old game: Test Drive Unlimited (TDU)

[Art Blade]

Although this game is I think two years old, it is still the only game that involves cars which I keep on my PC (it is a console conversion) and actually is the game that made me buy a Logitech G25 racing wheel with a seperate gear box (6 gears + reverse) and 3 pedals (clutch!) that of course also sports shift paddles.

The game is open world, that means you can drive wherever you want. Where? The whole isle of Oahu, Hawaii :) 5,000 miles of road and highways... There is police, eager to catch and give you a juicy ticket if you keep bumping into other cars or if you ram a police car... they can even go so far as to block roads :)

Now you might start to wonder, isn't this a racing game? Well, yes and no. Basically it is, but it contains more options than to simply participate in races. Like many other games, there is prize money involved to buy new cars (I believe the vanilla game has 88 and there is a DLC which I got that adds another like 50 cars) and to buy upgrades (actually, there are only three ready-built upgrades per vehicle, and they are not modular, so you better only buy the most expensive one, else it's a waste of money if you want to upgrade from a lower expansion stage). But you need a place for your cars... so you buy one or more condominiums, houses, luxury villas... and more vehicles. Yes, not only cars... there are a couple of decent motor bikes, too :) Most of the vehicles can be customised, like different colours you can pick freely from a palette, and different colours for leather seats. Costs money, of course, but you can do it as often as you like :)

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Then you have various types of races. Regular races against a couple of opponents, some of them are mixed (different car brands) and some are exclusives (one brand only). There are races where you have to speed and get caught in a radar... the accumulated top speeds decide if you win the prize money (usually there are 1st, 2nd and 3rd place awards). Then you've got three types of delivery races: Either you pick up a hitch hiker or a "super model" (far from it, they are spoiled bitches tired from shopping) or a packet and take your cargo to a given destination within a time limit. There are a couple of races that are time limit races and sometimes lead you across or around the isle, with huge prize money involved and sometimes a special car award.

And if you don't race in predefined events (which you may repeat as often as you like, there will always be prize money :) ) then you can cruise around and discover the beautiful landscape. Across the isle you will find and unlock shops that either sell vehicles or clothes. You have an avatar that you pick at the beginning of the game (male or female characters available) and you "want" to dress yourself with fashion stuff... from shoes to trousers, shirts, tee-shirts, jackets... or motorcycle gear and helmets... to buy that stuff you need coupons that you get from those super model and hitch hikers if you take them safely to their destination.

The most fun part of the game is free roam with an incredible amount of cars, each of them behaves differently (you do notice a difference between a Golf GTI and a Mustang) and every single car has its own dashboard design. During free roam (and some of the races) there is traffic! You have to drive somewhat carefully not to get slowed down by a crash or by the police (1 crash times out quickly, 2 crashes twice the time and 3 or more and you are screwed, the police is more likely to chase you the more agressively you drive and nearly won't bother you if you hit one car and then none for a while). You get an indicator with up to three police badges showing if you violated some basic traffic rules such as you shall not drive into the wrong direction on a highway and if you do, you shall not crash every single car you see... :)

Once you're through with your trophies and everything, the game stays open world, you can either do some free roam or repeat any of those races, try to purchase every house (around 50) and every vehicle.

Today I felt the need and put my racing wheel on my desk... and drove with my Enzo Ferrari around, in the pic you see me on a highway doing like 140mph (about to kick the pedal to the metal and it will be 350km/h). What I do like is the force feedback on the wheel and the fact that you can chose various methods of gear shifting (like, manual with or without clutch, automatic).

There is an online option but I never tried it (you have to decide if you want to start an online or offline career, and you cannot change an offline career later on into an online career). From what I gathered, the online aspect is not exiting, ranging from empty servers to none at all.

The single player mode is excellent, and it is my FC2 of the car games :)

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[Fiach]

TDU and Forza 2 are IMO the best current gen racers available, thanks for reminding  me about this, will take the Shelby out for a spin later :-X

[Art Blade]

hehehe  ;D

While Forza is not available for PC, TDU is. That means, it's the best gen racer for PC :)  :-X

By the way, two more things about TDU:

There are many many cars that range from near-racing cars like Enzo Ferrari and Lamborghini to oldtimers like Jaguar E-class. Excellent rare cars to play with :)

And.

In single player, you will meet "bots" or AI buddies, they have the same cars that are available to you, and they sometimes invite you to a race, and you can invite an AI driver. Those races start from the point where you met the other driver and it will always be you who decides where to go: you place a start marker and an end marker, probably best on a straight road, and the race can be up to like 5 miles. Then you can "bet" your virtual dollars against the other driver, winner takes it all.

There are two glitches known to me that I share with you now:

if you pick a road with two seperate lanes (seperated by some grass for example) you can set start and finish close to each other, the computer picks a route that connects those two points. The AI driver will follow the route, you can drive cross country and, a few yards away, pass the finish... LOL you win 20k max (2x10)

Even better, no matter if you win or lose such a challenge, go and participate in any predefined race that you know you will win, and on winning that, you will also AGAIN win the max cash from the previous free roam challenge race, usually 20,000 or so on top of the prize money. Even if you lost that random race, it will be payed during the prize money cashing :)

Even better, do those random challenges a couple of times (shortcut from start to finish) because you will always be asked for a rematch/revenge race, until you are fed up. Now do a predefined race, and win the max amount of 20k per free race accumulated, and the prize money... :)

I found out about that when I won a 3,500$ race and it kept counting money into my pocket, like 300k, all from previous random races LOL

[Art Blade]

By the way, nomen est omen, before you spend your hard-earned money on a ride, you can indeed have a test drive first. Two minutes and a lady observing you (or you her) and back to the show room. Best if you customise your car as if you wanted to buy it, then cancel the buying process, and the car in the show room looks just like you customised it (colours, rims). Then do a test drive with the car that still has your custom look :)

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[Art Blade]

I bought that Wiesmann and went for a fast lane... a little too crowded and those "Datsun Dummies" do exist here, too, all of a sudden and completely unexpected they start to turn on a highway (artificial dumbness) and of course I have to slam right into them. The police indicator actually works with half badges, so you see two solid ones which resembles four accidents in a row, and man, they were after me! The orange arrows indicate in which direction the nearest police car is driving around (they are behind me). The blue car symbol shows how far from me they are (a good distance). They shout over their speakers "STOP THAT VEHICLE!" and I rush away, escaping through traffic and taking random exits just to get rid of them. In the end I was lucky and I lost them :) By the way, how much of the wheel and dashboard you want to see while in cockpit view is customisable (seat position, up/down and back/forth). The size of the hands you see is 1:1 on a 26'' monitor!  :-X

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[Fiach]

I think some of the mechanics in TDU actually make you a better and more accurate driver, eg. the cops, the car delivery missions, the races on proper roads and a racetrack to test your cars out with no interruptions, all in all a top class game .

I love the whole house and garage  buying mechanic, along with the clothes etc. it becomes a real "lifestyle" type of game,especially being able to free roam all of Oahu!

[Art Blade]

yes :) And those little details such as working traffic lights and other cars using their indicators and horns  :)

[Ricamundo]

I had considered TDU a while back, as i've raced quite a few different games over the years, but i heard that online, TDU is or was quite laggy. is this true? I started out with NFS 2, 3 and 4, then after i got NFS 5 Porsche, i went online, and discovered a whole community around it. 8)

I eventually tired of those same cars and tracks, and moved to MBWR(Mercedes Benz World Racing), which featured lots of beautiful MB cars, and stunning open world scenarios. I still play this game occasionally, but now my main racing game is World Racing 2, the sequel to MBWR. Both games are from a small dev team in Germany(Synetic) and now are pretty much impossible to find outside of Euope i would think.

WR2 has a large rather productive  modding community around it, and the online racing is still popular. I have hundreds of cars, and recently one modder has been converting tracks from NFS 4, and Racer to WR2, as well as cars from several games. Another is finishing up a conversion of the famous Nordschleife track. i cant wait for that one. 8)

[Art Blade]

No idea about online characteristics. But there is DLC, here is one of the cars from it, a Chevrolet Corvette C1 1957, custom paint. I like it :)

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[RedRaven]

That car is a beauty Art, any old Mustangs? :-X

[Art Blade]

sorry, no old Mustangs. There are a couple of old muscle cars though, like

Dodge Charger Super Bee
Dodge Challenger R/T
Chevrolet Camaro Z-28
Chevrolet Corvette Stingray 1969
Chevrolet Corvette Stingray convertible 1971
Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe
Shelby GT500
Pontiac Firebird

[JRD]

sorry, no old Mustangs. There are a couple of old muscle cars though, like

Dodge Charger Super Bee
Dodge Challenger R/T
Chevrolet Camaro Z-28
Chevrolet Corvette Stingray 1969
Chevrolet Corvette Stingray convertible 1971
Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe
Shelby GT500
Pontiac Firebird

Hey... I ride one of those!!
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Nah... of course not, I ride the bus  :P

[Art Blade]

heh, I remember those stingrays from my youth. Actually, I remember that I once drove around in a brown Camaro with leather seats big as a sofa, crazy  ;D

[RedRaven]

GT500 for me please ;D

[Art Blade]

GT500 for me please ;D

Very well, sir  ;D

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About those glitches:

Here is an example where you can do that challenge race trick, just great there. In fact, you can place those start and end markers a couple of yards away if you zoom in. I didn't, but now you can see the surrounding better and will be able to identify the spot. Note, I am challenging a weaker car and no cash is at stake, yet I will win 20,000 per challenge no matter what, once I win the next regular prize money race. Try it :) I hope it works for consoles, too :)

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[Fiach]

Shelby Daytona is arguably the best car in TDU if only for the cool factor.

If you LOVE cars, bottom line is UNEEDTDU!

Otherwise you shouldn't be reading this thread, online is irrelevant, this game is pure car porn, jump right in and get DIRTY!  8)

[Art Blade]

lol  ;D

Here's your GET DIRTY, mate! I drive like a maniac on steroids!  ;D :-X Bloody double crash and that AI buddy hit the car to the right at the same time as I hit and flipped mine.

VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!  ;D

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[RedRaven]

Sweet, cheers Art :-X

[PZ]

The test drive capability is good!  One of the things I don't care for in Gran Turismo 5 is that an expensive car sits in your garage if it turns out to be a bad purchase - sure you can sell it, but at a fraction of the original cost  ;D

[Art Blade]

same with TDU. Unless you go online (never did that). In SP, you can sell it at 50%. The only game I know which got that right is NeedForSpeed:Shift. 100% refund  :)

[Art Blade]

Always a good purchase are through-the-roof priced Italian sports cars.

My personal favourite is the Enzo Ferrari that has a top speed of around 380km/h (235-ish mph) but hard to control, and a buddy of mine swears by his (TDU) Lamborghini Murciélago Coupé (which has a four-wheel drive, erm, as in 4x4 or 4WD) that is somewhat easier to handle and less expensive. I think that Murciélago coupé is the first really fast class A car you can afford in TDU, while that Enzo Ferrari is more likely one of the last. I drove more than 2,000 miles with my Enzo Ferrari in that game :)

By the way, the game's time counter of how long I played in total (per career) broke after around 330 hours. It froze and since it shows random numbers around 330-ish hours  ;D

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[Art Blade]

"What! It wasn't me! Alright, it was me. If you say so. You're just lucky we're not in Bowa or Leboa..."  ;D

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[fragger]

Otherwise you shouldn't be reading this thread, online is irrelevant, this game is pure car porn, jump right in and get DIRTY!  8)

;D ;D ;D

I've been printing this thread and hiding it in the back of my sock drawer :P

[RedRaven]

I've been printing this thread and hiding it in the back of my sock drawer :P

Lol, cant beat a little juvenile humour first thing in the morning.

And the thought of some one trying to stop any merc for speeding is a gem.

[mmosu]

Wow, this series has come a long way!  Last installment I played was Test Drive 6 way back on the PS1!!  I got that game for my birthday when I was a teenager, and man, I wore that thing out!!  That was the first driving game I ever played where you had a "garage" to fill with cars and also one of the first I ever played where you could paint the car a different color than it was when you bought it (I guess that passed for customization back then  ;))