While the main focus of the game is the cars, the motorcycles are where some of the real fun lies. Switching from four wheels to two changes the game play a bit. The cool thing with the bikes is that you can actually do wheelies by pulling back on the left thumbstick and Enzo’s (raising the rear wheel of the bike) by braking and pushing forward on the stick. There is a delicate balance as if you pull too far back or forward you can flip the bike and send your rider hurdling through the air. I can foresee contests where people try and see who can maintain the longest wheelie (Atari VP of Sales and Marketing said he’s aiming to see if he can do one for a virtual mile in the game but is still working on it).The motorcycles really add a lot to the game and are a nice change of pace from the cars.
As the first massively online racing the game does have a few interesting twists to it. The first is that there will be certain limited edition cars available on the island so not everyone will have the same chance to drive everything on the island. The same can be said of living quarters and the clothes that your avatar can purchase. I’m interested to see how Atari maintains these items and doles them out in the game.
The interface has a couple of cool items in it. The first thing you'll notice is the large GPS unit in the bottom left of the screen (if you are using an external view that is). This not only gives you a rough idea of where you are on the map but when you have missions it will help get you to where you need to go. In addition to the on screen directional arrows you also get the synthetic voice telling you when to turn and which way to go. Another cool little feature that may only interest me is the odometer on the bottom right part of the screen. I don't think it had any real practical value but it is kind of cool to see how far you've gone in each car.
The controls for Test Drive Unlimited are decent but probably not the tightest in the world. This will probably be addressed before the game ships though. A few of the other journalists there didn’t really like them but I didn’t have much of a problem with them. Then again I had one of the developers point out the ways you could change the feel of the steering so that probably helped a bit. The rest of the controls are what you would expect with the left and right trigger handling the brakes and accelerator respectively. The A button acts as your headlights button while the X button is your hand brake. The D-pad controls the map overview of the island (where you can see where everyone else on the server is) as well as the steering settings, radio station, and a few other miscellaneous features. The game will support the current Logitech driving wheel out of the box and support for Microsoft’s upcoming wireless wheel will be available in a future patch for the game (Microsoft has yet to release the driver API to developers yet).
Graphically TDU is fairly impressive. Not quite at the Oblivion level (but then again not a lot of pop up terrain either) but close. I was a little concerned that having the game on just one island would have limited environments to explore but there is actually a good variety of places to explore in the game from small cities to lush environments to things in between the game offers a lot of things to check out and explore.
Test Drive Unlimited could really be the hit that Atari is looking for. The game just has a cool, laid back vibe to it that I really haven’t seen in other races. Test Drive Unlimited really is aimed at casual games and is something I could see my girlfriend really getting into. The fact that Atari has aggressively priced the game at $40 means they are serious about getting people into the game. I just hope they can keep up with me.
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