Test Drive Unlimited

Unlimited endevour from Atari

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When Test Drive Unlimited appeared on the Xbox 360 last year claiming to be a new breed of racing game, a MOOR (massive open online racing game) to be exact, it came to the table with an impressive array of features promising to change the way we look at racing games in the brave new next-gen world. First up was a beautiful fully-realised Hawaiian island to explore at your leisure, its sprawling and naturalistic road network populated by other online players as well as AI controlled cars. Second was its push towards driving for the sheer fun of it rather than simply going from race to race. With property to buy, garages to fill and an impressive array of cars to own it was pitched as something more like a sandbox game for petrol heads who'd get just as much pleasure from driving their hard earned cars through beautiful scenery enjoying the view as they would from lining up on the starting grid and taking part in races. It sounded like the racing game at lot of people had dreamed about and, more importantly, upon release it largely lived up to expectations delivering its key promise of creating a living breathing island full of other gamers to race against or simply drive around with showing off your array of cars. And then they said it was coming to the PS2. Not just that, it was also going to offer the same MOOR experience on Sony's last gen console as it had on the 360, eyebrows were raised quizzically all through gamerland and we waited patiently to see how they could possibly manage to squeeze the experience down onto the PS2 without cutting corners.

The simple answer to all the doubters out there is, they managed it. In fact not just managed it but did it with a commendable amount of style. It's becoming increasingly obvious that the quality of PS2 titles being released isn't showing any immediate signs of tailing off, in recent weeks we've seen a new Final Fantasy and the epic Okami both being hailed as being amongst the greatest games ever on the PS2, the imminent God Of War 2 also seems sure to be added to that cannon and while it may be stretching the truth a little to include Test Drive Unlimited along with such esteemed company it certainly deserves to be qualifying for Europe even if it is perhaps not quite Champions League material, to steal a football metaphor.

The start of the game sees you arriving on the island, purchasing a car and house then heading out on the road to either just cruise around taking in the sights or using your in car sat-nav to head towards one of the numerous driving clubs dotted around the island. It's at these clubs that the racing proper takes place, each club offers a variety of competitions from your standard road races to time trials and speed challenges, winning competitions sees you move up the club's leaderboard as well as earning cash into the bargain. Your hard won money can be spent on new cars and there is a huge range to choose from spread out amongst the island's range of car showrooms with models from more basic manufacturers like Volkswagen and Chrysler right up to Ferrari and Lamborghini. You'll need to aim to own at least one car in each racing class eventually to ensure that all possible races are open to you which is where your houses come into play. Each house has a set amount of garage space and as your list of cars increases so will your need for storage meaning you'll have to dip into the property market to give them all a home. Houses don't serve much real purpose beyond being a storage spot for your cars, a job which they do well enough, but the potential on offer for personalisation, some kind of trophy display, the purchasing of material possessions., etc, is missed entirely which is a shame.

Driving the roads in a high powered car for no other reason than to see the sights and weave in and out of pedestrian traffic like a Hollywood action star is as fun as you'd expect it to be and free roaming like that gives you a real sense of the size of the island you're exploring with driving distances feeling true to life meaning a twelve mile trip to the coast actually feels like one. However, the island paradise doesn't always welcome your brand of inevitably dangerous driving with open arms, drive like a madman and you'll soon be noticed by the island's police force. As your alert level increases the more attention you'll get and the more they'll follow you trying to pull you over. Thankfully, or disappointingly depending on your view they tend to be very easy to get rid of even when on high alert, venturing off road in search of another non connected road will often be enough to throw them off track as they seem very reluctant to take any such shortcuts. The driving model itself is functional without being spectacular, cars tend to feel a little twitchy and the lack of any kind of damage modelling combined with the brick wall effect of things like lampposts and shrubs means that there is never any real sense of risk involved in the racing, your precious car will end up just as clean and shiny at the end no matter what you hit.

Of course Test Drive's unique selling point is its really rather fantastic online mode. Seamless online is something few games outside MMORPG's even attempt regardless of the platform they're running on so to see the humble PS2 do it so well brings a huge smile and it really is as smooth an experience as you'd hope. When loading up a game you're asked if you want to go online or not, the central game itself remains largely the same regardless of which answer you pick, however, choose to go online, and the island's roads are magically populated by other gamers from around the world all driving on the same island at the same time as you. You'll also notice the addition of multiplayer races onto the map and joining one of these is as simple as driving to it and entering. Admittedly, strip away the novelty factor and that essentially amounts to being asked to drive from multiplayer menu to menu but it works, and keeps up the illusion of a persistent online game world. Another layer in the illusion is the way the game treats the whole island as one big multiplayer lobby as you're given the ability to setup spur of the moment races against people you meet while just driving the streets between organised races. Simply flash your headlights at someone and if they accept your challenge you'll be able to quickly setup a race by picking a finish line on the map wherever you want and then it's all systems go. Unfortunately this doesn't work quite as well in practice as it sounds in theory. The limitations of the hardware mean that Test Drive only actually populates the area of the island immediate to you at any one time so other players have a habit of appearing and disappearing from your instance of the island with no warning even thought they may in reality still be on the same huge server. This can make keeping track of people you want to race long enough to actually get to the starting line a pain and although it's possible to create a friend's list and lock people to your server in a bid to get round the problem it's still by no means ideal and takes the gloss off what sounds a fine idea in theory.

All is not completely rosy in other areas of the garden either; the rest of the game hasn't made the jump to the PS2 entirely without casualty. The side missions that added a bit of fun to the 360 version have vanished meaning no more crazy taxi style people carrying and no more shady package deliveries either. It's not the most tragic omission that could have been made for sure, but they did offer a bit of variety in a game that for all its "MOOR" ambitions is sorely lacking in any real goal or sense of achievement beyond the acquisition of new cars. Another section of the game to have gone missing is the motorcycles, again not a major loss on its own but it is another little bit of variety shaved-away. Graphically the PS2 obviously comes off second best but considering the hardware its running on it still does an impressive job of rendering a whole island in one go, populating it with AI and player controlled vehicles and all the while keeping the frame rate from shuddering to a halt.

Test Drive Unlimited is without a doubt a fantastic technical achievement and should be commended as such. As a game its certainty one for the good pile, and will provide hours of solid well made driving entertainment on and off line, however having created such an open and immersive world so impressively it fails to build on that potential by not offering the player any real sense of progression or involvement in it beyond simply moving from race to race and buying more cars. Because of that it's not quite good enough to honestly be seen as one of the last great PS2 games, but it is damned close.

77%

By Paul Newcombe