Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4673 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Atari
• Released on: 2006-09-08
• Rating: To Be Announced
• Platform: Xbox 360

X360 July 06
"Test Drive Unlimited, quite simply, is awesome."

Manufacturer's Description
Test Drive Unlimited is the ultimate automotive experience for car and bike enthusiasts alike. Visit the most sophisticated car and bike dealers to purchase new vehicles or simply take them for a spin. Collect and trade rare performance parts and customise each vehicle to make it one-of-a-kind. Test Drive Unlimited challenges players online to experience the most exotic and fastest vehicles on more than 1000 miles of diverse Hawaiian roads. Gamers win races, challenges, missions and tournaments to earn credits and purchase new cars, bikes, rare performance parts, clothes, apparel, homes and garages.

First and foremost, the game encompasses a lot more than just racing. The player creates a custom avatar that other players will see driving his vehicle the same way a Massively Multiplayer online game. The idea is that the developers wanted the player to be able to put him- or herself into the game, so you can select your clothes, head model, glasses, etc. to create an avatar that looks like yourself, sort of along the lines of what you can do in a lot of recent football and basketball games. Then, when you go out driving, you will see this model in the car driving around in impressive detail.

At home you can change your character's clothes and other attributes to better match your personality. You can even take a spin down to the local clothing store and pick up some new gear. If you've grown tired of your surroundings, you can buy a new house as well.

Further continuing the customization aspects, players will be able to set up their own house and even decorate it with your own car photographs on the walls. The main options: not only saving points; ability to buy a bigger house and garage, with swimming pool, view, etc. That's where you get the news, store your car collection, tweak and tune your cars etc. Other locations include private clubs, public places such as car parks where you meet up with other inline players.

Feel like you need a change in your ride? No problem. Take a spin down to the car dealership and pick up a new car to add to your garage. You can fully customize all of your vehicles and then make a living by selling them online via the in-game auction system. It is very similar to eBay in that other players are able to see what you're selling and buy it via a stock exchange related system. If you set your price too high, you won't get many buyers, but set the price just right and you'll bring home the bacon.

All items you can buy use in-game credits, so don't think you'll be spending any real cash. New aftermarket parts, cars, bikes, clothing and apparel will become available via downloadable content every month.

All set up with trendy gear and clothes, tweaked and tuned dream supercar, membership in a top notch club? Your next officially sanctioned inter-club competition is still 2 hours away? Why don't you just drive down the alley and look for a challenger among the other online players driving now over the island?

ONLINE COMPONENTS: OFFLINE IS ONLINE
Imagine what you would do in your car fanatic fantasy world. That's what TDU delivers online:

• Wake up, dress up, choose car, tune it, leave your house
• Drive freely in the streets of Hawaii, and meet other online players in the street
• Challenge whoever you want for a quick race you choose the goal, the bet, the path, the rules
• Go to your private club to meet your friends chat, trade, prepare the next race
• Time for the official competition Watch your friends races on in-game G4 TV while waiting for your race

Customer Reviews

Its need for speed, but it isn't!
Back when the Xbox 360 was launched, EA released another incarnation of their Need for Speed franchise. It was a meek showcase of the power of the Xbox 360 and a suggestive view into the future. Unfortunately it had one big problem. Sure it had lots of flash cars, lots of parts to buy and some impressive visuals, but for the first time in a Need for Speed Underground style game it introduced cops. This wouldn't normally be a problem if they weren't an integral part of the game and 45 minute chases weren't necessary to advance but they were. You could spend 40 minutes successfully avoiding capture then unwittingly drive over some spikes and you'll have just lost 40 minutes of your life you won't get back.

Now, imagine a game with the familiar free-roaming map, lots of flash cars, lots of challenges and cops. Sounds familiar doesn't it? Well, in many ways Test Drive unlimited is very similar, but only in the good bits. Instead of a made-up world you've got a scale representation of Hawaii, with miles and miles of roads, countryside and coastline. You've got a downtown area full of shops, car dealers, real-estate agents and diners. There is so much map to explore you probably couldn't see it all in one day.

At the start of the game you pick your avatar, get on a plane and soon you arrive in Hawaii. From here you rent a car, take a trip to the estate agents to buy your first house, then to a car dealer to buy your first car. After that it is up to you what you do. You earn money by entering races, completing set challenges and challenging other xbox live players as they pass.

If you are connected to the internet, other Xbox live players appear around you whilst they pursue their own single-player game. If you fancy a race with someone, flash your lights at them and plot a route to race on. If they accept you can attempt to show them your tail lights! Single player challenges appear in blue and multi-player challenges are in orange and you'll pass under their icons as you drive around. Entering a multiplayer event will launch a familiar lobby screen where you wait patiently for the other players to decide that they are ready. Waiting for people can get tiresome but luckily this isn't really essential. There are still hundreds of single-player challenges to do first.

As the money rolls in you can start buying more houses with bigger garages to store your cars. The cars in the game are split into 6 catagories - A to F. A-class cars are the fastest and most expensive and F are the slowest and cheapest. Most of the challenges are locked to a certain catagory of car, so you need at least one of each, but the more the merrier!

As I've mentioned, there are police in this game, but they're a side effect rather then a necessary evil. If you don't hit other cars and annoy them you need not worry about them. Phew.

This game has tons to do, loads of achievements to get and the integration with Xbox live is seamless. There are lots of great cars, ranging from the old American muscle cars to the more modern Aston Martins, Ferarri's, Lambo's, Alfa Romeo's, Audi, VW and many more, plus you can download more from Xbox Live Marketplace.

Cars handle like real cars. The car's weight shifts its balance and effects your cornering and there is no ridge-racer style powersliding. The physics engine is powered by Havok, who are renowned for realistic physics in many games.

Forget what the demo was like, this is more polished, more fun and there is no time limit. Great game.

Test Drive Unlimited, the next gen racer!
Many people have given this game a few bad reviews, but they are mainly basing their views on the demo, which at the moment is a work in progress and mentions at the beginning it will not be the final version and can contain problems.

Anway, apart from that, Test Drive Unlimited is the next generation racing game that has been long anticipated. The game includes 125 vehicles, including cars and motorbikes, countless challenges where you can simply pull up to another racer in the game, roll down your window and talk through your headset to the other person saying, "wanna race?" And you're immediatly in one. Since this game is an MOOR (Massively Open Online Racer) almost all the racers driving around the island are real people that you can chat to.
The setting of the game is 1000miles of open roads on Hawaii's Oahu Island, where you can literally drive anywhere you want in it.

As for the Online part of the game again, as i mentioned before, you can start up a race immediatly after challenging someone. Also in online mode you can chat with friends, auction off your cars, create clubs where all your friends can hang out and compete against other clubs. If you haven't seen any screenshots or videos of the game, I suggest you do, the graphics put into the game follow up with the title of the next generation racer, including interiors made to perfection.

The creators of Test Drive Unlimited want to give you the feel that you are actually on Oahu Island and they try to include small bits of detail that are realistic, including the Ferries that cruise around the Island on the actual paths in real life.

This game is the start of the next generation racer games

Try it out on Xbox live 360 now, it'll have you pre-ordering for September
This game was due out late 2005 and has been put back several times, at least you can now try the game out on Xbox Live to see what's in store for it's September release.

On first impressions I was a little dissapointed with the graphics, they are good, and rich looking in colour, but they just don't have that real life look that other games seem to do better such as PGR 3, they have a distinct pastelly dry look to them, imagine Forza Motorsport, they look just like that.

But that aside the cars and driving experience excel, and are arguably the best ever created in a console video game, I have NEVER heard a cars engine from inside the car sound as realistic as this, the Lotus is frightening! it's deep, throaty and aggressive, and would have Jeremy Clarkson waving his hands in the air and jumping up and down with excitement, what's more, each car has it's own distinct sound, so when you try the 3 different cars available in the demo you'll notice the engine sound will be different in each one, and the handling too, this makes a joke of the ultra arcadey NFS series, where they build an entire games career around unlocking the cars only for them to all handle exactly the same, and if your like me and drive with the bumper view; all look the same; all you see is tarmac. In Test Drive you get the actual drivers view inside the car like in PGR3, and it's fantastic, I'd say there is even more detail in the Test Drive versions than in the PGR cars.

The game consists of Races, time trials etc, situated in different places all over the island of Hawaii, and you start the game in your flashy condo, complete with it's own huge garage of supercars, just walk into the garage, choose your motor and a screen will show you driving out in your car, then you can roam the entire island looking for whatever you want, or use the teleport option to get to where you want to go right away.

The game is somewhat limited in one respect, basically no matter how many tracks the game has, it's all in one environment, something you may tire of, it was the same with NFS Most Wanted, but the island feel reminds me of the phenomenal TT Superbikes on the PS2, set in the Isle of Man, so roaming around an entire island in glorious sunshine might just be more interesting than I'm giving it credit for.

The Test Drive series was always NFS's poor relation in the past, even though it's been going longer, the two series were very similar, both focused on sports cars in various worldwide locales, with the emphasis on outlandish speed, with the TD Series peaking IMO with TD5, it then threw it's rep away with the awful TD6 , and later the somewhat lukewarm TD Overdrive was passable, but the handling was poor. Now they have really pulled out all the stops, and for the first time in years I'd say the latest TD game is a 'serious' racing game that blows NFS and others out of the water.