I am what most would likely consider a hardcore racing game fan. Simply put, if there’s a game that gives the player control a vehicle and tasks them with getting said vehicle across a finish line first, chances are I’ve played it – and if it was well done, chances are I played it a lot. This fact has never ceased to amuse or confuse my friends, of both the offline and Xbox Live variety, who take great pleasure in pointing out that the racing genre is practically the embodiment of everything I claim to loathe about the current state of game design – namely, the abundance old and tired concepts that have failed to evolve and are repeatedly resold in different packaging. For whatever reason however, be it the satiation of some primal need for pure competition or the simple adrenaline rush speed never fails to provide, any racing game that succeeds at providing the three essentials of the genre – an exhilarating sensation of speed, tight controls, and that intangible ‘feel’ for the cars – will have me entertained for hours.
Imagine my surprise then, when I found myself enjoying Test Drive Unlimited, a game that fails to provide at least two of those three essentials. After some thought though, the explanation for my entertainment became clear: Test Drive Unlimited is pornography for automobile aficionados. While it fails to excel in the tangible elements of racing game design, it triumphs in recreating those intangible elements that make the act of driving so enjoyable, the most important being the sense of freedom that makes the wait for one’s 16th birthday and driver’s license nigh unbearable for so many. Racing may be the means by which players actually progress through the game and amass money, but the actual thrill of Test Drive Unlimited is the ability to simply cruise across a gorgeous, open environment in one of many 300-horsepower fantasies after the races have finished. If that weren’t enough of a reason for my entertainment, the game certainly doesn’t fall into retread territory. In fact that the game features what could be the next big leap in racing game design, and the most seamless integration of Xbox Live multiplayer into single-player gameplay that has ever been accomplished.
Gameplay
The game begins with a real-time cinematic set at the boarding gate for a flight to Honolulu, Hawaii. As the passengers line up to hand over their boarding passes, players are able to choose which one of the passengers they would prefer to use as an avatar in the game. None of them are particularly attractive, in fact all of the human beings featured in the game are quite ugly, but the choice isn’t particularly important unless players have a strong desire to collect clothing for one of the sexes in particular. Once players land in Hawaii, they are given a selection of a few cars to rent, and pointed in the direction of the real estate agent in order to put the down payment on their first home.
The player’s house serves no real purpose other than providing a space to store their vehicles and clothing, should they choose to buy any. The larger the house, the larger the garage, and by the end of the game, players will likely own several huge homes, each with enough parking space to house a fleet of automobiles. There’s really nothing to do inside the player’s residence, no arcade machines or distractions of that sort. Really, the only purpose for entering the house is to switch cars or change cloths. Besides altering their wardrobe, players can also access a customization option for their character’s face, but the system isn’t particularly intuitive and there’s no way to reset to the default, so players run the risk of being stuck with an even uglier character than when they started.
After settling into their new digs, players must choose their first car before setting off to compete in various race events or mission-based events such as transporting certain people or cars from place to place in under a certain time, or without damaging the car too badly. Race events are broken up by car class, so players will have to work their way through the first batch of races, buy a newer, better car, and then try their hand at the next round of challenges. Aside from this informal tier set-up, players are free to tackle the races and missions in whatever order they like, or choose to ignore them completely for as long as they’d like. Missions do not necessarily require a certain class of car, but as the challenge ramps up, players may find they need to upgrade from their current set of wheels to something faster in order to reach their destination in under the allotted time.
Finding races and challenges is a simple matter of hitting the d-pad to bring up the GPS map, which is complemented by a great reverse zoom effect as the camera comes over the car and launches into the air for an expansive, aerial view of the island. Races are marked by icons, which players can either travel directly to provided they have already visited the general area once before, or can mark on their GPS and drive to from their current positive with the direction of a guide arrow and stereotypically annoying GPS voice. This pretty much ensures that players will see the entirety of the island and appreciates the developers’ work, but does so in such a way that the player doesn’t feel pushed. The sheer number of available events open in various regions of the island, combined with the ability to warp to previously visited areas ensures that the player is never inconvenienced with being forced to drive for hundreds of miles to the next destination. If players prefer to play it by ear and enter events as they stumble across them, the races are marked in game by huge glowing icons that are difficult to miss.
Race types include standard races against up to seven opponents, time trials, and speed runs where the player must reach a certain speed within a designated amount of time. While the number of race-types and missions is fairly small, the topography and city layout provide for a wide variety of course designs. Tracks are nothing more that pre-determined routes through existing roadways, which means players will be navigating at high speeds through confined city streets filled with sharp turns and traffic, winding mountain roads, narrow country trails between cities, wide water-front avenues and highways, and more often than not, a combination of any of the above. Unfortunately, races aren’t as enjoyable as they could be, at least in the single-player game, because the opponent AI is barely competent, and never challenging. Missions are similarly lacking variety, as the player is always taking on the role of delivery boy, taking people or cars from one place to another for any number of trite reasons, including models who are tired from long days of shopping and need a ride home, or various rich people that – for whatever reason – trust you to take their expensive cars to the mechanic for a tune-up. These missions are flat-out boring, but they provide a lot more cash than the average race and are the only means of collecting the coupons required to buy new clothing, so players are likely to take part in at least a few.
Cash is used to either buy new houses, or to buy and upgrade vehicles. Test Drive Unlimited doesn’t feature the most licensed vehicles we’ve seen in a game, but outside some notable absences like Honda and BMW, the list includes all the cars and motorcycles that most gamers are likely to car about. Players can upgrade their cars by driving to any upgrade shop and putting money down on any one of three packages for a noticeable performance increase, but gear heads used to the flexibility and depth of customization provided by the likes of Forza Motorsport will be disappointed, as there’s no specific tuning or tweaking options for components like suspension, gear ratios, and the like. Player’s can’t simply buy one car and continue to upgrade it in order to progress as is possible in other racing games, as upgrading a car does not change its class. In order to unlock to access all of the racing events, on and offline, players will need at least one car from each class, F through A, although the drive to amass their own collection of fantasy cars will likely ensure they have more than a few of each class. That is, if paying their speeding tickets doesn’t land them in the poor house.
Test Drive Unlimited doesn’t give Need for Speed: Most Wanted much competition as far as the complexity of the police AI routines, or the enjoyment garnered from out-maneuvering them. Like Most Wanted, the cops in Test Drive Unlimited seemingly have no problem with the player driving past them at 200+ miles per hour in a 50 zone, so long as the player doesn’t accidentally touch anything whilst on the move. As soon as the player happens to brush against another vehicle in proximity to a police cruiser however, the **** hits the fan, and things begin to get annoying. Using a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ approach, players can usually lose the police after the first incident provided they don’t accidentally touch anything in the proceeding chase. If they manage to get out of dodge without inciting any further wrath, then the police heat meter resets to zero. If however, the far more likely event of hitting another vehicle transpires, then the police will start trying to ram the player off the road. If they succeed in making contact, they consider that a third offense, and at that point, it seems as if the entire police force starts gunning for the player’s ass, with repeated ramming attempts and road-blocks set up to slow your progress. At this point, its seemingly impossible to get away clean, as entering any event will be considered surrendering, and the streets are so packed with police cars, there’s nowhere to hide. By the time the player finally concedes, the fines could number in the tens of thousands. Police are active both on and offline, and they are incredibly annoying in both.
Multiplayer
While the single-player experience is enjoyable if somewhat repetitive, the online component is handled extremely well and serves as the major draw of the game. Test Drive Unlimited effectively does away with the clunky menus that typically serve to separate the online and offline components of a game. Instead, the single-player game effectively acts as a perfectly seamless hub for the online play, allowing players to engage in both online and offline gameplay whenever they choose, simply by navigating between events occurring within the same persistent gameworld. Provided the game finds an Xbox Live Gold account on the Xbox 360 in question, the player is unknowingly and automatically signed on to a server the moment the introductory tutorial is completed (or immediately upon loading up a saved game). Multiplayer races appear as icons on the GPS map in the same way that solo events do, and entering them brings the player to something a mini-lobby where they can cavort with other players with an interest in competing in the same event. Players simply select whether they want to race in a ranked or unranked event, and wait for a full starting grid worth of racers to join. The length of the wait obviously depends on the number of racers needed for the event, but it generally doesn’t take more than a couple minutes.
In addition to meeting players via the multiplayer racing events, players will also notice that many of the cars they encounter on the road are actually other players. At any time, the player can challenge another for money and/or ranking points simply by driving up to them and flashing their headlights, at which point the player being challenged can choose to accept or decline. If the challenge is accepted, then the player that accepted the challenge simply uses the GPS map to select any point as the finish line, and the race is on. Upon completion of the race, the loser has the option to challenge the winner in a revenge match and select a new finish line, which is a nice but exploitable option that can leave players racing back and forth all over the island all day. Players can also ‘lock’ themselves to one another, such that when one racer challenges another, the entire posse is entered in the race. This Massively Open Online Racing (or MOOR) gameplay model works well so long as players are content to challenge or race with strangers, but actually hooking up with members of one’s friend list can be tricky, as the game may automatically log players onto different servers, thus preventing them from ever meeting each other. Unfortunately, there’s no way to switch servers in-game; the best solution we could find was for one player to quit the game and head to the dash board, and have the other player send an invite while in free-ride mode. This method wasn’t 100% effective, but it typically got the job done. The trade-off for the inconvenience is assurance that the streets are never too packed with online racers.
Arguably the coolest online feature is the ability for players to create and upload their own custom challenges for other racers to try their hand at completing. Essentially a very simple custom course-creator, players simply map out a route of whatever length they wish through the streets of the island. Rules and settings such as time limits and damage limits can also be easily set, along with entry fees and rewards for completion or setting records for the challenge. Of course, while the entry fee goes directly to the creator’s bank account, the reward comes directly out of it, so players need to be careful about how much they’re willing to give away (and on the flip side, charging a fee to enter and not providing a reward will result in a very unpopular challenge). Finally, the game features a clan system, which essentially mimics the existing culture of car clubs or racing clubs. Members of these clans will have an easier time playing together, as they are automatically logged on to the same server, and club competitions provide for some heated races, and big rewards. All told, the variety of racing experiences is far larger online than it is for someone sticking to the single-player events.
Test Drive Unlimited effectively blurs the lines between online and offline play, erasing the need for navigating clunky menus in order to switch between the two modes of play. The result is a very natural, free-flowing experience that players can enjoy on their own terms, with little hassle. More so than any other title, Test Drive Unlimited provides a glimpse into the future of Xbox Live integration, and the future looks very bright. That is, as long as you have a broadband connection. Without the benefit of online play, the integrated system transforms from a brilliant means of intertwining online and offline play into a very shallow, and unpolished single-player experience that feels like training wheels for an experience that won’t appear without shelling out $50 for Live.
Controls
Unfortunately, it seems that in focusing all their attention on the grand, ambitious aspects of Test Drive Unlimited, the developers overlooked and under-polished the smaller, fundamental facets of the racing game experience. Talented as they are, Eden Studios didn’t completely miss the boat, but certain key elements feel decidedly under-polished in contrast to the elegance of the Massively Open Online Racing interface. The handling of the vehicles is the major offender in this regard. Despite substantial improvement made in this area since the E3 and Xbox Live Marketplace demos, the simple fact is that the cars frequently do not respond with the level of finesse one would hope for. The physics underlying the controls seem to fall somewhere in the middle of the arcade to simulation spectrum, but it’s doubtful that fans of either will find the vehicles easy to come to grips with. They somehow manage to simultaneously feel heavy down the stretch and floaty through the turns, and trying to compensate for either only exacerbates the feeling of the other. Turning off driving aids and switching to manual transmission certainly provides players with an extra layer of control over the vehicle, but even then, precision maneuvering always feels just out of reach. To Eden Studios’ credit however, every car does handle noticeably differently, which is rare in even the best simulations, but it feels more random than calculated, as cars that should perform a certain way relative to others do not.
The problem only gets worse when you subtract wheels, as the motorcycles handle nothing like they would in reality, featuring huge turning radiuses and less responsive controls than their four-wheeled counter-parts. Even if this weren’t the case and crashes weren’t more likely as a result, you would think that the animations for motorcycle crashes would have received some attention, but instead they are jerky and disappointing, as the player never actually falls from the bike, even after hitting something while traveling at excessive speeds. In general, the motorcycles feel like an afterthought, but the problem with collision physics isn’t exclusive to them. Cars routinely act to collisions as though they hit a brick wall, regardless if the impact was made on a car going in the same direction, an incoming car, a parked car, or a wall. No matter the nature or angle of the collision, the car will stop dead in its tracks every time. Finally, there’s not even a hint of damage modeling in the game, not even a cracked tail light. In of itself this wouldn’t be so bad, seeing as it’s not uncommon, but in conjunction with the aforementioned crash physics, even collision in the game feels artificial and jarring.
Despite these flaws, Test Drive Unlimited somehow manages to immerse the player in ways few racing games can. While some of the more immediate, and undeniably important facets of driving are not pulled off as well as they could be, the game nails several intangible elements that most racing games fail to, in part because they lack the freedom that Test Drive Unlimited provides. While the actual act of racing suffers due to the faults with the controls and the physics, leisurely driving around the island, immersing oneself in the act of driving an exotic car in an exotic locale is intoxicating, addictive and enjoyable.
Audio and Video
It’s hard not to be impressed with the sheer scale of Test Drive Unlimited, especially considering the absence of load time, even if the little details aren’t as polished as they could be. Oahu has been recreated very well, and is covered in convincing vegetation of various types and colors, which can make it a little difficult to concentrate on the road. Of course, being an island, Oahu also features gorgeous shore-lines complete with beautiful water, in addition to the large sea-front cities replete with tall buildings and charming residential areas, all of which look gorgeous. Unfortunately, as gorgeous as Oahu is, it seems the citizens can’t enjoy it to its fullest, as they are seemingly unable to step outside of enclosed structures. Outside of the cars driving by and the odd sales person at the car dealership or real estate agent, there are absolutely no signs life on the island, human or otherwise. City streets feel dead with the bustling masses, and the countryside feels creepy without the familiar movement of wildlife.
That being said, the lifelessness of the environment is admittedly difficult to detect while traveling at high speeds, as are some of the low resolution textures and low polygon objects, thanks in great part to the ample but not-quite excessive use of motion blur. The environment may be the star of the show, but the vehicles aren’t too far behind, meticulously modeled on the inside and out, albeit not to the same levels of detail seen in Project Gotham Racing 3 or Moto GP 2006. As in PGR3, each car has its own cockpit view, modeled according to the specifications of the real-world car, and like PGR3, it is the most immersive means of traveling around the island, albeit probably the most challenging as well. The cars are excessively shiny, always looking as though they had just been on the receiving end of about 800 tons of turtle wax. The resulting reflections beaming off the car look somewhat artificial as a result, and any exposure to sunlight seemingly engulfs and lights up the entire car as if it was in a show room, rather than on a sun-lit road. Eden Studios makes great use of the lighting engine, specifically colored lighting, shadowing and various diffusion techniques to change the look of the island under different conditions, such as sunrises and sunsets, overcast mornings, and hot afternoons with clear skies.
The audio in the game is fairly standard for a racing title, complete with different engine sounds for each car, although none of them are as well done as in true simulation titles such as Forza Motorsport, or even Project Gotham Racing 3. Some of the engine notes are noticeably off, most notably the signature whine of a Ferrari engine in the higher RPM range. Screeching brakes and the sounds of impact in a collision are both adequate, but not as satisfying as they could be. There is some voice acting in the game, including a few awkward sentences from NPCs at the onset of missions and orders shouted via megaphone from police on the player’s tail. None of it is award-winning caliber, but it’s not particularly grating or obnoxious either. The one voice that players may find annoying is the calm, sterile female voice of the GPS system as it instructs players to make turns on the way toward an event, if only due to the frequency with which these alerts come. Players have the option to turn her voice off in the option menu, as well as the option to balance the various sound effects and music to their liking. The music in the game is fairly varied, but there’s not nearly enough of it considering the sheer amount of time players will be spending driving around the island. It won’t take too long for players to memorize and grow sick of the songs on the playlist. Custom soundtracks make a fine solution to that particular dilemma.
Overall
Test Drive Unlimited will likely be remembered as an important game in the progression of not only the racing genre, but of online gaming in general. The seamless integration of the single-player component as an invisible hub to the multiplayer experience is an ambitious concept that Eden Studios has executed brilliantly, and one that is sure to be borrowed several times over, and put to use toward several genres. Furthermore, the scale of the game is simply awesome, and the graphics are very well done. In concentrating on the big picture however, it seems as though Eden Studios overlooked some of the basic, integral facets of an engaging racing game, particularly in the area of controls and physics. As a result Test Drive Unlimited isn’t polished enough to be considered a truly excellent racing game, especially relative to the all ready strong line-up of racers on the Xbox 360. In fact as a racing game, Test Drive Unlimited is merely above average. Despite this, the game is enjoyable on its own merits as a driving game that succeeds in imparting many of the intangible but powerful sensations that make the act of driving a car so damn fun to begin with.
