Test Drive Unlimited 2

[Art Blade]

I've heard rumors that there will be a sequel to TDU, this time an island in the Mediterranean, I've heard Ibiza.. (edit: not that one, I think it was Mallorca) Man, if that was true, I'd be one of the first buyers! I loved and still love TDU! :)

It is Ibiza.  ;D

HERE is a link to a topic regarding DLC for TDU2

[PZ]

I've never played it, but have heard much about it.

[JRD]

Test Drive Unlimited 2 The Good Life Trailer [HD]

Test Drive Unlimited 2 - Environment Trailer - PS3 / X360 / PC (E3 2010)

Even though this last trailer says fall 2010, it's been posponed to march 2011

Art... you can OhBoyOhBoy if you like!!!  >:D


Key Features:

    * CONNECT: TDU2 is "always live" with automatic content updates and seamless online/offline integration. New content, challenges and features will integrate dynamically into the gameplay as the world evolves over time.
    * SOCIALIZE: A whole new, out of car mode, where you can walk around shared spaces and interact with other players. New player run clubs are now a huge part of the game. New co-op play; follow the leader, keep your distance and enhance the experience within the social networking world.
    * CUSTOMIZE: Unlock a huge range of options and show off your custom avatar to friends and rivals. Customize your car with custom paint jobs, decals, interiors and trims. Customize every aspect of your avatar –– hair, clothes, physique and attitude. Buy your dream house or yacht, decorate, furnish and invite your friends.
    * RACE!: Test Drive Unlimited 2 puts the world's most desirable vehicles in the player's hands. These ultra-limited edition masterpieces are flawlessly replicated with Eden's finely tuned driving technology. Unlock vehicles from elite manufacturers such as Gumpert, Koenigsegg, Aston Martin, Audi and more.
    * EXPERIENCE: An all-new single player story mode with compelling character progression. A dramatic narrative, unforgettable characters, and immersive cut scenes to draw you in to the vibrant world of Test Drive Unlimited 2. Single player mode can be experienced offline or as part of the multiplayer experience. Create your custom avatar and build your fortune.
    * EXPLORE: Hit the streets on a whole new island: IBIZA. New terrain types, architecture and beautiful vistas bring this legendary location to life. Take on thousands of unique missions as you explore over two-thousand miles of back roads and black top in this Mediterranean paradise. Additionally, you can head to the Ibiza airport and take a flight to Oahu and experience the Hawaiian island as you never have before: with more than 600km of new asphalt and off-road network added as well as completely new missions and challenges.
    * M.O.O.R.™: Massively Open Online Racing is back! Level up your character based on your style of play, enjoy all co-op and competitive racing modes, and take on other racers that you encounter in our high-speed sandbox.
    * EVOLVE: Dozens of new enhancements, features and modes: dynamic weather, day/night, motion blur, car damage, a completely new handling model and more. New core driving modes and game-play: Championship, racing school, duels, cups. Off-road is now featured, with a whole new class of vehicle and hundreds of miles of off road tracks now in the game.

System Requirements

      Minimum:
          o OS: Windows XP SP2, Vista SP2, Windows 7
          o Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz or AMD Athlon X2 4400+
          o Memory: 2GB
          o Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 8800 / ATI Radeon HD 3870
          o DirectX®: DirectX 9.0c
          o Hard Drive: 14 GB
          o Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compatible
          o Peripherals: 10-button controller such as Xbox 360 or Logitech Dual-Action
          o Other Requirements: Internet Broadband Connection, Microsoft .NET 3.5 required

      Recommended:
          o OS: Windows XP SP2, Vista SP2, Windows 7
          o Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz or AMD Athlon X2 4400+
          o Memory: 2GB
          o Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 / ATI Radeon HD 4870
          o DirectX®: DirectX 9.0c
          o Hard Drive: 14 GB
          o Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compatible
          o Peripherals: 10-button controller such as Xbox 360 or Logitech Dual-Action
          o Other Requirements: Internet Broadband Connection, Microsoft .NET 3.5 required

[Art Blade]

Thanks, JRD -- COOL  :) :-X So, it's Ibiza then. :)

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OhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoy
OhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoy
OhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoy
OhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoyOhBoy

;D

[JRD]

"Thousands of missions" sounds awesome... if it's true, of course!

I don't know about customizing your pilot... apart from "socializing" with other players ala Second Life, what else you reckon there is to do?  ????

[Art Blade]

From the looks, the game is about the same as the first one. The basic concepts were stol.. err, inspired by successful titles such as then famous NeedForSpeed series (illegal street races back then) and stuff that reminds me of TheSims.

In TDU1 you had a couple of things to do. They will expand on that.

• Races: Earn money, various types of races including 1v1 freeroam races you could bet money on yourself
• Free roam: Discover Oahu/Hawaii on 5,000 miles of road and highways. There was police who chased you and made you pay big tickets.. money required..
• Cars/Bikes: Buy and "customise" cars/bikes -- only extremely basic customisation, either engine "upgrade" or not, and single colour full bodywork paint jobs with either predefined colours or (most of the cars) one freely defined colour.
• Garages: for your cars. You had to purchase houses or condominiums or villas that served as your "safehouse" and mostly as a place where to stash your rides.
• Fashion Clothes: some race types (hitch hikers, super models) earned you coupons. All you could do with them was to spend them on real life brands clothing for your game avatar (how to create a need in real life)
• being online/connected: Advertisements you saw in the streets of the game changed and matched your avatar (like, male/female perfums etc) -- again, creating real life needs. You had to decide whether to create an online or an offline career. You weren't allowed to mix both (which was great, I always played offline so they didn't bother me with ads)
• Online Clubhouses: Several race events and meeting with online players. Those clubs were empty/inaccessible when playing offline.

[black.penta]

Ferrari Reveal Trailer - Test Drive Unlimited 2

[Art Blade]

And again, black.penta with a nice surprise  :) :-X

[black.penta]

First: TDU 2 has achieved Gold - Status and the delivery starts in Noth America at Feburay the 8th and in Europe at 11th :)


Second: Start the Game - the first 10 min. of it:

http://www.gameswelt.tv/17798/test-drive-unlimited-2/staaart-die-ersten-10-minuten.html?mode=2

(sound is german)

[Art Blade]

The release date is only a couple of days away!  >:D  :-X

[Art Blade]

The vid reminds me of Need For Speed, the first Underground games. Man am I glad that I won't have to listen to those horrible German voice "talents"  :-D EEEEWWWw  :-()

[Art Blade]

Just found this 35 minute vid about TDU2 BETA on YT, watching now. No idea if the vid is good, but it is with vocal comments by the uploader.

Quick Look: Test Drive Unlimited 2

[Art Blade]

finished watching it.. the guy is so far from it  ^+-+

If you want to see very few vehicles and epic failure regarding races ("Aw, Geez, aw geez, aw geez... oh.. no, my door.. is open!" "Oh, Jesus. Yeah, I'm in 4th.. that's better than I did before.. Nice little windmill over there <pans camera to windmill> very scenic -- AW, GEEeeez! I just ruined that.") then it's worth a look just for chuckles.

He commented on the map where you could see the cursor the shape of an arrow indicating in which direction you'd start to drive on the road (as in left or right lane, matching the lane's traffic direction) and he thought that the arrow indicated which way the traffic in general goes as in one way roads, "like in the first game" (which indeed works like in the first game, it puts your car in the direction the arrow points).

Well. :)

[spaceboy]

I rented this with a free coupon yesterday and played a little bit, mostly the tutorial section and license test.  I'm not too impressed at this point.  I can give more feedback in a day or two.  The graphics are subpar.   I could do without the "sims" like people and weak story.   If anything it made me wish to play Just Cause 2 and/or FUEL.  Anyways, not to be too negative with only a little playtime I'll chime back in once I play some more. 

[Art Blade]

I could do without those people, too.. too much of a poor remake of early Need For Speed (perhaps Underground) series, and the graphic impression of those "Sims" (lol, nice one  ^+-+ ) is just subterranean.

The rest looks nice though as far as I could see :)

[spaceboy]

Well the PC version probably looks alot better, but the PS3 version is not up to snuff of games like JC2.  It's hard to explain my feelings, but since the story is lame (so far) and I just wanted to either race or explore, it just seems annoying to have the non-car stuff.  And I wanted to hijack a helicopter and fly around.  ;D

I had to grimace a bit at the need to earn XP by visiting the "hairdresser" and "cosmetic doctor" or whatever.  I suppose its a funny way of allowing you to change your avatar, but I really don't care about changing my avatar.  The 60 levels it talks about include 15 levels each for Competition, Avatar stuff, friend interaction, and something else. 

And a big negative for me is that you can't invert your Y axis, which makes it nearly impossible for me to walk around and look correctly at anything.  Everytime I wanted to look down at my car I instead looked up at the sky.  Yes, the controller options literally does not have a Y axis invert.  WHAT?!?!?!

The whole avatar portion just seems so - pedestrian.  Pun intended.  :)

[Art Blade]

 :)

Indeed.. not being able to change the axis IS a shiny example of unbelievably poor programming or at least not exactly user-friendly.

And you're just pointing out what I was thinking, I don't like the way they make you get used to turn into a fashion- and brand-conscious consumer (they'll most certainly have personalised ads again scattered across the streets) and neither do I like the idea of being forced to do some stuff online. I want an offline racing game, not a social network including "consumer education". I'll try to enjoy the driving and exploring (cruising around) as much as possible and will try to avoid any online-related stuff. But I already fear that it will cripple the game progress as in not being able to unlock certain goodies.. the last game had a small portion you could only achieve online but that didn't hamper the overall game progress nor did it limit your abilities; you could still get all cars and upgrades offline.

[Art Blade]

going to install and play. Will report later  :)

[spaceboy]

I'm interested to hear your thoughts.  I couldn't really get into it.  It's got enough base there for some fun, but since my gaming time is limited, it just isn't winning out against other options.  It definitely does not seem anywhere near as polished as other recent games.

[Fiach]

The invert axis will be in the next DLC I think  ^+-+, but yeah no invert would kill a game for me.

I really enjoyed TDU1, like I LOVED IT! I walked past the game (TDU2) in Tescos today and after a moments pause, I left it there. For me Forza is the ultimate racer, the roads in TDU1 could be really aggravating sometimes, between cops and other traffic.

Much like Spaceboy, if I want to travel around a tropical island, well I have JC2, I also swore off Eden games after the debacle that was Alone in the Dark, so a double no for me, but I would love to hear your impressions of the game Art :)

[spaceboy]

but yeah no invert would kill a game for me.

Thank You!  I always get into an argument with a friend of mine which way is the "right" way.  Of course it's inverting Y that is correct  :)

[Art Blade]

First impressions (hard to write here because the wheel is fixed between me and the keyboad, lol)

Installation was easy (got a German version but was allowed to choose English, so I'm really happy about the fact that I won't ever have to hear the extremely horrible German dubbing).

A friend asked me to wait (until today) so we could start from scratch together, including installation (we talk over the phone using loud speakers / headset). Funny enough, we both have identical systems, his installation took a couple of minutes longer (probably fragmented hard drive but he assured me that he had used windows' defrag).

Well, it was HORRIBLE to finalise an online registration with Atari (so I can play online) which I had to do SIX times until everything was right (ahhh, got it sorted, done).

The game settings were accessible after the intro you saw in the first vid here, so it looked bad, was in windowed mode (wtf, a game that doesn't start full screen?) so I was lucky I knew a windows shortcut (ALT+ENTER) to switch between windowed and full screen).

Now spaceboy will smile and slap his forehead.. I need to use mouse and keyboard to walk but apparently I can't invert the mouse's y-axis.  ^+-+ :D Again I am lucky. I don't recall which game it was, there was an editor (probably ArmA2) which always started with a non-inverted y-axis and it would take ages to invert it, and after making changes I needed to test in-game, with inverted y-axis, then back to the editor.. you get the picture.. so now I am already re-educated and used to a non-inverted (yuck) y-axis mouse.

However, I've got a massive G25 Logitech racing wheel (my mate: G27) and the setup offers to "detect devices" -- a keyboard. No wheel (although I was allowed to replace keyboard bindings with wheel buttons and x/y-axis settings). Which brings me to another strange point: The package, on the back, lists supported devices as there are mouse, keyboard, and optional XBox360 controller for PC. Not a single word about wheels. Only after installing the game you get to see a "readme" where they do list a couple of wheels. How stupid is that? Just to show you: My mate had already opened his package and put the CD into the drive when he mentioned that wheels were not listed, and I asked him to proceed with the installation and find out whether or not the wheel is supported by the game and I actually told him that I was willing to wait and in case wheels weren't supported to return the unopened game (but I was too curious and went, "aw screw it," and opened it anyway). But there will be people who read the pack, miss the wheels, and won't buy it for that reason. Silly to lose customers for not advertising a wheel for a racing game. The wheel worked not entirely. Which meant I had to download a driver that makes full use of all its features. Neither win7 nor the game thought it necessary to mention that my driver was missing although at least win7 recognised it as a G25 yet it treated it as if it were a regular wheel (some buttons were missing in the settings, the extra third pedal --clutch-- wasn't identified). Now I'm doing this setup.

While writing this, my mate (he had his drivers installed) went on testing the game and told me that some online characters showed up in the initial first home in the garage he was sitting in his car, merged with them, which means that probably everyone starts out in the exact same location. Which means that "your" home isn't your home but like a public place.. LOL  ^+-+ :D

We'll check if it is the same as with TDU1 where you could either start an online or an offline career. Since we both started an online career we now fear that we won't be able to go offline with that career. Starting an offline career will definitely deprive you of like 25% of the available achievements and we don't know how important they are for game progress, like "won't we get this or that car because we can't get beyond 75%?" We'll see.

The good news so far is that driving the first purchased car (we agreed upon a Lancia) felt realistic when using the E-brake/hand brake and the cockpit view  is nice so far, and driving around a little and passing fields and trees the environment looked pleasing. That is definitely better than in TDU1.

Enough for now, I want to get my (software) wheel drivers working and customised and test some more :)

[Art Blade]

Just a small insert: Having installed the Logitech Game Profiler, the wheel does what it is supposed to do and the game recognises the device properly and of course allows adjustments in-game.

However, adjusting that sort of wheel (900° capacity to turn it.. 24 buttons, 3 pedals, force-feedback variation of settings..) does take quite some time until it feels right, exactly the way you want it to feel. Not to hard, not to soft, turning on a street in a realistic range and so on.. but once that is done, man.. great :)

[spaceboy]

glad to hear you've got it all setup now Art.  Now how about the GAME!!!!   ;D

[PZ]

Sounds good, A_B, looking forward to a few gaming shots  ;)