However, this doesn't mean you'll need to have been racing karts since the age of four, Alonso-style, to stand a chance of victory. It's almost entirely due to the game's hugely competent handling model, which has clearly been finely-tuned to deliver particularly convincing experiences, closely relating to the type of 40-odd differing vehicles available.
So it's pleasing to note that such psychological (or should that be physiological?) reactions can be observed during the course of playing TOCA Race Driver 3 Challenge. You should feel the tension of being sat on the starting grid surrounded by revving engines while waiting for the lights to go green, the exhilaration of putting a move on a competitor, and the sphincter-contracting realisation that you've gone too fast into a bend. The best racing games, then, should scare you. The human body wasn't made to travel at such velocity, much less to decelerate violently from it in the event of an intimate encounter with a barrier. Hurtling around circuits at triple-figure speeds should feel frightening, because regardless of how good car safety has become and how Schumacher-esque your skills, it remains a dangerous activity.
Although we didn't get to see the ins and outs of this mode, it sounds like it'll make experimenting with different types of racing much easier.They say the best racing drivers are fearless, which is effectively a polite way of saying they're stupid.
You might want to try your hand at GT racing, or see how much damage you can do while behind the wheel of a monster truck.
To this end, they've created a "spoke" mode, where you can begin with a particular type of racing before moving outward to one of many types of spokes. This time out, the team wanted to give gamers a wider variety of race types, from offroad rally racing to the more traditional lap racing.
This iteration of the series (it was previously called Pro Race Driver) has been in development for upwards of 18 months, and it appears that it's going to be the best of the bunch. Having the champ on the cover of TOCA Race Driver 3 is the perfect way for developer Codemasters to show competitors that they're ready for a fight to the finish line. Afterward, we got a chance to check out a game that's striving to the bring the experience home, as well as chat with Dan Wheldon, who's nearly claimed this year's IRL Championship. The race was a perfect introduction to what racing, particularly on the IRL circuit, is really like. Seeing the cars bumping while jockeying for position is impressive, too, especially when you consider everything that could go wrong at those high speeds. You can even feel them as they go by, the sound waves from their noisy engines rattling your chest. Television just doesn't accurately recreate the feeling of seeing and hearing a car whiz by you at speeds approaching 200 miles per hour. Like many sports (see, I'm already calling it one), auto racing is one of those "you have to be there to get it" activities. I went to my first real race last weekend in Sonoma County, and the experience finally helped me to understand why people would spend a perfectly good Sunday watching cars drive by them several hundred times. For some reason, I always looked at Indy and NASCAR racing in the same way I viewed speed walking or ping-pong: Sure, they let you compete with others, but does that really make them sports? This was my opinion until last week, when something changed my mind for good. Despite my love of nearly all things athletic, however, there was one sport that I was just never able to get into: auto racing. Actually, the term "sports nut" might be more fitting, since I'm one of those folks who obsessively checks scores and news over and over every day. On the outside chance that you've never visited this site before, here's a little bit of information for you: I'm something of a sports fan.