Test Drive Unlimited – Hands On

Thanks to the wonderful people over at Hexus.net, I was able to visit the Atari UK Headquarters last Thursday to spend the entire day playing the almost final version of Test Drive Unlimited.

After a bit of a Testing Drive down to London, thanks largely to roadworks on every motorway under the sun, I wasn’t sure if playing a driving game for the rest of the day was quite the ideal way to wind down. You could say I was wrong.

If I had to sum up the game in one word, that word would be immense.

Since before the XBOX360 was released, Atari’s Test Drive Unlimited has been on the tips of tongues of race fans across the globe.
With all that Atari have claimed, all the screenshots and media we’ve seen, the only real doubt was can they really pull it all off? Well, yes.

The first thing to marvel at is the sheer size of this game. The entire game is based on the island of Oahu, in the state of Hawaii.
When you think island, you think small, but if you’re thinking small, you’re thinking wrong.
Oahu is the 3rd largest Hawaiian island with a total area of 596.66 mile² and the entire island is modelled to near perfection for your roaming pleasure.
After picking up a shiny new Aston Martin, I must have taken it for a good 20 minute drive, at least. When I looked at how far I’d gone on the map, it wasn’t far at all.
You could literally spend months driving around in Test Drive Unlimited, and you’d still need an A-Z to find your way home. Well, that or the games rather funky built in GPS system.

As you make your way around the island, there are all sorts of things you can do. There are missions (largely along the lines of giving people lifts), races, houses to buy, car dealerships to go inside, all sorts.
The level of detail in everything is incredible. Particularly the cars. Project Gotham Racing 3 has some fantastic car models and great levels of detail in it’s own right, but Test Drive Unlimited certainly raises the bar in terms of appearance.

The play test was unfortunately limited to single player only, and I wasn’t therefore able to experience the Massively Multiplayer Online Racing Game that it’s meant to be. Judging by the single player, if the online game works as well it will surely be a gem on Xbox Live.
In comparison to the demo released earlier in the year during E3, the game has come a long way. I was left hugely dissapointed with that demo but this playtest has done enough to completely reverse my opinion.

So, is it all thumbs up for Test Drive Unlimited?
Sadly, no.

Despite the immense amount of detail, and the sheer size of the game it lacked the thrills and spills of a real racing game.
Due to the sheer size of the project, I couldn’t help but feel that some of driving elements had been lost.
It may look prettier than PGR3 and there’s certainly a lot more to it, but for me it doesn’t feel as good as PGR3. In Test Drive, I never quite got the same buzz when I screamed around a corner. I couldn’t quite feel my back end sliding out, I never quite felt I had complete control.
The same could be said about the bikes. Again it’s great that the game could feature so much, how often do you get to race cars and bikes in the same game? Not very often.
But are the bikes any good? Well yes and no. They’re good in their own right, but they’re certainly not on par with say MotoGP3.

As a result, Test Drive Unlimited does a huge amount of things incredibly well, but for pure driving thrills, it might be slightly lacking. However you must take into account that I’d only played the game for a matter of hours. Perhaps after a few days behind the wheel of the same car I’d be able to throw it around corners as I please.

Overall I was very impressed with the game, I’ll be eagerly awaiting it’s release in September and will certainly be picking up this title.

Thanks again to Hexus for arranging my participation and to Atari for giving us the oppurtunity to preview the game at their very well hosted Race Day.

If you have any questions about the game, feel free to ask and I’ll do my best to answer.