonely over these long distances, as close-pack racing is extremely rare in this kind of competition. While in other kinds of racers your brain can get dull just circling over and over again around the same oval track, here the same can happen just from the unending empty sameness of some of the routes.