Test Drive Unlimited Review

Overall Rating

Entire island of Hawaii to explore!
Fantastic choice of cars, all with in-car views
Excellent 'always on' XBox Live

Some pop-up and out of proportion locations spoil the otherwise great graphics
Cars handle slightly floaty, which you can get used to, but the Motorbikes are terrible.
You hardly earn any money until you rank up to the higher levels, which takes time.

I last played Test Drive back in the PSOne days, and after playing a demo of Test Drive Unlimited in-store, I decided to give it another go and see what's changed, and the answer's an awful lot.

The old Test Drive games were very arcade like, offering Time Trial races and although being fun, they were short lived. Test Drive Unlimited is still very arcade like, especially in the drift happy, floaty style handling and time trials but this time around you have hundreds of licensed cars, with some customisation available, you create an avatar of sorts who drives your cars and is again customisable to a degree, you can even buy your own properties which is essential for keeping your cars, then on top of all that you have an entire Island to race around.
The island itself is very convincing, it doesn't suffer as much from the usual glitches seen in such large scale games, however do expect a bit of pop-up and fade-in as you drive along. You are mostly confined to the roads however, try off-roading too far and you'll find your car starts to struggle before going no further, but you can create your own short cuts and cut across roads at most places.
However my biggest complaint with the game is the Motorbikes, their handling is awful and although they're fast, they're just not fun to drive. You'll try them, and most likely never use them again unless you have to.

But thankfully it gets better, and as if the island wasn't big enough, Atari have packed more than enough into it to keep you busy, there are plenty of races, time trials and special events such as picking up hitch-hikers and delivering packages. The early races aren't worth much and it takes time before you can afford any of the supercars, but get your rank up enough and the money starts pouring in, however this will take quite some time. And if you're just cruising the island while connected to XBox Live, you will be able to see other players from around the while driving around too, the main island itself in free mode acts as a sort of a hub, from where you can access all the single player and XBox Live events, but just driving around you'll bump into others and you can generally just muck about. It's amazing how much time you can waste without even doing any races, but you won't care because it's fun.
The XBox Live modes are pretty good too, there can be some noticible lag in some of the races but it isn't much of an issue as long as you turn collisions off, with them on you'll occasionally be ramed by someone and then see them seconds later, or attempt to ram someone and go straight through them, but it doesn't ruin the fun and you've still got an entire island to race around.

The choice of cars is pretty good, you buy new cars by visiting dealerships around the island, you only have a few garages available from the start, the rest you must discover yourself whilst driving around. You also need to have a free space available in a garage at one of your properties which are found all over the island. Each car can be painted in a custom colour and some extra rims but it's nothing compared to other racing games, just a little bonus really. Each car can also be tuned with a booster kit, but there's no in-depth tuning or mucking about with settings, this is pure arcade fun.
Although progress is slow once you first start, give it time and eventually you'll have properties filled with cars all across the island, which is good because you'll need specific styles or brands of cars for some races, and occasionally a single specific car. As well as races you can expect the usual time trials, speed trap races (as seen in Need for Speed - racing past speed cameras) and some more unusual ones such as picking up hitchhikers and models, and delivering packages or even cars! These kind of races offer you much more cash than a normal race, if you pull it off, or tokens which are used to buy clothing for your avatar.

Graphically, the game is really quite good, although it's let down by a few technical issues. Although the game has variable times of day, it never actually goes into night, so don't hope for any night-time cruising, and when you're hurtling along at some speed buildings and trees tend to pop-up more often than I'd like but the island is very convincing, and although the general traffic is boringly generic the actual cars you get to race in look great, and all with in-care views too.

The game also features a fantastic sat-nav system, yes you get a boring voice telling you to turn left or right but as you select where you want to go you can zoom out to view the entire island (or even the world!) and then the camera thunders down from the sky, it looks fantastic.

I've already mentioned that the game is always connected to XBox Live (if you have it), but as well as online races there is also a marketplace to buy and sell cars, you can arrange tournaments and race events and even set up your own clubs and club races. If you really get involved in the online world of TDU you'll be playing this game for years, it's big enough to last you months purely through single player but this is a whole new game online, if you're not hoping for a serious simulation then you'll love this, despite some problems in pacing and the few technological issues, it's a great game well worth playing if you're a racing fan.