You also have the chance learn from an experienced coach. This opens the game up to casual gamers, but gives pros the chance to fine tune their vehicles. You have the option to tweak the car, but it's not necessary. The way it's laid out is different than most Codemasters games. The menu layout is easy to use, and before each race you can check telemetry, tune your car (downforce, transmission, anti-roll, tire, brakes, ride height, suspension, and toe and camber), learn about the course, and in some cases switch vehicles.
Fans familiar with TOCA will be happy to know the GT and modern day licensed vehicles are in full supply.
What delighted me was the full range of vehicles. Each win opens up two to three new racing challenges, and each time it's a surprise. Using a vertical branching system, Codemasters enables players initially to pick from two styles of races, play through three to four races in that style, and progress up the ladder. The World Tour is the game's designated launching point. Each race is packed with a substantial replay playback feature that enables saves, rewinds, fast-forwarding, camera options, and more. A third mode, Simulation Mode, enables players to partake in free races, time trials, multiplayer races (two-player races), and for Xbox owners, System Link and Xbox Live competitions.
Modes range from World Tour, a 30-plus tier set of challenges to Pro Career, which requires you to pick a racing style and launch into a full career competing in that style. Codemasters brings its normal level of professionalism to the game. Codemasters has put a lot of control into the hands of gamers, and this third iteration continues that trend with great success. No, it means you can drive everything: GTs, muscles cars, open-wheel roadsters, F1s, 4X4 monster trucks, rally cars, and heck, even 18-wheelers. This doesn't mean you get to drive 35 different kinds of sedans or 35 different kinds of trucks.
It gives you the chance to drive more than 35 different racing disciplines, and it improves the great physics, graphics, car deformation, and handling that have made all Codemasters' games so likeable. And in light of its success, you might ask how a simulation can be fun.
I admit, Criterion's Burnout series has spoiled us all. TOCA Race Driver 3 is, in a way, Codemasters way of maintaining its racing morals, if you will, while broadening the game to newer levels for the huge US racing market. Critically and commercially, these games have done exemplary in Europe, but in the US their reception is mixed. Codemasters, the long-time racing development and publishing team from Europe specializing in European car simulations, has for years given gamers simulation style games. The title highlighted the Ferrari's singular brilliance, giving gamers a realistic and terrifically challenging port. About four years ago Japanese publisher SEGA brought PS2 gamers an arcade port of Ferrari F355 Challenge.