''Rig'n'Roll'' is an open world

truck A truck or lorry is a motor vehicle designed to transport cargo, carry specialized payloads, or perform other utilitarian work. Trucks vary greatly in size, power, and configuration, but the vast majority feature body-on-frame constructi ...

driving simulation and

racing video game Racing games are a video game genre in which the player participates in a racing competition. They may be based on anything from real-world racing leagues to fantastical settings. They are distributed along a spectrum between more realistic rac ...

released on 27 November 2009 in Russia and during 2010 in the rest of the world. It simulates truck driving and

management Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a Government agency, government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includ ...

along with associated business strategic activities, and features North American trucks. The game takes place in

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

and

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a state in the Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the 7th-most extensive, ...

, in the year 2014. The game was published by 1C and developed by SoftLab-NSK's Igor Belago, who was inspired by games like ''

Grand Theft Auto ''Grand Theft Auto'' (''GTA'') is a series of action-adventure games created by David Jones and Mike Dailly. Later titles were developed under the oversight of brothers Dan and Sam Houser, Leslie Benzies and Aaron Garbut. It is primarily d ...

''. ''Rig'n'Roll'' also includes a program for the creation of skins for trucks,

license plate A vehicle registration plate, also known as a number plate (British English), license plate (American English), or licence plate (Canadian English), is a metal or plastic plate attached to a motor vehicle or trailer for official identificatio ...

s, and trailers. Gameplay modes include

racing In sport, racing is a competition of speed, in which competitors try to complete a given task in the shortest amount of time. Typically this involves traversing some distance, but it can be any other task involving speed to reach a specific go ...

, single-player missions, regular truck driving, and free cruising.

Gameplay

Rig'n'Roll offers a lot of road exploration based on real-life locations, with multiple missions to be completed and places to visit in non-linear environments. Management in this game is done by using sliders, and much of the game is focused around cargo/truck selection and choosing routes. To start missions, the player drives into a warehouse and chooses either a normal delivery to another warehouse (which can be a solo delivery or a competition against AI opponents; the highest payment goes to whoever reaches the destination first) or a race with other truck drivers. Every delivery has a time limit, and the payment will be deducted if the player's truck hits anything while delivering fragile goods. While on the roads, players can interact with

NPCs A non-player character (NPC), or non-playable character, is any character in a game that is not controlled by a player. The term originated in traditional tabletop role-playing games where it applies to characters controlled by the gamemaster ...

(e.g. hitchhikers) and take on sidequests. For the management part of the game, the player is able to hire or fire drivers, adjust driver AI behavior for both trucks and cargoes, upgrade their fleet of trucks, view rankings list, improve truck rating statistics, manage and expand their business economy at freight management offices, warehouses, and via a PDA device known as ''"Black Shark"''. Each driver has his or her own preferences for options such as choosing to make long or short distance deliveries, whether they should deliver fragile goods and how often they should participate in races. Changing the AI behavior may increase the amount of money the driver earns for the company per day but it may sometimes cause his or her loyalty to drop. Although there are no speed limits on any of the in-game roads, there is a heavy emphasis on following traffic laws while driving. In addition to hitting other vehicles, the player can be pulled over and fined by the police for offences like driving at night with the headlights off, driving in the wrong direction and not giving

right of way Right of way is the legal right, established by grant from a landowner or long usage (i.e. by prescription), to pass along a specific route through property belonging to another. A similar ''right of access'' also exists on land held by a gov ...

. Committing an offence will usually trigger a pursuit by a police car even if there are none around at the time when the offence took place.

Development

This game was in development for over 9 years due to the developer of the game focusing mainly on making hardware/software equipment for multimedia, TV broadcasting, VR systems, imaging systems for training simulators, and video game

engines An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power g ...

for computer games. Before release, it was also featured at E3 2005,

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, as well as several other Russian gaming exhibitions and developer conferences. A demo was announced for 2009 and then for 2010, but both scheduled dates were canceled. All cheats were taken out of the game prior to release. Also, modding possibilities, trainer usage, save file hex-editing and hacking of the game were somewhat restricted.

Reception

Rig'n'Roll has so far received mostly fair to positive (mixed) reviews on the

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/ GameRankings sites respectively, praising the game for its realistic graphics in depicting the Californian scenery, impressive physics, truck designs, music soundtrack, intuitive controls, mission structure, and gameplay variety. The game was also criticized because of its truck-driving simulation aspects feeling too "arcadey", for having a weak in-game tutorial, a lack of

multiplayer A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system ( couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...

, and for frequent delays in development.

References

External links

* {{Trucking industry in the United States 1C Company games 2009 video games Business simulation games Focus Multimedia games Single-player video games THQ games Truck racing video games Video games developed in Russia Video games set in 2014 Video games set in the United States Windows games Windows-only games pl:Hard Truck#Rig'n'Roll