I’ve lost my TOCA 3 disc. I need a racing game for occasional use at games meets. I’m a casual, not serious, gamer.
I tried Live For Speed a year or so ago and the fun isn’t there.
Wants:
[ul]
[li]Fun.[/li][li]Lots of tracks.[/li][li]Hi Opal![/li][li]Lots of cars, of different types. Maybe a truck or two.[/li][li]Fun![/li][li]Any vehicle on any track.[/li][li]AI cars.[/li][li]Networkable.[/li][li]Not locked. I don’t want to pay for cheat codes.[/li][/ul]
Your recommendations, please?
Flatout 2 is pretty good - but there is a little bit of unlocking involved. You can find cheats for free, though.
Try to find 1nsane. It’s an off-road racing game that features lots of different vehicles including a few big rigs, has network capability, and is quite fun. Several fan-made vehicles and tracks are also available. It does have locked content but it’s pretty easy to unlock stuff but if you get stuck a saved game with everything unlocked is available.
I don’t suppose Test Drive II with all the add-ons is a realistic suggestion (though it’s fun even now if you can find it.)
I’m not much help. I was never that into driving games and the last one I had for the PC was indeed Test Drive II.
GTR2, hands down.
It was available for 19.99 at Best Buy this summer, and the Momo force feedback wheel was on sale for 59.99, so I grabbed both, and have a pretty good racing sim for under $100
http://gtr-game.10tacle.com/index.php?id=246&L=1
Be ready to stick alot of time in if you want to get good.
some review quotes:
PC Gamer (UK) - Award 92%:
“Best driving sim ever. Fact. The true driver’s choice.”
PC Zone (UK) - Award 92%:
“As far as driving titles go, this is probably the closest you’ll get to the real deal.”
“scarily realistic”
Gamespy- Sports/Racing Game of the Year-2006
Seconding Flatout 2. Recently reinstalled it. I’m not even bothering with the savefiles I backed up, I’m just going to finish it again.
Pardon me but the OP asked for FUN. This sounds too much like WORK. 
Yeah I realized after I posted that some people may not particularly like running the same turn over and over again trying find the perfect braking and turn in points and whether or not you can trailbrake into the apex some until you get it perfect, and then once you get that much of the turn, finding where and how hard you can get on the gas until it all comes together in one perfectly executed turn. Then you have to hope you can repeat it over and over.
And that’s just to get the gold medal on the training missions.
Then you have to start stringing turns together over and over until you get a section of a course. Then you have to get the whole course. I had my roadracing motorycycle liscense and really appreciate the finer points of doing something over and over looking to pick up a .1 of a second, and I think for many people, like me, it’s actually fun, but for many others it might be a bit tedious. Or a whole bunch tedious.
Well for tons of fun sans realism you really can’t top Burnout 3.
This link at Wikipedia would probably be helpful:
2 years ago my answer would unequivocally be “NASCAR Racing 2003”. However in that time several things have happened, okay one thing: a company headed by John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox, put the kibosh on any new modificiations of the source code because they are using it for their new sim (out this year alledgedly). This lead to the community surrounding the game shrinking like mad, no new user- made mods, and no new versions of the game getting printed (like in compilations or GOTY editions). Thus discs of the game on Ebay routinely run for over $100. Real damn shame, and Mr. Henry’s new sim had better be worth all the crap he put the community through.
Now I’d probably say rFactor. Problem there is that the AI sucks and the online community is a mess of incompatible versions of mods and tracks, making connecting to pick-up races very problematic. Does have plenty of tracks and cars, with some good stuff (American Le Mans) coming soon, and none of that “locked” content idiocy.