Need recommendation for a car racing game

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If you can honestly recommend Toca Race Driver 2 or Colin Mc Rae Rally 2005, that would be great, since they're at $7 price on a local promo.

If not... well, Need for Speed series games, below Carbon, are on promo too, so that while they cost about $15 each, you buy one and get one for free (symbolic price).

It's not like I wouldn't pay more, but since my computer is hardly a C2D with GF8, I don't think there's any sense getting the newest games.

As for my specs, it's PIV 2.6c, 1 GB RAM DDR400, GF 7600GT. I don't play at more than 1024 * 768 because my monitor won't give me any decent refresh rate anyway, so this is the resulotion where it has to be smooth with all details on (preferably). And I might want to buy a joystick or a wheel if I like the game because car racing used to be the type of game where I had the most skill. I generally pwned everyone on LAN in NFS2 SE.

Now, I don't fancy all the tuning and crap. I don't like missions, either. I want to drive and to race. And I don't fancy cops being my enemies. In fact, I don't mind racing through Rome or Paris at night, which is obviously not so very legal, but I just don't like the criminal theme of the newest NFS games. It's just something that makes me uncomfortable and I want the game for comfort, unwinding after work and such.

So, got any recommendations for me?

 

Are you looking for a simulation or arcade game?

 

Trackmania United!!!!!
Its a pretty crazy arcade style racer with loopty loops, half pipes, corkscrews etc. There's a few hundred tracks in 7 environments and it actively compares times online in game (do it for your country). Trackmania Sunrise, and Trackmania Original are also good picks (though United is definitely the best). Its got very nice graphics, but should run very smoothly on your comp with everything maxed out. It was released at 1/2 normal price at the beginning of the year (in shops) and is now available for $29USD on steam.
Give it a try - its fun as.

 

Whatever! Just so I can race without worrying about upgrading the car, tuning and whatnot. I'm not normally campaign-minded and I prefer to have everything unlocked from the beginning.

 

The last racing game I played was Colin McRae 2. If 2005 is at least as good as the old one was, then I definitely recommend it, especially for such a low price.

 

The only Need for Speed game I played was pretty good. I think the only thing I had to unlock in that was newer/better cars (or you had to in one of the game modes but all of the cars were available in a different game mode...). I've only heard good things about the newer Need for Speed games; have you looked at the game reviews on amazon? GTR 2 is supposed to be rather splendid, as well, but I don't know if it has the tuning and equipment stuff that you say you don't want.

 

Trackmania United has all the cars unlocked from the start (there's only 1/2 a dozen or so) although to unlock a new tears of races (ie Medium) you need to complete all the races in the previous tear (ie Easy). There are 7 environments and 3 race types, so you're never going to get to a dead end by not being able to win at one particular race. Aditionally there is a 'get a challenge' button on each tear of races (ie easy island) to download top rated user created races. Also there's no tuning/upgrading.

 

Richard Burns Rally, released in 2004. Still the best and most realistic racing simulator for the PC. You will need a wheel for this one though.

 

Carmaggedon 2

 

If you don't have NFS: Underground 2 or NFS:Hot Pursuit I would pick up one of those games over Carbon. Carbon is a waste of money.

 

Yeah, Hot Pursuit is great, even better than HP2, Underground series might require some tweaking (meaning you have to buy upgrades and you don't get those upgrades right away ) So, any "cheap" NFS game will be better because from Underground, you have to break your way tru upgrades, meaning you start with a slow car without any upgrade. TOCA series are the best simulators around, but those require some mechanics knowledge later on. Rally games are that... rally games, so you have to know about tires and surfaces... Now, if you like F1, try F1 Challenge, it's an old game for instance should be very cheap, but there are mods which update the game to 07 season, and you don't have to be a super mechanic geek because every track comes with its own setup file so you just go out and drive.
GTRs games (basically SimBin racing games) requires some setups knowledge if you don't want to set IA cars to race at 70% thus being like racing alone because IA becomes too darng slow.