Developer: Eden
Publisher: Atari
Release Date: Out Now
Players: 1, 2-8 online, clubs and co-op
Words By:
I think it was when I dropped off the third or fourth badly drawn female of questionable virtue and she said “thank you so much, you’re adorable!” that I realised just how weird a game TDU2 is. On the face of it it’s an opportunity to test drive and own some of the most desirable Sports, GT and super cars in the world today. But as soon as you enter Eden’s strange island worlds you realise that this is also some sort of odd, disparate mixture of games that could just have easily been called The Sims: Cars & Gambling Edition.
Starting the game at one of the most awful rooftop parties you could imagine with the worst music ever to exit my TV’s speakers, you get to choose from a small selection of male or female avatars (you can change their appearance and clothes later). Having a quick tour of the party area you’ll soon realise that the character designers put a lot more effort into animating the dancing female characters’ breasts than any sort of lifelike features or realistic animation, bodily or facial. Exiting the party you get the lovely surprise that a friend has given you a Ferrari 430 Spider! But after taking this for a brief test drive you wake from this happy dream and realise that the car in fact belongs to spoilt brat and horrible bitch Tess Wintory, TV presenter and millionaire’s daughter. She commands you to drive her to a meeting concerning a race series and then the game proper starts. This consists of a vast series of tests and races that are awarded with XP, cash and prize cars.
The game delivers two HUGE play areas in the form of an approximation of both Ibiza and Hawaii (only Ibiza is available until you reach level 10, when you can fly to Hawaii). I can just about accept the fact that the street racing fraternity of Hawaii (Oahu to be precise) might be made up entirely from annoying, over-privileged Americans but Ibiza too? Where are all the sex & booze-crazed Brits?? The voice acting throughout is diabolical, and Eden should have done it better or scrapped the whole idea, Some of the cut scenes have such inane dialogue and bad animation that you’ll either cringe or laugh hysterically-or maybe even both which may result in serious hiccups, either way we here at Gamecell suspect the whole thing may be Al Qaeda-sponsored in an attempt to drum up even more anti-American feeling across the globe, and it may well succeed.
The visuals have been given an upgrade and the cars now have convincing dirt and some minor crash damage effects (see screen above, left )as well as working active spoilers and electric roofs on certain cars-hand operated roofs just magically open or close though. Brake discs glow cherry red, exhausts shoot flame and there’s plenty of tyre smoke. In-game the racing does suffer from an inconsistent frame rate, and at times this will annoyingly affect cornering, especially as the handling seems to be considerably less forgiving than in the original TDU. The scenery definitely looks nicer than in the original game but the pop-up seems much worse, and the overall draw distance is poor, making it difficult to pick out the apexes of corners and even see which way to go on dirt roads. Dynamic weather now plays a part and the rain and wet road effect is very good, but in a game that has animated electric folding roofs on the cars where are the windscreen wipers? There’s a day/night cycle too which obviously affects driving significantly as well as allowing for some time-specific mission requirements. As well as 4 basic levels of tuning to upgrade your cars, you can also paint them and apply stickers, but this is a pale shadow of Forza’s paint shop and applying stickers is fiddly and unsatisfying as they frequently blur and glitch. We were amazed to find that you can’t paint some cars and the Casino prize Audi R8 can’t be painted entirely either as its windscreen pillars always stay the original white! (see screen above, centre) The car lineup includes a fair share of exotics including Alfa Romeo, Aston Martin, Audi, Bugatti, Ferrari, Ford, Koenigsegg, Lotus, Mercedes, McLaren, Nissan and Pagani but Lamborghini and BMW are conspicuous by their absence (Porsches appear in the form of RUFs). The small but memorable lineup of motorcycles from the first TDU have also been scrapped.
The in-car view is nice and detailed but the camera turns when you steer, which feels weird and doesn’t actually help at all as it doesn’t do anything intelligent like turn more when you’re steering hard or driving around a spiral off-ramp or similar stretch of road. They aren’t always visible from the driver’s view but disappointingly the rear view mirrors give you a view of something that looks like a Commodore 64 game. I found myself using the bonnet cam quite often because of the unhelpful in-car cam movement and also because some cars seem to have limo-levels of screen tint that make seeing the road ahead stupidly difficult. The on-screen map is actually much simplified from the original, it now looks like a cheap Sat Nav display, but gives you all the info you need. The main game map was probably the most impressive thing about TDU, and it’s still impressive as you zoom in and out and can warp to anywhere you’ve already visited.
The online component is as tenuous as ever, and although you can set up a custom private game and invite friends it’s now impossible to hook up with a group of friends and play together in ‘free roam’, which will lessen the appeal of the online game for many people. The various race types (including new ‘Keep Your Distance’ and ‘Follow The Leader’ modes) can be joined from the main career game map and the ‘lobby’ sees you and your opponents’ cars lined up in the road, you can even take a look at/sit in the opposition cars at this point.
The Sims aspect stretches to being able to decorate and buy new furniture for your homes (which you have to buy to garage all your cars), as well as get plastic surgery and buy dozens of new outfits to alter the appearance of your in-game character. You’ll even get large amounts of in-game XP for buying new furniture, getting your head shaved and having a face transplant.
Our version of the game came with an unlock code for the optional Casino element of the game, and here you can play slot machines, blackjack, roulette and poker. Your stakes are virtual chips which can be bought at the highly reasonable rate of one to every two in-game Dollars, I’m not sure why the “exchange rate” even exists. Depending on your love of gambling this feature could of course steal days of your life, and you can also win vast fortunes (as well as lose them) which will help you with multi-million dollar purchases like the Bugatti Veyron and the more expensive dwellings that even include yachts. There have been countless problems accessing the Casino but at least one patch has been released which will hopefully cure the problems.
All online racing modes also seem a bit twitchy and glitchy and we’ve had things like opponent’s cars being invisible and the host of the game disappearing mid-race. Get used to seeing the words “the Test Drive 2 server is not available at this time” as this message seems to pop up a LOT. Even offline missions seem unpolished with the car coming to an instantaneous halt at the end of some races and other missions, and if you’re online AI traffic often disappears as the game presumably tries to synch your traffic with other gamers in the area. During GTA-inspired “Tail” missions you have to follow some poor sap’s girlfriend to inevitably find out she’s having an affair. The girlfriend’s mind is obviously elsewhere and she frequently has problems with the other in-game traffic (usually when she tries to overtake something) and the game’s solution to the ensuing traffic jam is to simply make the AI car disappear! During offline races AI cars often go see-through for some reason (like you’re playing online racers) and the AI also sometimes allows your car to crash after a race has ended (it’s just as well you don’t have to pay for repairs.) It’s just one more thing that makes the game feel rushed and untested.
Across both vast islands you find the maps dotted with challenges of various kinds including; Car Convoy (deliver a car), Tail (follow someone), Jolt (drive carefully), Adrenaline (drive like a nut but don’t crash), Driving (just deliver a random female somewhere). These will keep you occupied for a while as they spawn randomly and there are 100 to complete spread across both islands.
TDU tries to be sexy but fails spectacularly, and getting a car washed is the game’s equivalent of getting a lap dance in GTA as three badly drawn bikini-clad girls get your car all in a lather. Your car will look nice and clean when this unintentionally funny spectacle is over with, but you’ll probably feel dirty.
Even after the patch we found the game locked up arbitrarily. I’ve had the game lock up solid when entering a new house, when exiting an online challenge-and on two occasions even when I’d just bought a new car! The clubs feature, that didn’t work from the start, now finally works and the exclusive club cars can now be used and associated achievements ermm... achieved.
Whatever you think of TDU2’s looks, handling or non-car related diversions the core gameplay is fairly sound. The handling may be an acquired taste but road racing, whether it’s in traffic or not, is a lot more interesting and exciting than the tepid circuit racing supplied by Forza, Gran Turismo and the like, and the game supplies hundreds of miles of varied streets, highways and back roads on which you can test out your skills and your various vehicles’ abilities. TDU 2 is a hugely ambitious game that tries hard, but fails at too many critical points because it seems confused, not sure of what sort of game it actually wants to be… but the real shame is that it was released in such a buggy, unfinished state.
Best Bits
- Miles of open road. - Some nice cars to pose around in. - An MMO racing game with online clubs is a good idea in theory...
Worst Bits
- Pop-up, pop-down and iffy handling. - Glitches, bugs and random lock-ups. - A tenuous, unreliable, and overambitious online experience. - Idiots online playing with open mikes!
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
