Not the review I was hoping for. I loved the original and was getting excited about this one being released.
this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024
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The original Test Drive Unlimited was great, but it rightfully bombed in reviews due to some really bad technical issues. Some of the car characteristics were really bad and off the mark, and the game suffered from an engine issue that was a problem other racing games had solved long ago;
On long slopes, the geometry of the road didn't curve properly; the angle would have a polygonal jagging issue. This was most likely to shave off performance cost on the 360. Other games had already solved this issue by effectively smoothing angle changes, but TDU did not do anything of the sort. The result was that on hilly terrain cars would constantly bump around and lose traction due to weird unexpected air-time. Some cars were affected far worse than others, particularly super cars had a bad time.
I loved TDU, I loved cruising around in my Shelby Cobra and doing the one-hour tour around the island for decent money.
But the list of flaws is pretty long, and the technical issues made it a nonstarter for anything competitive.
Same, but the demo didn't really give a good impression.
Always online even in singleplayer is already a non-starter, but other than that (people literally not being able to play the game on release due to congested login servers) the driving is subpar, the city map looks nice but is empty like a ghost town, the driving is subpar, the soundtrack is terrible, the radio inserts sound AI generated, and progression seems bad too.
Oh, and apparently this was the best they could do after several delays of over a year. I hear the entire dev team went on strike against their publisher immediately after release too. And to think they also trashed their last WRC title for this, too. Just an absolute drawn out shitshow.
Hahaha I just knew this game was going to get poor or average reviews.