Rig 'n' Roll

Rig'n'Roll
Official American boxshot
Developer(s)	SoftLab-Nsk
Publisher(s)	1C Company (Russia & UK) Rondomedia (Germany) Cenega (Poland & CZE) Focus Multimedia (UK) THQ[1] (North America)
Distributor(s)	1C Games, Amazon, Steam, Impulse, GamersGate, Gamesload, Xfire, etc.[2]
Designer(s)	Igor Belago
Engine	VWI (Virtual World Inventor)
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release date(s)	Boxed/Retail RUS November 27, 2009 CZE May 7, 2010 GER May 22, 2010 POL June 11, 2010 UK June 25, 2010 NA July 14, 2010[1] Digital Download November 18, 2009 (Russian) April 16, 2010 (English) May 20, 2010 (German)
Genre(s)	Truck simulator, RPG, Sandbox, Action-racing, Adventure, Truck tycoon
Mode(s)	Single-player
Distribution	DVD, Digital distribution

Rig'n'Roll, acronymed RnR or R&R, is a sandbox-style truck driving simulation and racing video game released on 27 November 2009 in Russia and during 2010 in the rest of the world.^[3][4][5] It simulates truck driving and management along with associated business strategic activities, and features some of the best known trucks in North America (list below). The game takes place in California and Nevada, 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.^[6] Rig'n'Roll also includes a program for the creation of skins for trucks, license plates, and trailers. Gameplay modes include racing, single-player missions, regular truck driving, and free cruising in an open world.

This game is also called Hard Truck 3: Rig'N'Roll but the name Hard Truck was removed after the prequel Hard Truck 2: King of the Road.

Story

The story in the game begins with the protagonist, Nick Armstrong, who hopes to fulfill his dreams of owning the best CCWA (California Commercial Warehouse Alliance) trucking company across California. In order for his dreams to come true, he has to earn more money and compete with the rest of California's import/export trucking companies. Later on, he will be able to meet new friends and expand his business. However, shortly after the beginning of the story, Nick's friend Matthew Tearson goes missing. Nick investigates and is caught in a situation with the Storm Express, a shipping company that has been delivering a new designer drug and silencing third party truckers who make the shipments along the Highway 108. It is later revealed that Matthew is killed by Crane, a trucker from Matthew's company, who also frames Nick for murder by killing a trucker from Storm Express using a wrench he borrowed from Nick. In the end, Crane tries to kill Nick by running over him in a truck, but he misses and Nick chases him in another truck, eventually killing Crane by smashing his vehicle and causing it to explode.

Unlike most sandbox games, ignoring a story mission for too long will end the game abruptly.

After completing the story missions, Nick can focus on expanding his trucking company, with his goal being to win the award for having the most successful company at a certain in-game date. If he succeeds, he receives a large cash reward. Failure to do so results in a "Game Over" screen although the player can continue playing the game with no penalties.

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 (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".^[7] 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. 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.

Trucks

The list of featured trucks in the game:^[8]

• Freightliner Trucks Argosy, Freightliner Classic XL, Freightliner Coronado, Freightliner Century Class*
• Peterbilt 379, Peterbilt 387, Peterbilt 378 (Hercules)
• Kenworth T600, Kenworth T800, Kenworth W900L, Kenworth T2000 (Titan)
• Western Star 4900EX LowMax*
• Sterling Trucks A9500S*
• Navistar International 9300, International 9800, International 9900ix* (not included in final release)
• Mack Trucks CH603, Mack CX603 Vision* (not included in final release)
• Volvo Trucks VNL770* (not included in final release)
• Custom Trucks Guepard (custom truck)

* indicates a licensed truck.

Development

This game was in development for over 9 years^[9] 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 for computer games.

Before release, it was also featured at E3 2005, Gamescom, 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.

Rig 'n' Roll supports AMD Eyefinity-based multi-monitor set-ups.

Reception

Rig'n'Roll has so far received mostly fair to positive (mixed) reviews on the Metacritic/GameRankings^[10][11] 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, and for frequent delays in development.

Versions

Voice acting for Rig'n'Roll was done in English, except for the Russian version. The list below (in brackets) only tells what language the subtitles, text, and menus will be displayed in.

• Rig'n'Roll: Truck Tycoon – canceled by Nikita
• Дальнобойщики 3: Покорение Америки (Russian) – 1C
• Rig'n'Roll (English) – 1C, Focus Multimedia, THQ^[12][13][14]
• Rig'n'Roll: Die Truck-Simulation (German) – Rondomedia
• Rig'n'Roll: Tirowiec (Polish & English) – Cenega

Patches

Patches to improve system performance and optimization were released for Russian version of game. All other versions have these patches included already (hotfixes must be applied manually). The latest patch for Rig'n'Roll Russian version is currently 3.0.5. English US retail is 3.0.4, while the English version hotfix for some downloaded versions is 3.0.1. So any boxed retail version that is newer than the Russian version will have a version number that is greater than the previous release of the game and the latest patch. This can be confirmed while at the main menu, or by looking at the file version properties of the game's executable.

Newer patches to fix additional bugs are reported to only be included in the upcoming expansions, so players would have to buy the expansion first to get the patch. However as for today, no more patches were released, and game has been probably abandoned by developer.

Expansion

SoftLab-Nsk had plans to expand the game map to Las Vegas, according to advertisement banners that were put up along the roads and highways of California. Content included in this expansion was rumored to contain a patch for the game to fix certain bugs, as well as to add a few more trucks, hitchhiker/storyline missions, and gameplay features such as pedestrians that were either missing or deactivated in the original game. The expansion pack along with the patch were planned to be released at the same time as a free download, but rumors have been reported that they were planned to be actually released at a cost - either through an online digital download service provider or at a retail game store. More information on the expansion and a possible release date is not disclosed, and addon itself is rumored to be permanently cancelled by developer or publisher.^[15]

Add-ons

Not many addons were released for Rig'n'Roll.^[16] One addon was however released, and second one is yet unknown. They include airbursh kits and more gameplay content to supplement the game's Sandbox-style driving open world. The biggest addon is The Great Race — a total file size of 578.85МB. Las Vegas addon release date is unknown, but there is a rumor that it has been cancelled by developer or publisher.

The Great Race

The very first major Black Shark add-on modification for Rig'n'Roll: The Great Race,^[17][18] according to 1CPublishing, is expected to be released on December 2010 in time for the Christmas holidays, or Q1 2011 for all English version copies of the game as DLC. The Russian version for TGR is scheduled for release on November 12, 2010. This addon will feature more of CCWA's Big Rigs championship event called the "Monster Cup", which focuses more on allowing players to compete in several arcade-style truck races with selectable map tracks, rather than just in the usual pick, choose & deliver truck tycoon management RPG-style gameplay approach. 8

Monster Cup

The Monster Cup focuses on arcade racing across all of California and a bit of Nevada. Its races are long distance and go anywhere from 10 minutes to 40 minutes. It has eight leagues:

1 - 5th League

2nd - 4th League

3rd - 3rd League

4th - 2nd League

5th - 1st League

6th - Premier League

7th - Championship League

8th - Monster League

Airbrush kits

Airbrush kits to wipe or paint the color and dye of your truck to your preference. It is available in the game's repair truckstop as a way of creating skins.

References

External links

• Official website
• 1C Games
• 1C Rig'n'Roll forums
• SoftLab-NSK website
• SoftLab-NSK truck games
• Rig'n'Roll Review (In English) at PlayHard.ru
• Igor Belago interview at PlayHard.ru
• Additional Rig'n'Roll info at TruckPol