The Test Drive franchise has been around for a long, long time. Indeed, I remember reviewing it about a thousand years ago on the Commodore 64 home computer when the series debuted in 1987. It was an incredibly ambitious game for its time, featuring “real” exotic cars in a “real world” environment, something that no other home racing game was doing at the time. I remember thinking how cool the idea was, but ultimately gave the game a middling rating because while the concept was good, the execution just wasn’t quite up to par.
Fast forward to today, and here I am almost a quarter of a century later, playing the series again. And I’m getting a serious feeling of déjà vu.
Like its great, great, great 8-bit grandfather,
Test Drive Unlimited 2 features real cars in a real-world environment. But in between the original game and the latest one stands many evolutions of gaming technology, so now instead of a single road, TDU2 features two entire virtual islands, Ibiza and Oahu, that deliver literally thousands of miles of open road to drive around. The game also features a storyline in which you choose a character who you can level up and customize RPG-style, and a ton of virtual items you can buy, from clothes to houses. Oh, and cars of course. After all, this is a racing game.
The game starts out with a fairly long cut scene that essentially sets the storyline, and enables you to choose your character. My initial reaction to this was not particularly positive. The character animations, voice acting and general atmosphere are cheesy to say the least, and some of the characters themselves look quite odd. Like the modelers didn’t quite have enough time to give them the finesse they might have wanted.
