Mirror, signal, manouver
It has to be said that the only way to play TOCA Race Driver 3 is with a steering wheel or some form of analogue controller. You’ll get by on the early stages with a keyboard for sure, but later on, with the twitchier, more responsive cars, you’ll need that proportional input if you want any chance of balancing the car through the curves at over 120mph. The on/off input of a keypress will soon see the back end of the car skip out and slam you into the Armco.
The damage modelling both in the visuals and in the car handling is excellent. Brake late into a corner and wreck your front spoiler and you’ll soon feel the car understeering when you put the hammer down. Similarly, rely to much on the brakes and you will fade them out… not something that’s good for lap times when you run off the corner at Becketts. But I did see a couple of flaws with the game engine, the oddest one being my snapped off rear spoiler sitting bolt upright on the track, as if it had been mounted there. Whilst not being a deal breaker, it’s these little details that take the edge off the realism a bit.
Click for larger imageOne of the features touted by TOCA Race Driver 3 is the AI’s ‘grudge’ system. The idea is that if you use the side panels of an opponent as a bit of mobile Armco to help you round a corner or if you nudge his bumper and send him into the gravel, the AI driver won’t just forget about it, he’ll come looking for you in the next race and, given the chance, he’ll return the favour. Knowing this system is there in the first place should help you make sure you drive that little bit more carefully and not try the old trick of hammering down the inside on a hairpin and using the sides of other cars for braking.
The AI drivers also display a degree humanity in the way they drive, though they do appear to have near-ESP skills when it comes to avoiding a crash. They don’t hug the racing line or barge into you to get the best line out of the corner… well, not unless you’ve pissed them off in a previous race that is. Even then, the AI sticks within the rules of the race as they don’t want to get black flagged. So they won’t cut across the grass to remodel your door… but then might nudge your wheel arch on a fast corner and send you into the gravel. Happily, the AI cars aren’t made of rock either, so you’ll not be faced with those immovable lumps of moving metal that were the bane of racers before. Smack another car in TOCA Race Driver 3 and he’ll be off all over the track just as much as you are.
