Russian Car Driver HD

In Brief

Russian Car Driver HD is a vehicle based game with 6 modes of play that include Free ride, Drifting, Drag Racing, Parking, Rallying and Championship Racing.

Introduction:

Russian Car Driver HD is a car racing game developed by Falcoware and published by Atriagames. In this game you take the role of a random dude who decided to visit Russia and on arrival was given a car for free called a VAZ 2108 aka the Lada Samara. From then on you can either continue with the free ride story mode, go racing, drifting, rallying or just cruise around. You can repaint your car, the cars rims, put advertisement on the back window and once unlocked by completing various races select different liveries to gie your car some individuality. After some time cruising you earn XP and can choose what to improve; i.e. Acceleration, Top Speed, Brakes or Handling. In Russian Car Driver, the car drives you!

Edited reference accessed HERE. 2018

Installation:

Russian Car Driver downloads to a 149 MB zip file that unzips to three files, (a setup.gcd security wrapper, the set-up file and a read me). If you have multiple hard drives you can save games on any drive you wish by replacing the C drive letter in the path with whatever drive letter you wish the game to be installed to. The newly installed game is 525 MB in size. The game installs to the following path by default:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Falcoware\Russian Car Driver HD

However, if you prefer a different path for installation for example I use G:\Games\ name of game instead of 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Falcoware\name of game'. You can edit the default path when the Setup - .Russian Car Driver HD - Select Destination Location window appears.

Five shortcuts are installed to the desktop, four of which can be safely deleted (i.e. Falco Space - Online Game!, FalconLine Online Games Website, FalcoGo WebGL Games! and Free Games Downloads!). If you 'don't' want to install the games shortcut to the desktop during installation, just make sure the install desktop shortcut is unchecked when the 'additional task's window appears; you will still get the other Falcoware shortcuts installed. Also, if you don't like icons installed to the quick launch task bar, make sure you also uncheck the appropriate checkbox when the 'additional task's window appears (after the Select Start Menu Folder window).

Synopsis:

Russian Car Driver is a fun car driving game. A game with multiple radio stations, multiple game modes, a reasonably detailed map with no annoying visible glitches in it and variety of color customization unlocked while playing various missions . The occasional bear or deer on the road adds to the Russian ambiance of the game. When you complete a mission, you can upgrade aspects of your car, such as speed and steering. If you enjoy listening to royalty-free stock music and driving around the Russian countryside while accidentally slaughtering wildlife, you'll get something out of it. Russian Car Driver is not meant to be on par with the top-grade racing or car driving games on the market, so just enjoy it for what it is - a good bit of fun.

The Game:

Russian Car Driver is a mobile port, so the graphics are relatively basic for a game released January 2017, however, this does not detract from the games charm. There are six game modes, two of which are locked at the start of the game. These two locked modes include Drifting, which as any car enthusiast knows is a method for driving around corners and bends using your brakes to 'drift' around with the back of the car skidding along in a controlled fashion. Once the Drift mode is complete you unlock a further mode called Drag Racing. I didn't have the time to unlock the Drag Racing mode, but was excited to find out what this entailed, sadly after watching a video aimed at the Drag racing mode (see video I've linked to in the video section below), it wasn't exactly as I'd envisioned it. I have an old drag racing game that was given away here several years ago, which although graphically inferior, was nevertheless a decent drag racing game that emulated the actual sport. The drag racing element of this games drag mode bares no resemblance to actual drag racing. You basically race along a straight stretch of road with a standard car, avoiding other traffic and driving as fast as you can; very disappointing, however, there's lots more to try in this game, so instead of turning the game off to search out my old copy of that drag racing game from a previous giveaway I continued exploring this game and wasn't disappointed. :)

The other three modes that are unlocked right from the start are a Free-ride mode that allows you to drive anywhere in the game world. There are two maps to choose from in this mode, countryside and off-road. You can also select what sort of weather or time of day it is; i.e. sunny, rain, foggy or night. Free ride includes a story mode, which can be toggled off. If you choose story mode you will receive various messages from someone called Sanya via a mobile phone, who will give you instructions on where to go. A marker on screen appears whenever you get one of these messages. As you progress through the game you earn experience points which enable you to upgrade your vehicle. There are four features that can be upgraded. These are max speed, steering control, engine power and braking performance.

The next mode is called Parking, where you have a series of parking tests, some easy, some not so easy. For each parking exercise, you have a certain amount of time to complete, and can be awarded one of three medals; bronze, silver or gold depending on how fast you completed the level. If you fail to get the bronze you have to start again. Once all 12 parking exercises are completed you unlock the first of the locked modes i.e. Drifting. The final two modes include a racing and rally mode. All modes have three difficulty settings (Beginner, Middle and Professional) and each of these includes 12 stages.

There are three camera views, chase, bonnet and behind the wheel. The following are the key bindings (locked)

Steering = WASD or arrow keys
Lights = L
Ignition = I
Gears = Y
Camera view = toggle C

There is also a Heads Up Display (HUD) where all the key bindings are accessible via the mouse, plus you can access the cars radio via a toggle on the left hand side of the screen. To open the radio click on the tab that's just visible on the left hand side of the screen. You can change channels via the back and forward arrows when the radio tab is open. There are several radio stations available that play royalty free music, and include Rock FM, Electro FM, BPAN FM, Metal FM, Trance FM Hit FM and DNB FM. You can turn the radio off by clicking anywhere on the opened radio apart from the channel buttons. The HUD includes a speedo on the top left of the screen and an engine rev counter dial on the top right, plus below the rev counter are button toggles for the gears, lights and change camera view. Along the bottom is a button that opens up information about your experience points.

The options menu offers quite a few adjustments for example the display options allow you to adjust texture quality, view distance, terrain quality, toggle animals on or off (if you hit an animal in game you kill it). You can also toggle on or off the grass, traffic, texture filtering, bloom effect, vintage FX effect and vertical sync. The control options include steering help, manual or auto gear selection, plus you can toggle on or off three brake assists i.e. ABS, TCS and ESP. ABS prevents the wheels from locking when braking hard or when on slippery surfaces, TCS avoids wheel slip when one wheel rotates faster than the other as in when you are cornering and ESP is an electronic brake force distribution that improves braking performance. The sound options include volume sliders for the radio and engine volume plus a master volume control. There are also some in game toggles that include being able to toggle on or off the drivers hands when the camera view is from behind the wheel. You can also toggle on or off car deformation, which if turned on will show damage to the car (though this is nothing like the car deformation you see in games like the Flatout series or Bugbears latest creation Wreckfest). Damage to the car in Russian Car Driver HD results in some minor cosmetic damage and smoke appearing from the engine compartment. You can also toggle on or off road police, who react to you if you are speeding when passing them. You can also toggle the dynamic overview camera and BPAN (haven't a clue what that is yet). You can change the colour of your vehicles body and the color of the wheel rims as well as choose from various exclusive styles; however, these are locked at the start of the game. You have to complete level 6 in the racing mode to unlock the 18 different styles, for example a double black stripe that runs along the length of the car from the bonnet to the boot.

Falcoware have just released a new version of Russian Car Driver with an HGV vehicle instead of a car called Russian Car Driver ZIL 130: Truck Driving simulator.

Whiterabbit-uk 10th December 2018

Conclusion:

Overall I was reasonably impressed with this budget game. It's not a Grand Theft Auto, Need for Speed or Shift AAA game, and despite it's fairly simplistic graphics, it's got loads of game play options to offer. For free you really can't go wrong. I definitely recommend downloading this game and trying it out for yourself.

Videos of Russian Car Driver HD:

You can see several in-game videos of game play HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE (português), HERE, HERE (game trailer shows all six modes), HERE (Drag Racing), - Truck Driving simulator HERE (русский)& HERE.

Suggestions:

After you've had an opportunity to play today's giveaway please take a few moments to give some positive or negative feedback; for example, what you liked or disliked about the game, or how it could be improved. If you don't like the genre at all, please explain why and if any, what improvements would change your mind? If you don't have time to post a comment today, please do so at your convenience, thank you. If you wish to post a review or comment about the game later, you can access the comments section by going to the game giveaways home page, then scroll to the bottom of the page where it says Archives and select the date the giveaway was live (giveaway days are in bold type). This will open the appropriate page for you to post your comment or review. Alternatively, you can google the name of the game and include Gamegiveawayoftheday in the search. This should give you a list of links to whenever this game was given away.

If you miss today's game giveaway you can always get the game via Falcoware 24/7 HERE. There is a EULA message that says if you agree to download the game, (this isn't included in the game giveaway version) you also agree to install Relevant Knowledge, which is a data gathering service, however, you can refuse to download Relevant Knowledge by clicking the disagree button and you will still be able to download Russian Car Driver. I downloaded the game via this method before the giveaway went live last night and on comparing the giveaway version to the download directly from Falcoware, there was no difference apart from the one directly from Falcoware didn't include the HD suffix and appeared to be a PC version and not an android port. When closing the game down, there are no browser re-directions for both versions .

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting Russian Car Driver HD to work please visit the FAQ's Thread HERE and read through the communities comments because sometimes fixes have already been posted, for example, a common issue seen since the Themida wrapper was introduced three years ago is that some community members installation of the game are blocked by their security because Themida code has been known to hide malware, (usually an error message is flagged for example 'The executable is corrupted' even though in reality it is not); so as a precaution some anti malware programs will block and even delete the suspect installation files even though the files (i.e. the setup, read me and setup.gcd files are actually totally free from malware. This issue can be solved either by rebooting your computer in safe mode with networking or a quicker method is to temporarily turn off your security software to allow the installation. You could also try white-listing the setup.gcd file. In the almost 12 years this game giveaway site has been operating there has 'never' been a game given away that was infected with malware.

If for any reason you want to contact the giveaway team, for example, you have a game to offer the community, or are unable to download the latest game or other issues that the FAQ's thread or these comments don't cover or solve you can do so HERE

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Falcoware for giving away Russian Car Driver HD and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

If Russian Car Driver HD doesn't interest you, but you still hanker for something new to play, you'll find details of some game deals whether they be sale items, indie bundles or games being given away for free HERE (I've not updated the thread in a while, but most of the links still take you to the latest deals).

The rest of the information that used to be posted in the game review can be found in the forums HERE. Finally, check out Delenns threads for details of other free games and offers HERE and elsewhere in the game discussion forums HERE, (usually on the first page of the game discussion forums).