just a brief review to let potential buyers know what they're in for
The Good: cars sound great,cars look amazing,driving is realistic,free roam island is huge!,car selection is great,different houses and clothes are cool,cars handle differently depending on terrain and weather.
The Bad:some ugly scenary,lack of decent damage is a shame,no atmosphere,compulsory online is annoying,some frame rate issues,very poor police
One of the main things that annoyed me in my first few hours of test drive 2 was that when you get through the prologue you automatically get put online and get loads of lag,there is no way of getting offline apart from signing out of the playstation network!
it also annoyed me that even though the driving is realistic you can still hit a wall at 130mph and drive a way with a microscopic scratch Which seems a bit unbalanced.
To expand a bit more i would say that the other main annoyance is that you can only fast travel to places you've driven to, so if a high paid bonus mission appears then you will have to face a boring 10 minute drive to the mission which would be allright if free roaming is fun but the lack of atmosphere stops this.
police chases are also a let down as you have to ram a police car 3 times to get it to chase you but then once he's on you suddenly 6 police cars and a helicopter appear and its virtually impossible to escape.
apart from those things I have enjoyed my test drive expierience so far because the actual driving and car models are great but the lack of atmosphere stops island exploration being fun.
The thing that dissapointed me is that the previews sounded so good and the videos looked great so i got my hopes up expecting a revolutionary game but instead i got a slightly above average one.
hope this mini review helped you get an opinion on test drive 2!!!
Review Updated!: after a bit more playing i have discovered that test drive 2 can have a great atmosphere with the cars radio on and if you really get into the game and i have enjoyed free roaming so i raised its score up to 7.5 however i have also discovered that even 3 championships in the difficulty is still quite easy.