If your a fan of Toca 2 or sim racing games then you should check out Toca Race Driver 3.
Toca 3 has two main modes of play, World Tour and Pro Career. World Tour is the story mode of the game. You will select your difficulty(normal or hard) and work you way up tiers, each tier features different racing classes but they will repeat classes over and just add in more tracks. The farther you move up the more difficult the game gets. Sometimes after finishing a race you will be treated to a cut scene which features your crew chief Rick. These cut scenes are like the ones in Toca 2 which are viewed from a first person view.
In Pro Career mode you will chose a style of racing like Off-Road, GT, Oval, Classic, ect. You will race in different styles of racing that fall into that main class of racing. For example in Classic you will be racing classic rally cars, american muscle cars, 30's and 50's Benz's, 60's and 70's GT, ect. One of the nice things in Pro mode is that you have a few more options to how you want to race, you can turn off yellow and black flags, set how many laps you want to run, and set the AI difficulty to a custom setting of 50%-110%.
After completing a racing class it is then unlocked for free play, time trial, and multiplayer modes which are in a third mode called Simulation. This introduces the biggest problem with Toca 3, which was also a problem with Toca 2. You are always changing racing classes throughout the game, you will go from driving a monster truck to driving a GT race car. These styles of racing are very different and they don't give you the chance to practice a new racing class for the first time. For example, the first time you race the American Muscle Car class you get no chance to test drive the cars or tracks first, you get to qualify, then race. Sometimes you get a set time limit to qualify, like 15 minutes, sometimes you only get three laps. This also makes the ability to tune your cars settings useless since you can't change them and then make practice laps to see if your changes did anything postitive.
There is a way to get around this, when completing a racing class in Pro Career mode you unlock it for free play, time trial, and multiplayer. So what you can do is set the AI difficulty to 50%, set the race for one lap, win the race and unlock the time trial mode for that class so you can practice before racing in World Tour mode. Now with time trial unlocked you can mess with your cars setting and try to get a small edge on your opponents which you will need. Your opponents in Toca 3 are very tough, for the most part they never make mistakes, they almost always run the same racing line, and sometimes they don't try to avoid a wreck and will bump or smash into you.
The car physics are also improved in Toca 3, if you turn on the pro sim physics the cars can be very challanging to drive. And for some reason you have to turn this setting on everytime you play the game, it doesn't save it. Toca 3 features damage just like in Toca 2. They use indicators on the hud to let you know how damaged a system is. The damage is cool but sometimes it's weird how it works. One time I lighly hit my rear quarter panel on a tree and after that my tranny was having problems shifting. Toca 3 also features a cockpit view like in Toca 2. Don't expect anything like the detail of PGR 3. The interior in most of the cars is just a black carbon fiber look. But the hood line is corect for each of the cars and will show the body color you selected and any decals or strips that are on the hood. Toca 3 also features yellow flags, warning flags, and black flags now. It's a little weird how it works. If you are going around a turn and slid to the outside of the turn and get just a little off the track and into the grass you will get a warning flag because the game thinks you got a advantage to doing that when in reality you lost time. Basicly any time you get your tires a little off into the grass you get a warning flag, even if you gained no advantage doing it which is usually the case. And driving on the grass for extended periods of time will damage your suspension and get grass and dirt on your tires making you loose traction when you get back onto the track unless your driving a rally car.
The graphics are very good, as good or a little better then Toca 2 but not better then Forza. The game runs nice and smooth and I've never seen any frame rate drop off. The damage modeling looks good, you'll smash up fenders, bumpers, and break windshields.
The sound is good, the cars and effects all sound find but they will use the same engine sounds for cars in the same racing class. So a Pontiac Trans-Am sounds just like a Buick Gran Sport. The only problem I've had with the sound is that sometimes my custom soundtrack would pause for just a second which gets a little old when your listing to your favorite song.
This game has decent value, there is alot of races to finish and it has multiplayer also. You will probably get burned out before you beat everything, the game starts to get old after your racing the same racing classes over and over with just new tracks added in.
Toca 3 is a good racing game. It has alot of different racing classes in it, good graphics, alot of tracks, and execellent car physics. If you into arcade racing like NFS or Burnout then you probably won't like this game, but if you like sim racing games you might want to check it out.