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Test Drive: Unlimited
We take a look at the first MMOR set in Hawaii. Where's the freaking kelp?

Labeled With  Eden Games Atari Test Drive Unlimited
Written by Josh Lowensohn on Wednesday, September 20 2006


What to do with all this money you ask? Well, your funds are often allocated to purchasing vehicles in the island’s multitude of showrooms. You’ll find pretty much nothing but super cars in manufacturer’s showrooms, but there are also variety showrooms in every main city that provide you with an ever-changing supply of classic and exotic cars. When you run out of room for your purchases, you’ve got to make sure you’ve budgeted for a new dwelling to increase that necessary garage space. You’ll notice right away you can’t immediately access the motorcycle showrooms until you’ve “discovered” all the automotive showrooms first. This takes a little bit of time, but if you make a concerted effort to drive all the way around the outside of the island, you’ll unlock them. Upon purchasing or test driving a motorcycle you’ll find out why they keep you from using one right away—these things rock. Like in real life, they’re much cheaper than cars and pack a mean punch when it comes to top speed and acceleration. In one of my first impromptu races with another player, I made the mistake of going up against an A-class Kawasaki Ninja in my B-class Ferrari. While you’d think it would be a pretty close match, I got absolutely obliterated on the straight-aways.


Multiplayer in action


Speaking of which, the multiplayer element in TDU is done in a really cool way. Other players in your “area” of the island show up as names with distances. These are other players driving around, and once you’re close you can talk with them, give them some playful bumping or even challenge them to a race. Doing to lets the person who is challenged pick the route using a fairly versatile menu that comes up, zooming out the map and letting you pick the finish marker from where the challenge was issued. You can set the stake of the race, adding to the potential payout for the winner. If you’ve downloaded the demos off XBOX Live Marketplace, you can have a go at this without having to purchase the game. It’s a nice little touch and gives the game a feeling of life and freshness every time you come into a new town. It’s also cool to ease drop on other player’s conversations. Keeping the game paused while checking my e-mail one evening, strange voices cut in:

Random 1: Hey dude, what’s up?
Random 2: Not much, just got a paint job…
Random 1: Oh wow, that looks awesome!
Random 2: Yeah, I’m gonna go do that 1 mil race again, I need some more garage space.
Random 1: Cool, I need a faster car.






Friendliness aside, the multiplayer system is somewhat flawed. It’s not easy to get into races with other people if they’re not in the same location. I often found myself getting to the yellow multiplayer race starting points on my own and attempting to start the race only to be told that nobody was doing that race right now. You can host the race, but then you have to either invite players to it or hope somebody comes along to go against you. Because of my lack of experience I often found myself getting booted out of game lobbies I got into with no warning or explanation. While it’s a cool concept to move away from boring menu-driven match-up screens, relying on random people to be around is just a pain.

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Test Drive Unlimited


 
 
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8.0
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Player Support (1)

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