Test Drive Unlimited

Rating ESRB: Everyone Genre driving Publisher Atari External Links Official Test Drive Unlimited Website

Much like the Driver franchise, Test Drive was a solid PlayStation series that never found traction on the following generation of consoles. Attempts to turn Test Drive into a street racer and a combat crush-a-thon never achieved a very high-level of critical or commercial success. The fact that we're still talking about the series speaks to the commitment of Atari to revamp their flailing series into something both competitive and enjoyable (something that certainly was not done with Driver: Parallel Lines).

Unfortunately for Atari, the Xbox 360 market is jam-packed with racing games of all sorts. Project Gotham Racing 3, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, and Ridge Racer V flooded the launch lineup, while 2006 has played host to Burnout Revenge, Full Auto, and Need for Speed: Carbon, among others. How is a fading franchise like Test Drive supposed to make its next-gen (current-gen?) debut when so many strong options are already available?

Simple: offer up a fresh experience. Test Drive Unlimited doesn't offer extreme customization, hardcore street racing, or a ridiculous narrative. Test Drive Unlimited is a loose, open-world, always-online racer with a heap of activities. It's the casual alternative to something like Project Gotham Racing, or a more straight-laced version of Need for Speed. In fact, it's almost like the NBA Ballers of racing, as a strong emphasis is placed on accumulating wealth and splurging it on in-game items such as cars, houses, and even clothing. It makes for a bizarre balance of racing and commerce that is oddly addicting, though not always enthralling.

Fresh off a plane to Oahu, Hawaii, your customizable male or female character has $200,000 to drop on a home and a vehicle. After getting settled in, you can go anywhere on the island, which is staggeringly expansive. Test Drive Unlimited is billed as "Massively Open Online Racing," as those connected to Xbox Live can see other racers from around the world whizzing about on the virtual roads of Oahu. While you will occasionally run into a prick who tries to ram you off the road (or is yelling into their headset), the feature significantly ups the ante on online integration in next-gen racers.

As you make your way through the standard races, time trials, and speed trap events, you unlock many more things to occupy your time. You can pick up models and hitchhikers and drive them to their destination, or transport packages or expensive vehicles for a significant fee. Vehicle dealers, clothing shops, and real-estate agencies line the streets of Test Drive Unlimited, and you are rewarded for making the effort to see and do everything. For example, visiting every car dealer on the island unlocks the ability to buy and ride motorcycles, and is well worth the two or three hours it takes to complete that voyage.

Aside from the single-player missions, you can also race online against other drivers or take on a custom user-created challenge. Racing online requires a significant time investment in the game, as many of the other drivers have significantly better vehicles. I tried doing an online race after playing for ten hours and was promptly smoked by the competition. While I understand the desire to use one's own purchased vehicles, I wish the game did a better job of matching up players that have vehicles with a similar level of performance. Of course, this requires a large amount of online racers, and they weren't exactly flooding the streets when I was playing.

Your success in Test Drive Unlimited requires you to do a little bit of everything. The Achievement Points are given out for buying, driving, owning, and so much more. I was awarded points for driving a certain amount of miles, owning ten outfits from Ben Sherman stores, and finishing fifteen transport missions. My only complaint is that there isn't much of a middle ground between the Achievements - many can be unlocked within your first week of play, while several others require weeks and months or regular play. One Achievement rewards you for owning two houses, while the next requires you to own fifteen. What, a man can't own seven digital houses and be rewarded for it?

Test Drive Unlimited doesn't offer up a perfect racing experience, but it does a pretty good job with what it has. Sliding bars in the options menu allow you to broadly customize the handling of the vehicles, from a Project Gotham Racing level of rigid perfection to a looser, arcade-style feel. Still, going back to Test Drive Unlimited after a few days of playing Need for Speed: Carbon was a difficult venture, as even the loosest setting in Test Drive still has more of a realistic feel than the slip-and-slide drifting of Need for Speed.

Some annoying quirks keep Test Drive Unlimited out of the top tier of open-world racers. If you nick a few cars on the tight roads of Oahu, you'll quickly find yourself in a police chase that is nigh impossible to get out at the higher levels. Should you get caught - and you probably will be - you can expect to shell out tens of thousands of dollars, which often knocks you back to square one. If you're out of cash, you'll have to kill thirty seconds in "jail," which only infuriated my broke ass even further (though, admittedly, it's an amusing concept).

Transporting a car can be a difficult venture, since every inch driven outside the confines of the winding roads drops several dollars from your reward. Furthermore, nicks and slams alike take thousands of dollars away, yet slamming into a highway barrier is perfectly acceptable. I didn't have a chance to drive any exotic cars while in Hawaii last winter, but I have a feeling that a head-on collision with concrete would do just a bit more damage than driving on grass for two seconds. Just a hunch, really. While the GPS system is largely very well-done, the commands occasionally come late, seriously hurting your chances of finishing whatever race or mission you're working on.

Despite the issues, I had a lot more fun with Test Drive Unlimited than I expected to, especially considering the dismal PlayStation 2 and Xbox offerings of recent years. It's a gorgeous, casual racer that is absolutely packed with varied content. While it lacks the excitement and tuning detail of the Need for Speed series, it offers a strong, online-enabled cruise-fest unlike any on the Xbox 360.