Freedom! And cars! All kinds of cars!

User Rating: 9 | Test Drive Unlimited PC
I have played my share of driving and racing games, and this gem goes on the short list of all-time favorites, right up there with the original Motocross Madness, which was also amazing for its time -- and quite hilarious.

Test Drive Unlimited provides arcade-style gameplay where you bounce back from each and every crash (not a bad thing, in my book), while the driving physics are quite complex -- yet driving remains simple, accessible and fun -- and so driving around is a very "saturated" and immersing experience. The physics and effects are separate and variable enough so that all of the cars actually have a distinctive feel.

I repeat: all of the cars have a distinctive feel.

The parameters that affect actual performance and/or "perceived" performance -- and which vary from car to car -- include the following: acceleration across the low, mid, and top end of the power band; top speed; "length" of gears; abruptness or "crispness" of gear shifting; wheel base and road grip (seems to tie in with ride control, lateral skid, and the ability to do controlled slides around corners); steering response; stiffness of suspension (seems to tie in with ride control and forgiveness); brake response and brake distance; and, obviously, overall vehicle dimensions.

Even the lower and medium performance cars are fun to drive. Although you perhaps own half a dozen ultra-expensive performance monsters, the more casual vehicles still remain an attractive option for taking a spin.

Add to that, the cars look magnificent, and have an impressive level of detail -- the doors even open realistically as you inspect cars both inside and out in your garage or a vehicle showroom. And, the ability to drive around a whole huge island -- rather than loading up individual race tracks -- is very, very cool.

Some of the missions or challenges are a tad sucky, I will admit, and some of them are far too frustrating and downright close to impossible, unless maybe you have some kind of fancy game controller that greatly eases play. (I am playing with a PlayStation-type controller.)

And, you have some races that are placed at locations with winding roads that are teeth-grindingly aggravating. Worse still, there are a handful of these that involve racing around an extremely tight loop. When you've got a race called "The Never-ending Loop" which contains over 10 miles of this eye-boggling nonsense, you're beyond "a tad sucky" and into the realm of pure sadism-by-design.

Also, a lot of missions involve dodging traffic, and traffic patterns are maddening, because they do not seem random, but are rather too "conveniently inconvenient," with clusters of cars appearing on the horizon as you approach that dangerous curve, and so on.

In fact, this issue of the traffic patterns is, in my mind, THE BIGGEST PROBLEM with the game. The traffic-generation algorithm is too transparently set up to foil and frustrate you as you attempt to complete certain missions. For instance, there are a few "pass the radars at high speed in heavy traffic" missions where this nasty little bit of programming is very in-your-face, and it stops being fun. "Heavy traffic" is all fine and dandy, but as you go through these courses, you'll experience a stretch of light traffic, and then WHAM-O! -- as soon as you hit that blind curve and/or approach that crucial radar, you run into clusters of cars going in both directions. To make it even more aggravating, this frequently stops you cold toward the finish of a brutal course. You'll often see these little traps generated repeatedly, in assorted shapes and colors but more or less in the same locations, no matter how you vary your approach -- and although they may be predictable, running these gauntlets can be very, very tricky. Rather than these contrived close-to-impossible generated "events," I would rather see traffic that was truly random, whether high-density or light.

Also, the motorcycle control feels really awkward, and so I am having a hard time getting into that aspect of the game. The motorcycle part of the game certainly isn't to the level of, say, "Superbike 2000," which had -- and demanded -- razor-sharp bike control. However, as there are only a handful of cycles, and this feature is only a tiny portion of the overall game, it's hardly an issue.

Test Drive Unlimited, patched to the latest version, plays with high graphic settings, HDR turned on, with workable frame rates, on my seven-year-old Frankenputer. (P4 2.66 GHz, 2 GB RAM, GeForce 7800 GS, the FSB is overclocked six or seven percent, massive power supply unit velcroed to the outside, side panel removed with a desk fan blowing directly at the exposed innards. Frankenputer, I says.)

Great game, great value, way too addicting.

Oh yeah, and one other thing: BACK UP YOUR SAVEGAME FOLDER REGULARLY. But of course you don't *really* need to be instructed in such details.