The download clocked in at around 480 Megabytes and took around about an hour to acquire. The demo itself had pretty snazzy presentation and generous time limit. However, you can go back and try again, as many times as you please. You start the demo in your house, on a quiet part of the Island of Oahu, Hawaii. We were given a pre-made character but there will be options for making your own protege. Everything is locked in the house, so you’re left with a trip to your garage that currently stores two cars.
This could be you.
Not to be insulted with some petty “other” car, we took the Lamborghini out for a spin. Throughout the driving experience, there was a GPS voiceover telling us about some of the controller capabilities and general directions. Initially, we were directed to a Time Trial. When we got to the icon, all we had to do was press the A button and it would begin. Sure enough, we raced through the checkpoints and completed the trial with flying colours. Later we found a street race and apparently there is one more event to be found in the demo. These events could be entered and exited at any time that the player pleased. The purpose of these events is to earn cash. Cold, hard cash. The better the performance, the more cash you get. With the cash, you buy more cars, better tune-ups and even different residents around the Island. And unlike the demo, the final game will have a lot more island and over 125 cars and bikes. However, the big catch to this game is the online component.
While we didn’t get a chance to try it out, but the open nature of the game is actually designed to act like a giant multiplayer hub. That is, you’ve got your single player events scattered all over Oahu and when you’re connected to Live, you’ll be able to set up and join challenges with other online players. It’s a pretty big island so there are a lot of possibilities. If the developers can get a seamless nature going, then we could be in for a nice ride.
A good sense of speed.
Gameplay-wise, the game played somewhat like a light simulation-racer. Easy to pick up but in requiring skill and precision to be successful. There’s nothing really new to the control scheme but it felt comfortable on the 360 controller and the level of control that you had made it feel authentic. For whatever reason, you’re able to spin the camera around your car and there are little things like a GPS so that you can manually point out where you want to go on the map or if you run off the road, you can press “back” to get back on the side of the road. Interestingly, outside of events, you’ll be subject to the law. So crashing and causing carnage will attract cops and if they catch you, fines. The area that we had to drive through was not particularly suitable for pedal-to-the-metal racing but it’s only a small part of the game.
Graphically, the game looked good but the actual area that we raced around would have hardly been considered the most picturesque part of the island. Other than a few graphical glitches, dodgy character model and lack of a damage model, the rest of the game was solid. While it wasn’t really pushing the 360 but managed to inject a good sense of speed, especially down some of the straighter roads. There’s really not much that we can say about the sound at the moment.
We can think of worse things.
Unless the developers are really able nail the online component, Test Drive Unlimited will struggle to compete on a pretty competitive genre. That, and an island, even if it is a large one, is not the best place to confine a player, especially when you’re driving as fast as you can. That and it otherwise, doesn’t do anything incredibly different to previous racing games.
While not really distinctive on the surface, Test Drive Unlimited just has enough promise and potential to at least provide some flair and something that can be played out as a person’s fantasy. There are worse thing that we can think of than driving around Hawaii in fast, shiny cars.
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