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Another year, another Racing game with flashy
cars most of us can only dream about. Out comes ATARI’s Test
Drive Unlimited for Microsoft’s Xbox360.
More a
simulation than an Arcade-style Racer, Test Drive Unlimited
looks set to take the likes of
Project Gotham Racing 3 head
on for the crown of the Next-Generation Racer battle with astounding
graphics, miles of road and some of the finest cars out there to
play with. Rather than give you various tracks to drive on and
unlock, Test Drive Unlimited gives the player an entire
island to drive about at your leisure: open main roads, small
country roads and even off-road along the beach (although this does
obviously slow the vehicle down) there’s no place ATARI don’t want
you to drive and explore.
But it is very realistic, there are
no crazy jumps or smashing through obstacles that are in the way, it
all reacts and handles as it generally should; smash into a
lamp-post and the car will fair worse than the post, hit another
vehicle and both cars will crumple (the other car will generally
take more damage), if the car’s backend begins to snake it will take
some effort to control it again.
Being a demo at E3, Test Drive
Unlimited only had a limited selection of options to test, three
cars were available in the forms of a Lamborghini, Lotus Elise, and
Shelby Mustang, with Hawaii to drive around. Test Drive Unlimited
has a
much more open-ended structure than other Racing titles,
having the option to either drive about and take in the scenery or
to find one of the objectives indicated on the Map which you can
drive to in order to begin, similar to
Midnight Club: DUB Edition on the PSP, with various
different race types from Time-Trials to Head-To-Head.
Elements certainly need to be tweaked here and
there though, the Collision Detection could do with a little
fine-tuning as sometimes even a slight nick at low speeds would send
the car spiralling out of control, and it could do with a little
more speed as unless the Camera is on the front bumper it can feel a
little lethargic even in the Lamborghini. The handling could be a
bit sharper to, all the cars have different handling characteristics
but struggling to get round an easy open corner or a cheeky
one-eighty with the handbrake should be a joy, not a task.
In the end we’ll wait and see how
Test Drive Unlimited turns-out, but the way its going it looks
likely to be a quiet little corker. |
