Don't Make Them Mad

Take on A.I. Drivers With Long-Term Memories in Total Immersion Racing
By Brad Cook
 You squeal around a corner in your BMW V12 LMR and stomp on the gas, accelerating toward the finish line. An Audi R8 creeps up beside you, attempting a last-second pass. With a slight jerk of the wheel, you nudge him off the track and zoom to victory.

Fast forward three races. Once again you find yourself mere seconds from the finish line when a familiar-looking Audi bumps you from behind. You lose control and spin-out as your rival takes the checkered flag.

That wasn’t a coincidence. That was a computer-controlled car with a grudge. Make another driver mad and he’ll remember you. Maybe he won’t get back at you right away, but eventually he’ll take advantage of an opportunity to knock you out of a race, and it will come when you least expect it.

Immerse Yourself in Heated Battles
Those grudges really come out in Feral Interactive’s Total Immersion Racing career and challenge modes. In the former, you begin the circuit as a rookie in a GT class car. You field offers from team managers who want you to compete for them, select the one you want, and take part in a series of races. You earn points depending on your finish in each race; the season champion is the one with the most points. After each competition, your manager assesses your effort.

race carAt the end of the season, you can stay with your team or accept an offer from a new one. Some managers require you to beat a lap time in a trial before taking you in, though, and all of them base their offers on your point total at the end of the previous season. Race well and you can work your way up to teams that feature GTS and prototype class cars, which handle better in the corners and accelerate faster in the straight-aways.

You don’t have to stick with each car’s preset specs, however. Before each race, you can tweak your car’s settings for tighter performance. If you’re not sure how to best configure you car, try a time trial with the race engineer option enabled; he will alter your car after each lap and show you how to get the most out of your vehicle.

Help, If You Need It
Total Immersion Racing also features a crew chief who verbally guides you through each race, letting you know when prime opportunities arrive to pass your rivals and how many laps are left. In the game’s option settings, you can also switch on auto-braking (your car automatically brakes as it enters corners), anti-lock brakes, traction control (keeps your tires from sliding too much), gear suggest (when to shift up and down) and a corner warning that tells you when a curve is coming up, which direction it’s going in, and its severity.

All those options remain active whether you want to take on a single race, go for a championship, or embark on the challenge series, which offers 37 tests of endurance and skill. Each challenge you successfully complete unlocks the next one, as well as more cars and tracks for you to use. Career mode also allows you to unlock new cars and tracks as you achieve success. The game features 18 cars and 12 tracks total.

If you’d rather race against another human, invite a friend over and try out a few split-screen races. You can even hook two steering wheels to the same Mac. Just remember that, unlike digital opponents, human ones may hold grudges even after you switch off the computer. 		  race cars
Closing in Fast. Catching these two is just half the battle; after you pull that off, you’ll need to hold the lead.
magoc
Driver’s-Eye View. Put yourself behind the wheel of a car capable of doing 160 MPH and push your racing skills to the limit.
Total Immersion Racing Media

View QuickTime trailer
Download the demo

System Requirements:
Mac OS X version 10.1.3 or higher
500MHz PowerPC G3 processor or higher
128MB of RAM or higher
750MB of hard disk space
8MB 3D graphics card or better

If you liked these games, check out:
 F1 Championship Season
 NASCAR 2002
 NASCAR 2003
 Virtual Grand Prix 2
 Wipeout 2097

Tips and Tricks

track   When you enter a curve, take the inside and “lean” against a car on the outside by pushing against it and staying there. This will allow you to go faster through the curve without losing control and going off the track. Sometimes you can also stay between two cars and bounce between them through a curve, putting you in a position to accelerate and leave them behind as soon as you hit a straight-away.

  In the easier difficulty settings, you can afford to be a little reckless in the curves because you can catch up to the rest of the field faster if you go off the track. In the harder settings, though, mistakes are much more difficult to overcome; losing just a second or two by hitting the gravel or grass on the edge of the track can be enough to keep you from winning the race.

  If you’re hopelessly behind and want to retire from a race while playing a career, don’t. You get a point for finishing last while you get nothing from a DNF (did not finish), and your team manager won’t be happy if you don’t stick it out to the very end.

  Make sure you run a qualifying lap before every race. The starting grid is arranged according to fastest qualifying times, so you have an opportunity to begin the race from the front position. If you don’t take a qualifying lap, you start in last place and have to work your way up the field.

  If you switch on auto-braking, don’t rely on it completely. Sometimes it doesn’t decelerate your car fast enough. When really tight corners come up, take your foot off the gas early and allow auto-braking to slow you enough to handle the turn without crashing. While auto-braking does override the gas pedal if you keep it pressed, if you stay on the gas through a turn you may find yourself accelerating sooner than you wanted.

  Before you use a newly unlocked car in a race, take it for a few practice laps to get a feel for it. Even without modifications, you’ll find that many cars handle differently from others. Some are looser around the corners, which means you will have to turn the wheel more to keep from flying off the track, and you’ll definitely need to lay off the gas pedal. Cars that are tighter around the corners tend to stay on the track even as you accelerate.

race car   If you want to see what other drivers think of you during the race, turn on the emotions option. (The default is the “]” key, but you can map it to another key or a button on your steering wheel.) A triangle appears above each car; the more you bump that driver and take aggressive actions with him, the redder the triangle gets, and meters on either side of it show how frustrated he is with you at that moment.

  When you start driving better cars and taking part in longer races, watch out for opponents in lesser cars who you’ve angered in the past. All three classes take the track at the same time in each race, but they’re spaced far enough apart and the races are usually short enough that the faster cars don’t lap the slower ones. In longer races, however, prototype cars eventually find catch up to GT and GTS cars, which could spell trouble if you weren’t a nice driver during your time in the lower ranks. The emotions option comes in very handy there.