Previewed: January 8, 2007
Previewed by: Brice Boembeke

Publisher
Atari

Developer
Eden Studios

Release Date: February 13, 2007
Genre: Racing
Players: Online
ESRB: Everyone

Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)

Once you’ve gotten started in the game, you’ll rent a car to take you from the airport to the nearest real estate agent in order to buy your house. This is the game’s tutorial on how to drive, which, if you have a steering wheel, will be fairly self-explanatory. You can then take your rental to a nearby car dealership in order to get your first vehicle. Then, take that car that you buy, pick a direction, and start driving.

Let the road take you where it will. As you drive, you’ll come across races for money, races against other computer controlled cars, races against the clock, and races against other real drivers, connected through the game’s integrated online network. Make money from those races in order to buy new homes, new cars, and upgrades for the cars that you already own.

The game is simple, but with the entire island of Oahu to explore, there’s a lot to do. There are seemingly endless side- and back-roads that cut through the picturesque island environment, leading you through nature and into the cities that hug the coastlines. And the island is massive. To drive the highway that circumnavigates the island could take you an hour or more, depending on traffic. With several thousand miles of highways, mountain roads, and city streets I would have to say that the island in TDU is definitely larger than all the areas covered in the latest GTA.

The simplicity and straightforwardness of the gameplay is probably the game’s strongest feature. The open-ended feeling of being able to drive around at will between races creates a very cohesive experience. Also, running into (sometimes, literally) other actual drivers during your jaunts around the island, really makes for a very cool experience. You can even meet up with someone and instantly challenge them to a race for a certain amount of money by setting up a beginning- and end-point yourself.

There is also such a wide variety of cars to choose from that you’ll find yourself having trouble deciding which one you want to spend your hard-earned cash on next. And as far as realism, the vehicles each have a very unique feel to them and behave as you would expect them to, even though most of us have never, and most likely will never, get a chance to drive most of the vehicles that are available in the game.

The list of drivable vehicles is impressive, but at the same time, there are some types that I expected to see, that, as far as I can tell, are, as of yet, not included. Some of these include, Honda, Toyota, and BMW. At the same time, however, you do get access to some extremely rare and amazing cars that are a pure pleasure to drive.

The game also supports Track IR for those of you who own it, and that adds another level of immersion to the game. I’ve even found myself crashing, sometimes, because I’m staring off out the side window at the beautiful environment and forget to watch where I’m going. Another cool aspect that they’ve incorporated into the game is an integrated voice chat. One problem, however, is that a lot of people don’t use headsets and have their voice-chat enabled and all you hear over the voice-chat channel is their car-engine. So, as nice an idea as it is, they definitely need to work on it a little.

Also, as far as betas go, the game is what you would expect. There are still some flaws and bugs that need ironing out, but between the first version of the game that I received and the current patch, many of the main issues were already resolved.

One of the things that I find frustrating, and I’m sure that this will probably resolve itself once the game goes public, is that I have only participated in single-player races, because I can never find any other active multi-player races. Now, maybe it’s because I’m not looking in the right places, or maybe it’s because there aren’t enough people playing the beta right now in order to find any races. Hopefully, once the game has more people playing, finding multi-player races will be easier.

All in all, I am fairly impressed with the game and am looking forward to when it is released. The beta is pretty solid and the game functions well on my nearly outdated computer and I’m sure that they will optimize it even more prior to release.

Bottom line, if you’re a racing fan and enjoy the Need-for-Speed/Test Drive style games where you race actual street cars on actual streets, this is a game to put on your wish-list.

While we look forward to the release of Test Drive Unlimited on the PC check out our great screenshots.