Test Drive Unlimited - 8/10
Test Drive is one of the oldest racing game series, first appearing over 20 years ago in 1987 on home computers. For PSP owners, Test Drive seemed to be the bright light and the end of a dark tunnel; it looked as if it would set a new benchmark for PSP games, and compel developers to go that “extra mile” in creating quality on the console.
Set on the Isle of Oahu in Hawaii, the player is given a small amount of money. First you will need to buy yourself a respectable set of wheels, and of course you are going to need a respectable house to keep said wheels. . You compete in various races to earn money so you can purchase new cars and homes – the characteristic most racers take on these days. But what sets this apart from other racers is the approach they took when making it. The whole Island of Oahu is around 30 miles from north to south, and 45 miles from east to west. It feels much bigger in the game though, you can spend over an hour just traveling around the Island once.
Police also feature in Test Drive, but will only pick you up by speeding in excess of 200km/h or by colliding into traffic, although the AI isn’t as sharp in other games, and they are easy evade. But if you do manage to get caught, you will have to pay a small fine, varying by the seriousness of your crimes.
As a “driving simulator”, Test Drive’s physics are forgiving, cars handle much better than in real life, meaning you can speed around corners at 50km/h, instead of slowing down to 30km/h to take the bend, but all this adds more excitement and speed to the game. The sense of speed is also realistic, so people used to arcade racers will find it a bit on the slow side.
There are really only 3 types of races, racing against other cars, racing from one place to another against the clock, and speedtrap races, where speedtraps are placed around the course, and you have to go though them as fast as possible, at the end of the race, the person with the fastest average speed through the speedtraps, wins.
Being a free roam game, courses are defined on your GPS system, which tells you when to turn, but unlike most other free roam racers, there are no barriers that keep you on the right track, stick to your GPS, or lose. Club races also off-road penalties that are measured in a bar, if you are off-road, it will go down quickly, if it reaches 0, you are disqualified.
Your opponent AI is mostly solid, but occasionally they will lose it and go off the track, or just suddenly stop for no reason. They also seem to be fairly aggressive, knocking you off the track in order to win. As there is no damage, you can smash into your opponents and oncoming traffic as you wish, it only costs you a few km/h in speed, which is gained back easily, but it you crash into something bigger then you such as a truck, you’ll go flying and effectively it will cost you the race.
Multiplayer in Test Drive is fairly simple; you can drive around the whole of Oahu as you can in Single Player, but instead of just your general traffic, you will be driving around with anyone else that is online at the same time, anywhere around the world. You can continue competing in races against AI opponents, just like you would offline, but you have the option to races against real opponents too, but the type of races you can choose from is limited to only 2, race around a pre-defined course, or a speedtrap race. Still, the ability to choose to race against AI or real opponents is nice. Police are turned off while online, so you can drive around not worrying about speeding and colliding with traffic, you can do as you wish.
Graphics wise, Test Drive looks good on the PSP, depending on how forgiving you are. Because it is on the PSP, and because the game is so huge, jaggies and texture warping are both fairly common.
If you have the original PSP, you will get some pop-up while driving at high speeds, where as if you have a newer model, you will get next to none. Car models looks pretty good too, again, it depends on how forgiving you are though. Traffic wise, you will only see around 8-10 different models of cars, but there isn’t much clumping, so you don’t have a line full of the same exact cars at the same time.
The only real downside though is that everything looks the same, no matter where you go on the island; you can’t escape from the blandness.
The car list is mostly dominated by supercars. While there are some “lower-end” cars, such as the Ford Mustang, after just a few hours of gameplay, you will own, and be racing against highly powered, super expensive supercars. Mind you, less powerful cars are still required to compete in certain club races that are restricted to a type, or model of car. Unfortunately, when the PSP version was being made, they decided to leave out some very popular and exotic cars that were in the Xbox 360 and PC versions, these mainly being Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches. Though there is still enough variety to keep you entertained. While you can use your money to purchase cars and houses, you can also spend it on upgrading your car’s performance. There are 3 stages of tuning, but all are fairly basic, and you don’t get the feel of modifying your car to the way you want it as in games such as Gran Turismo.
The sound itself is okay, cars have different noises, but only really if they are in a different class, the in-game music is mostly filled with Techno and Dance music, and not very good ones at that. But the worst part is the GPS talk back, the generic voice tells you which direction to turn and when, while also telling you how far your destination is every kilometer or so, which gets extremely annoying. Thankfully, there is an option to turn it off, which means you have to rely on the GPS system itself, which is displayed in the lower left hand corner in a small box, much like those in Grand Theft Auto games.
Every PSP owner knows that with big games, comes long loading times, but this is not the case with Test Drive, while the initial loading time is still fairly long, once you are in the game, the load times are shortened considerably to only a few seconds.
If you are into racing games where you can heavily modify your cars, then you may want to look elsewhere. But if you are a PSP owner who wants a good, solid racing experience, look no further, Test Drive Unlimited is the game for you.
Presentation: 8.0
Graphics: 7.5
Sound: 7.0
Gameplay: 8.0
Replay Value: 9.0
Overall: 8.0
Submitted by gdmatt
20/01/2009
22
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Test Drive: Unlimited
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