Welcome to the first ever massively multiplayer online racing game. It may seem strange that that this type of game hasn't been attempted before, but after a few hours into the joyous world of Test Drive Unlimited, you do start to realise why. It isn't so much technical limitations but the openness of the game that means bugs creep their way into the heart of the multiplayer, trying their best to ruin the experience. As a result, TDU's main selling point feels firmly stuck in the beta stage.
You don't encounter the faults until later in the game, though; from the beginning it's all about finding a house and carefully choosing that first car. The Hawaiian island of Oahu is your playground and, while the game starts off at a slow pace, you won't notice this because the majority of your time will be spent just driving and taking in the sights. The island of Oahu is simply huge and coming into contact with actual players on the map is a unique experience, particularly if they decide to try and chase you for no apparent reason. You see, TDU may work offline, but without the online component, something is lost. Interaction with other players is what drives the game and, although there are many bugs (more on them later), driving alongside actual player-driven cars is far better than the average CPU AI you encounter.
What makes driving around the island such a joy is the perfectly tuned handling. The cars handle more like PGR3 than any other racing game we can think of, making it fit perfectly between arcade and simulation. While the cars are great to control, the bikes are something else entirely. Braking is slow and cumbersome, and rather than showing a nice animation of your character going head over heels once he crashes (which would've been a bonus) the game just fades to black for a couple of seconds and you reappear back in the middle of the road. If the developers were going to include bikes, they could have at least made the effort.
The main brunt of the single player mode is the challenges; these are scattered across the map and consist of a number of things. Firstly, you have the straight races, time trials and speed challenges which do exactly as they say on the tin. Then there are the other missions which have you either escorting cars or parcels from place to place or taking passengers to their chosen destinations. Each challenge gives you strict time limits and a restriction on the amount of driving errors that can occur. While winning the races gains you quick income, the passenger driven missions are a way of obtaining coupons that can be used in the many licensed clothes stores across the island. Yes, it's as much about dress up as it is about racing - after all, when at the wheel of a Ferrari, you want to look as cool as possible.
Apart from the missions and clothes labels, the island is also home to plenty of car manufacturers and estate agents. At first you will need to drive past each place before you can enter; but once visited, you can simply use the map to short-cut to each point (but why would you want to do that when you can have a lovely drive around the countryside?). The island really is a wonderful-looking place, with the only graphical disappointment being the horrible character models that wouldn't look out of place on the original Xbox.Now onto the multiplayer. Firstly, let Gamestyle explain the hilarious calamity when the game was released. A main part of the experience would be the ability to sell your car to one of the online players, were it not for a bug where selling a house containing a car you have on the market would stop the game's progression. Atari quickly jumped in and decided to deactivate the entire system, which is the state it's in at the time of writing. Difficulty finding your friends online is another one and various connection issues during peak time is also fairly common. It makes reviewing Test Drive Unlimited difficult because, for all we know, these errors could be fixed shortly after.
The races you can enter online (featured on the map in the same way as a single player race) are competent enough, but because they aren't grouped into particular classes, there's no point in even entering them unless you have a decent car or bike (unlikely for a fair few hours). Once you do put the hours in, there's much fun to be had, but nowhere near as much fun as planning a meeting with friends online and just having a good old fashioned mess about. Regardless, releasing a game in this state is inexcusable and turns "auto updates" into a reason to patch the game at a later date.As an overall package, there is a lot to love about TDU; the concept is sound and exploring never gets tiresome, but the laziness evident in the current build is inexcusable. If and when a patch is released, you can add a point to the score. Until then, it can't overtake PGR3 or Burnout Revenge as our racers of choice.
