The Test Drive series of racing games have been around since the late 1980s, but they've never come with the glitz and glamour of the Gran Turismo's of this world. To be fair to Test Drive, though, it's not a series that really aims to compete with Gran Turismo. It's more closely related to the likes of Need for Speed, where outrunning the police is as common as racing your opponents.
That kind of gameplay wasn't of interest to me back in the day, so I never bothered with any Test Drive title, and that includes the many open roads of Test Drive Unlimited, an open-world drive around Hawai'i.
Open world driving? Before Forza Horizon? Before Burnout Paradise? Ok, what have I missed here?
Frustrations
Test Drive Unlimited was originally developed for the Xbox 360, but I've not found a copy of that, which leaves me with the inferior PlayStation 2 port released a year later. Make no mistake that I'm still very surprised at what goes on in Unlimited, and what the PS2 can chuck out, but I will be wondering just what I'm missing out on by not leaping into the newer generation and playing it as it was intended.
Speaking of surprise, in an unexpected start, we're flying into Oahu, one of the Hawaiian islands, picking out street racing with our eagle eyes and dreaming of the day we can tear around the island in a sports car.
We're barely out of the airport and we've decided to splash some credits renting a Ford GT for half an hours-worth of cruising through the city. By the looks of it, this guy's entire reason for being in Hawaii is to drive cars. I don't even know his name, but I know he sure likes cars.
The clock ticking, we set off in whatever direction our GPS wants us to go in. I suppose we could completely ignore it, but it does look to be pointing us in the direction of an illegal street race, and we are in a rental car, so we can thrash it around a little bit, right? How else are we going to find out how it handles?
Sadly, it doesn't handle terrible well, but this is partly due to emulation slowdown and the troubles associated with it. Accelerate and brake are accompanied by handbraking, but everything is manual in this port, for inexplicable reasons - no gear changing inputs at all. Not that an automatic gearbox helps you to avoid sliding offroad or, worse, colliding with indestructible scenery.
So I've had some fun with a Ford GT, it must be time to buy a car of my own so I can race after the clock runs out. The Map opens up and some nearby dealerships pop up with a number of customisable cars for sale.
Fun Times
After tweaking some emulation settings, Test Drive Unlimited was starting to improve, not that this PS2 port was ever going to capable of other-worldly graphics. Sticking with Ford, I buy a Mustang and unnecessarily pimp it out with bright red seats and Pony-themed wheel hubs. Red cars go fast, red cars with red interiors go faster.
But I'm not told to race. The sun is setting, and you can't sleep in your car, can you?
I don't know what this guy is running away from, but he's got a no-nonsense approach to his holiday. Buy car. Buy house. Race car. And we're already making some inroads into the racing scene, with our news tab indicating various invites to race series' based on our purchase of a Mustang.
The Ford Owners Club is just around the corner, and they invited me first, so that's where we're heading.
A press of the triangle button set it as our target, and the GPS does its thing and plots out a route, but I'm curious as to how big this map is.
Oh my. That makes Forza Horizon 4 look small. That's not the essence of Hawaii taken and placed in an expansive road network through the rolling countryside, that's Oahu. Probably not 1:1, but 1:1-enough. 1,000 miles of tarmac to drive over here. On a PS2.
The various clubs are structured like a ladder, where you'll be racing club members one by one to climb the ranks. Reach the top spot and you'll be rewarded with prize cars, and credits for victories of any kind mean progressing through the game, so let's get to it.
Our first challenger is Frankie "Bunyip". Identical cars - though I've no idea what tuning, if any, is possible - and a straight enough point to point sprint race, this should be a formality.
Further Frustrations
And he's gone. Make a single mistake and your opponents will punish you. There doesn't seem to be any form of rubberbanding. Once they're gone, they're gone. Bunyip here even left the minimap, he was so far ahead.
So how do you catch up? All I can really do is drive fast and try to save time wherever possible, like cutting corners, or at least kissing what counts as the apex. Unfortunately, most of the corners have two obstacles: dirt that slows you down and indestructible objects that stop you dead in your tracks.
Worse than dead, because it takes a short while before the auto gearbox recognises that you want to reverse. Crashes are utterly devastating in Unlimited and will ruin your races. Avoid these posts, though, and you risk being penalised for driving off-road too often. Does this game want me to have fun?
It must do because in my second attempt I was ploughing through traffic with no problems. A pole will reduce my alarming and illegal speed to single figures, but oncoming traffic will bounce out of the way. You'll be slowed down a little, sure, but not detrimentally.
As the race goes on, I'm reminded of Need for Speed: Most Wanted, and how empty it was. Unlimited is very much the bigger, more ambitious open-world, and understandably emptier, but it feels like there are only a handful of other car models that you'll see again and again, and terrain that does its best to keep you on the road by being too boring to investigate up close.
Another sprint at another club also begins with a bang that I'm on the worse end of. It seems trucks are heavier than cars ad stop you dead. Who knew? Blackloc knew, I bet, as he drove off into the distance.
I need something else to do. Something interesting. There's only one thing that springs to mind, and it's a road trip to the other side of the island. How will the PS2 cope? Are there any loading screens? Am I locked into an area at a time? How limited is Unlimited?
Further Fun Times
When you're not in a race, you're free to do what you want. You can start street races that you come across, and if you're on an Xbox 360 and/or the servers are still up and running, and there are other players to challenge, you can flash your headlights and design a race of your own.
I came to the Forza Horizon series with FH4, and before that only played a small amount of Burnout Paradise. The open-world racer wasn't my thing until I put hours and hours into FH4. Going back to the early days of the idea in Test Drive Unlimited opens your eyes to how bold these games are.
You need to pack an adventure around every corner. You need players to not be too far away from the action, yet not bombard them with too much at once. There should be something for everyone, and Unlimited gives you street races, point to point races, a tuning garage (somewhere), and something to work towards - owning houses and garages full of cars.
And the police, spoiling your fun. You need to obey traffic laws in Test Drive Unlimited. Well, you don't need to, but if a police car is nearby and you tear past them at high speed or crash into something, they start to take notice, a bar filling up at the top of your screen to indicate their status.
I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking at with regards to the cop meter. The greener it is, the further you are away from a police car, and I guess the more badges you can see the harder the police will come down on you, but for this drive, I was just gunning it, like I was on the Cannonball Run or something. There weren't any spike strips or roadblocks to contend with, no helicopters to hide from. Just go fast and don't crash.
I had made it into the heart of the island in short order, but all I was doing was driving along the highway at great speed. There was nothing to see, nothing to stop for, but no loading screens to sit through either. It was smooth sailing.
Apart from navigating the map. Each time you dip into it and come back out, your car will start from a standstill. Not ideal when dealing with the police.
Also not ideal are the occasions where the GPS helpfully points out that the quickest route to your destination is to drive on the wrong side of the road. It may technically be quicker, but I don't think that's the best thing to show off in a game that, by the looks of it, wants to be more realistic than fantastical.
Alright, you get some arbitrary points for pulling off drifts and whatnot and slaps on the wrist if you get pulled over by the police for crashing into yet another fire truck (why are there so many on the roads?), but the presentation is very much a case of "this is Oahu, explore it at your own pace, enjoy the driving it has to offer".
The airport was a weird start, but it's the only plot I've seen. Once behind a wheel, that's you. That's Unlimited. Go drive somewhere.
Nearing my destination, a random house I could buy in future, I look around for something to do on the north of the island.
Further Frustrations
Nothing. There's nothing up here. Not yet, at least. By the looks of it, all the races are centred all the way at the south of the island, where you start, and spread out over time. I've jumped the gun. I've taken too much freedom and it has cost me.
Luckily, if you've travelled on a road, you've unlocked it for fast travel, and it's quite fast. Again, I'm surprised the PS2 can pull it off, and can only imagine it looks much better on the Xbox 360 - in all aspects, of course.
There's a street race just around the corner from the Ford Owners Club. Let's start there.
Ah. Yeah. That's right. The racing requires precision that you just can't get with emulation. One bad move and you can wave your chances goodbye. You can choose from multiple difficulty levels for each race, though, so you can mitigate your chances of wasted time, but I guess harder races give more money, and if that's the goal of the game...
Final Word
Test Drive Unlimited had me drive across Oahu for an hour before I called time on it. I like the scale of this game, or rather I admire it. It must look so much better on the Xbox 360, hopefully fuller and less of a wasteland.
It's not a wasteland, to be fair, but Unlimited is a little bland. Lots of cars to choose from and customise, numerous activities to do, but I suspect that there is a point where this game may start to feel like too much of an effort for too little a reward.
I'm sure the races take your through some interesting environments and challenge you in different ways depending on what cars you and your competitors have, but I'm equally sure they'll feel a little samey. Rock up to the start line, race, win a few thousand credits, realise you need a few hundred thousand credits to buy anything, repeat?
Do you want to repeat? I don't know how many events you'll need to win to get your hands on a swanky car or new house, but it feels like it could be a great many. Does that mean I'm locked into a car for a long time, unable to buy a new one for fear of wasting money I was saving for a house?
What is the point of another house anyway? A new spawn point? A bigger garage? I'm not driven, if you'll pardon the pun, towards the purchasing of houses. There's nothing compelling about it, and it's not just a grumble with Test Drive Unlimited. Sure, it's thematic to have a home base where you park all your cars, but the game isn't about looking at parked cars. It's about driving them across a thousand miles of open road. Is that interesting? Yes. To a point.
I fear my view of Test Drive Unlimited has been tainted by playing the PS2 port before the Xbox 360 original. It's definitely the kind of game that works better when the hardware allows it to shine. Again, I'm surprised by what the PS2 port can pull off, and would encourage anyone to give it a go, but there are better - albeit smaller - open-world racers out there that does what Test Drive Unlimited does, but better. Then again, they all came out later.
Test Drive Unlimited proved what could be done and used online multiplayer well, but it doesn't have the recognition from the wider world that it perhaps deserves. I read of mods that keep the game alive with more car models than you can think of, so there is some reason to come back and play it, but the only reason I have is to see how much better other versions of this game can be compared to the PS2 port.
I won't be playing a whole lot of Test Drive Unlimited, in other words. There's just no driving force behind me doing so. No reason to stick around. No reason to not poke a nose in and see what it's about, but beyond that, I'm good, thanks. Need to catch a plane.
Fun Facts
You can roll down your windows for that extra sense of realism.
Test Drive Unlimited, developed by Eden Games, first released in 2006.
Version played: PlayStation 2, 2007, via emulation.