To busy working for a Respectable Financial Institution to do much of anything here anymore I'm afra...
To busy working for a Respectable Financial Institution to do much of anything here anymore I'm afraid.
Member since:16.07.2000
Reviews:292
Members who trust:87
It’s well known that I’m quite keen on all matters petrol related but it’s perhaps less well known that the second word I learnt to say as a nipper was ‘car’, coming before ‘mom’ much to the distress of my poor mother! So it’s no huge surprise I really like this game, based around the insane world of the British Touring Car Championships, which I also really like!
* Game Features *
Not only does the game feature the BTCC but it also features the support races! I can bat around Silverstone like a maniac in a Ford Fiesta, worrying my mom by saying I’m just practising for the next time I drive her Fiesta. Another choice is the purer racing experience of the single seater Formula Fords, although the complete lack of downforce and skinny tyres means you can quite happily spend half of the time you spend cornering with opposite lock on. Great fun! The better you do in the support car championships the more support car championships you can race in – including Lister GT cars!
But all this is but a backing to the main show, the Touring Cars! Now, if you’re interested in motorsport and have never seen a touring car race all I can say is – “Stupid!”. It’s some of the closest, most exciting racing you will ever see and the game reflects that. TOCA 2 is set during one of the BTCC’s stronger periods with many entries from manufactures such as Volvo, Ford, Vauxhall, Peugeot, Nissan and more. You take your pick for
the car you want and can then set off for a championship featuring pre and post race commentary from Top Gears Tiff Needell! Although should you not fancy a championship you can have a single race or a time trial, each with a few variations such as ghost cars. You can even jump onto the test track an all manner of configurations – including an oval and a rally style dirt track! A final mention should go to the cheat codes that do all sorts of interesting things like lowering gravity or making the cars bounce off each other.
* Realism *
Well, I have to admit to never having driven a touring car but the game certainly gives the impression of realism. It’s fairly hard going keeping the car under control and moving forward with a fair degree of speed. The cars are fairly nervous (Especially at high speeds, say on the test oval) and the controls are very sensitive – too sensitive in fact, even on the very lowest setting. However, you’ll adjust to it and when you do it’s very satisfying throwing the car through a high speed corner just slightly to fast and correcting the slide on the way out.
The cars are also easy to damage, although initially it’s superficial damage you can soon start damaging wheels, smashing windows and smoking engines. Trying to get the apex of a corner just right through a broken window is pretty hard, although could just cheat and change the camera you view the action from. However, it seems impossible to damage the car so much it refuses to carry on.
Silverstone is the only circuit in the game I’ve actually been to, but TOCA includes a whole bunch of UK circuits as well as 10 mysterious bonus tracks, one of which is a street race in America! Track realism is pretty good, although some things have changed due to the games age – for example, last time I went I sat in a grandstand at Maggots and when I was blasting round it in my Formula Ford I was a bit surprised to see it’s not there. So surprised in fact I managed to send the car into a rather graceful parabolic arc which I only just recovered from. But plenty of other parts on the circuit looked familiar and obviously, the layout’s pretty faithful although you won’t find any of the new fangled night races here (Unless you get a very heavy storm which makes things almost as dark!).
You also get all the correct drivers, Menu, Leslie, Cleland etc – all easily identifiable by the name on the rear passenger window, as are you of course, with all the cars looking present and correct. Although you can ‘skin’ the cars, for example – one of the alternative skins provided with the game makes the Volvo come over all military camouflage!
* Graphics and Sound *
The sounds generally pretty good – the engines wail and whine in a pretty convincing manner until you’re flat out in 5th/6th gear at which point you can hear the engine sample looping quite clearly which spoils it all a bit. You can hear other cars approaching you though, which is something that Grand Prix 3 manages to avoid! Plus there’s the rather sickening sound of your car bouncing over the gravel traps at speed – you just know there’s going to be one hell of an impact at the end!
The graphics though show their age a bit, although the resolution can be cranked well over 1280x1024 which helps to alleviate some of the ageing. My main complaints are that in good weather the tracks all look fairly flat lighting wise, Need for Speed 5 (Porsche one) by contrast has changes in lighting levels, shadows, the works! Also textures look a bit blocky close up and your car is a fully textured 3D object so the drivers hands look a bit like they’re made of lego! Ultimately though, when you’re on a hot lap there’s nothing bad enough to put you off.
* Problems *
Well, there is one thing that really bugs about this game. It’s the sort of half hearted nod to arcade racers in the full on BTCC championship mode that bugs me. There are various “You must finish higher than 3rd in this race to carry on” type conditions with the bad excuse that your team would sack you. You could easily be running say 2nd or 3rd in the championship and then get sacked after one bad result, possibly even due to being punted off by someone else. Personally I’d prefer to try and win the championship by blowing the competitors away in the remaining races. That though, is the only real thing that gets to me in the game.So, it’s a game for all petrol heads really – although I’d guess it would be an absolute nightmare playing it on keyboard! You really do need some form of analogue controller for this game. It’s also not the easiest game out there, if you found the last Need for Speed game tricky you may want to practice some more on that before tackling this.
Finally, spec time!
It runs 100% smooth on my 1.2ghz athlon/512mb/geforce although it will also run happily on, say, a 450mhz/12mb/tnt2 albeit in a lower resolution.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
sounds like a good game i might just reent it and give it a go.
Jehaz 24.08.2001 01:46
A ha! another Toca2 fan. Good op. Thorough and detailed...and accurate.
TallTone 15.08.2001 18:01
TOCA 1 was one of the few games I played regularly on PC and I can see from your review a lot of differences - in terms of tracks and cars available. But, in your opinion, is it worth buying again?
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Aug 15th, 2001
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