TOCA Race Driver 3 is easily one of the best Racers for the PC. It has the perfect balance of racing depth and realism.
The key to this game's sucess is the sheer variety and depth. As other reviews might have said if there is a form of motorsport it is probably in the game. And that is true. The game features oval racing trucks, Formula 3, Honda Type-R's, Off Road dune buggies, DTM race cars, World GT, exotic super cars, and even IRL indy cars. The amazing thing is that although there is such a wide range of racing specialties, they all share the same supurb driving mechanics and damage simulation and realistic handling. So no one branch of racing seems to have been given less consideration. Another great advantage of all this is that you will learn new kinds of racing that you enjoy, which will encourage you to try all of the different disiplines. For example, I got TOCA thinking I would mostly stick to Open Wheel and GT generes, but while playing the world tour I found out that I was really good at driving American Muscle Cars and had alot of fun with that.
The wonderful depth of the game brings about one draw back, although there is not a short supply of cars by any measure (there are close to one hundred) but because these different cars are spread between Historic, GT, Open Wheel, Touring Car and Rally and Offroad, there are times where each individual series or class of racing might feel a little in need of more different models of cars in it. For example if you consider high end Japanese Sports cars, TOCA has Nismo S-Tuned 350Z and Honda NSX-R racing in that race. Where a game like Grand Turismo 4 would have Toyota Supras, Mitsubishi 3000GTs, Honda S2000s, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIIIs, Mazda RX-7s, Subaru WRX STIs, Mazda RX-8s competing in a similar race. To it's credit though there are usually atleast 2 or 3 different models of cars on average in each racing series.
No game is without its flaws, the AI racers are very cunning, but unless you play them on the hardest difficulty they are much too easy to defeat. The reason for this is that the key mechanism that they use to make the opponents less difficult is by having them brake sooner for corners and take them at slower speeds. This makes passing them remarkably easy just by braking harder and closer towards the corner and taking the turns at a higher speed. So I advise everyone to play the game on the hard difficulty if you are an expert at racing games or you will never see another competitor's car your entire career in TOCA unless you are lapping them.
However playing the game on hard bring's it's own set of difficulties. Sometimes hard is too hard because on the hard setting one crash or spinout pretty much takes you out of most races. So on the hard difficulty it can be frustrating when you are stuck with a car you aren't good with that you need to race with and win and you have to keep restarting the race. Although restarting is much better than finishing a race you know you can't win. And the game will allow you to move towards in the game even if you dont get first in every race, or win the championship. Usually the top 3 spots at the end of a championship are enough to move you on to the next event. This can make the game feel alot different than other Racing games where you need to win constantly, and the difficulty is adjusted approprietly with rubber band AI, so you catch up when you aren't winning and so the competition catches up when you are. TOCA doesn't do it this way, rather it just lets you fight it out for every point you can get and at the end of a series or championship it doesn't punish you for not getting first place in every race, although you certainly are rewarded for winning.
As for the graphics and sound compared to PC in general they are good, but not great or excellent, compared to just racing games, they are very good. The strong points with the graphics are how detailed the cars are, you can see little details like the vents in the brake rotors and the glimmer of light off the paint and crisp textures for all the sponser decals and mesh wire on the grill of the car and that sort of thing. The tracks themselves are very good looking and look as if they have real surface when the light hit it right you can see the grain and texture of the road, it looks good. It is not as super graphics as Need for speed most wanted but this game achieves great visuals without being overly hard on the PC and without using tons of high tech features.
This game is easy to get into, but it also caters to experts of racing games like me. It can go from easy arcade to brutal simulator just by changing a few settings. If you have a force feed back wheel the effects on that are very nicely done and realistic. A nice touch is that you can choose an in car perspective to race from, although the majority of cars have only a default looking interior with a carbon fiber dashbord and A pillar, it still adds to immersion when you are in the car, and can look to the left and to the right and see your car's side mirrors and if you enable the setting actually see real time reflections of what is behind you. So as true purist you could play from inside the car view, using your side and rear view mirrors on and in the car as your only way to see behind you and turn off the other indicators, and use a multiturn racing wheel with a manual gear box with a clutch pedal (it supports this) and a real shifter. Played this way the game becomes a simulation and is very very realistic once you turn on the three Pro Sim settings: Pro Simulation Handling, Pro Simulation Damage and Pro Simulation Sand Traps. I played about half of the world tour this way, but had to ditch using a shifter for the paddles on my wheel and turn off the pro simulation settings and drive from the bumper view instead of in car once I got to the fastest vehicles that I needed maximum concentration and control of the car. Besides on the fastest racing cars it is more realistic anyways to use paddle shifters instead of a shift knob as these cars have sequential automated manual transmissions without a clutch.
The Audio in the game is good as well. The only fault that I could find is that if you manage to wear out your tires to shreads by going off road and burning rubber for like two minutes straight and blow out all 4 of your tires and then stop on pavement rev the motor up and drop the clutch there will be a tire chiping sound, which sounds very wrong when there are no tires on your car, and there is just a shower of sparks coming from the wheels scraping on pavement. With 7.1 speakers you can get really intense when you hear the other racer's engines behind you and crowds cheering to the sides and your engine roaring in front of you. It is also helpful to be able to hear and pinpoint exactly what tire is starting to squeal as you take corners and have to carefully manage the limited traction that you have expecially on with pro sim handling on. Some of the cars have really exotic and nice sounding engine notes and the sound is in general really detailed from grinding when you shift when your transmission is damage to the gentle scraping of your suspension if a severely lowered car rubs the ground as it corners to the sound of your windsheild wipers moving if you are racing in the rain. One thing that blew me away was how in offroad races you can hear each individual pebble that bounces off the body, undertray and wheel wheels of you cars. And you can hear where they hit aswell, it is extremely immersive feeling and I liked that a lot.
If you are looking for a clone of games like Grand Turismo 4 or Forza Motorsport for the PC, TocA is not what you seek. However, when you give TOCA Race Driver 3 a chance you will find it is even better than these console competitors. It turned out to be more of a game that I expected and it will keep you busy for quite a while. It is acessable for beginners but doesn't skimp on realism and accuracy for veterens. The multiplayer is solid, and although most games seem to not be in the US, finding one that is with the nice server browser is easy. The multiplayer is as good as the single player and further gives me another good reason to play this game. When everything is considered this is the best racing game for the PC.