Anyways, lame excuses aside, we move on to the next World Tour - superpowered GT Class A 4WD Track Challenge around the Nashville Super Speedway. The size and power of these cars makes us want to poo ourselves, even though we are fairly regular and go each morning like clockwork after our Weetabix. Somehow we manage to scrape through the two races and get through to the next stage. We’re not sure how we managed to succeed at these races to be honest, as our driving was loads worse than it was on the Rally course. However, our yellow-toothed, pot-bellied alco-Scot manager seems to be happy with our performance for a change, and that’s good enough for us.
The next stage kind of takes us by surprise, as its the huge rear-wheeled American offroad dirt series – all good ole boys racing roun’ the big ol’ Indianapolis Motor Speedway Oval. This section of the game reminds us a little bit of last year’s Flat Out from Empire Interactive, but it’s a hundred times better than that game was – and this, we have to remind ourselves, is just one small fraction of the hugely diverse motorsports mix on offer with TOCA Race Driver 3.
Next, its back offroad for the Baja Buggy KitCar Cup. Jumping over huge speed bumps at 150kph in a big off-road go-kart has always been one of SPOnG’s childhood dreams, and now we can fulfil it. Again, as in every other race so far, the stunning car physics, intuitive and pleasing control mechanism, engine and tyre sound effects and all the other perfectly conceived aspects of the gameplay come together seamlessly. The attention to detail is almost stunning – for example, the signs which your opponents knock off the track sidings bounce off your Buggy with such alarming realism that the mind boggles at exactly how long it took someone to code just that one tiny bit!
After a few rounds skidding and hopping around the National Dirt Arena, we eventually score a lap record – much to the Scot’s delight, who’s voice starts to crack as he gets all emotional and goes in for a kiss at the end of the race. Eeeeeurgh, back off Jock, you stink of whisky and fried Mars bars!
Our initial fears that TOCA Race Driver 3 might be opting for more variety in terms of range of content at the expense of quality of gameplay were, we are happy to say, entirely unfounded. Its at this point that we think we will most definitely be advising anybody we know who likes driving games, hell anyone who likes videogames, to go out and grab a copy of this superlative racer when its out next February. It’s essentially like getting ten or more very good quality driving games in one go. If you are a fan of value for money games (and some of you will remember that this is the foundation on which CodeMasters was built) which provide countless hours of singleplayer and multiplayer joy, TRD3 is a sure-fire winner. If you prefer aggressively marketed tat, which you will quickly tire of, then we can quite simply point you in the direction of the Need for Speed series. If you are, or have ever been, a fan of the TOCA series then we don’t really need to spell it out much further that this is of course an essential purchase. Its not just the next iteration in the series, it’s an immense leap forwards for the series.
Back to the game. Next up, and ticking off another childhood dream, is Monster Truck Racing. Now, as with many of the other racing categories on offer here, the surprising thing is that this is the best Monster Truck racing game we’ve ever played. We can’t, off the top of our heads, actually name any other Monster Truck Racing games (erm, worlds biggest computer games database - ed) but we are sure that they were probably published by Acclaim, and were probably a bit rubbish. This on the other hand is trucking great fun! 1.5m tyres, 4WD steering and enough low-end torque to wheelie straight off the starting grid. There is no emoticon designed to express our current state of happiness with this game.
It’s hard to imagine any gamers seriously picking fault with TRD3. The most ardent fan of arcade drifting thrills, of Outrun or Ridge Racer for example, will appreciate the little more depth on offer here. As Ricky the ever-helpful manager points out when I’m sliding all over Brands Hatch in the International Rallycross, “drifting may look flashy, but it’ll slow you down so be aware of that!”. Ricky is clearly not an Outrun fan.
TOCA Race Driver 3 provides all the spot-on realistic car physics we’ve come to expect from the series with some impressive crashes, damage effects and true-to-life mechanical effects, such as tyres warming up, radiators overheating and engines blowing. Then on top of all that it goes and provides more motorsports genres, cars and tracks than we’ve previously imagined possible to squeeze onto an Xbox disc.
We’re quite a few hours into playtesting the preview version now, and we’ve only just scratched the surface, having only played through the World Tour mode on the easiest setting. We’ve not really looked at the Pro Career Mode, which lets you pick one of the disciplines and play through each championship in more depth with full race rules, calendars, flags, tuning, upgrades and so on. And we are yet to get a taster of the TRD3 Xbox Live experience. Which will inevitably be awesome. If you can imagine something even better than the TRD2 Xbox Live experience, which we are now confident that this is guaranteed to be, you will understand why this game is going to be an essential Easter 2006 purchase.
What more to say? We do have a few minor gripes, but so minor it almost seems rude to even bring them up. Some of the levels seem to need playbalancing a bit better, as we refuse to believe we really are that shit at rally driving. The rear-view mirror feature promised for the final version is absent in this preview copy, but it should make a significant difference to the gameplay. Lastly, we weren’t massively keen on racing classic 1930’s Merc’s – which looked beautiful but just seemed to handle badly and be very slow and frail. Especially after bouncing around in a Monster Truck.
Watch this space for an in-depth interview with TOCA Race Driver 3’s Producer very soon. A playable demo of the game is also available at http://www.codemasters.co.uk/tocaracedriver3
The next stage kind of takes us by surprise, as its the huge rear-wheeled American offroad dirt series – all good ole boys racing roun’ the big ol’ Indianapolis Motor Speedway Oval. This section of the game reminds us a little bit of last year’s Flat Out from Empire Interactive, but it’s a hundred times better than that game was – and this, we have to remind ourselves, is just one small fraction of the hugely diverse motorsports mix on offer with TOCA Race Driver 3.
Our initial fears that TOCA Race Driver 3 might be opting for more variety in terms of range of content at the expense of quality of gameplay were, we are happy to say, entirely unfounded. Its at this point that we think we will most definitely be advising anybody we know who likes driving games, hell anyone who likes videogames, to go out and grab a copy of this superlative racer when its out next February. It’s essentially like getting ten or more very good quality driving games in one go. If you are a fan of value for money games (and some of you will remember that this is the foundation on which CodeMasters was built) which provide countless hours of singleplayer and multiplayer joy, TRD3 is a sure-fire winner. If you prefer aggressively marketed tat, which you will quickly tire of, then we can quite simply point you in the direction of the Need for Speed series. If you are, or have ever been, a fan of the TOCA series then we don’t really need to spell it out much further that this is of course an essential purchase. Its not just the next iteration in the series, it’s an immense leap forwards for the series.
It’s hard to imagine any gamers seriously picking fault with TRD3. The most ardent fan of arcade drifting thrills, of Outrun or Ridge Racer for example, will appreciate the little more depth on offer here. As Ricky the ever-helpful manager points out when I’m sliding all over Brands Hatch in the International Rallycross, “drifting may look flashy, but it’ll slow you down so be aware of that!”. Ricky is clearly not an Outrun fan.
We’re quite a few hours into playtesting the preview version now, and we’ve only just scratched the surface, having only played through the World Tour mode on the easiest setting. We’ve not really looked at the Pro Career Mode, which lets you pick one of the disciplines and play through each championship in more depth with full race rules, calendars, flags, tuning, upgrades and so on. And we are yet to get a taster of the TRD3 Xbox Live experience. Which will inevitably be awesome. If you can imagine something even better than the TRD2 Xbox Live experience, which we are now confident that this is guaranteed to be, you will understand why this game is going to be an essential Easter 2006 purchase.
Watch this space for an in-depth interview with TOCA Race Driver 3’s Producer very soon. A playable demo of the game is also available at http://www.codemasters.co.uk/tocaracedriver3