fter almost 20 years on the scene, and numerous iterations (and company swapping), Atari is prepping Test Drive for the Xbox 360 and PC. It’s almost scary looking back on this game when it first appeared on DOS, Atari, and Commodore 64 computers. Now at the helm of development is Atari’s Eden studio. While the Xbox 360 has its fair share of racing titles, Test Drive Unlimited is bringing a few unique elements that could separate it from the rest of the pack.
Eden’s plan for Test Drive Unlimited is to expand the game from just a pure racing simulation to incorporate the entire racing lifestyle into the game. The entire game takes place in Hawaii on the island of Oahu. Eden has modeled 1,600 square miles of open road for racers to tear up. Fortunately, once you open up a new stretch of road and find a key location, you can warp to it later in the game instead of having to trek hundreds of miles to do something specific or find your friends.
While you can play the game offline, where Test Drive Unlimited really impresses is its online feature set. Atari is billing Test Drive Unlimited as a MOOR – a massively open online racing game. Every single person that is playing Test Drive Unlimited on Xbox Live will be on the same island with you. While you’re driving around you’ll see other real world drivers, as well as AI drivers cruising the streets along side you. While in theory you could plan to have the worlds largest traffic jam in a specific part of the island, Eden is only allowing users to see eight vehicles on the screen at once. However, in Test Drive Unlimited, any racer you come across you’ll have the opportunity to race, whether they’re driving a car or a motorcycle.
Wait, motorcycles?! Test Drive will now incorporate motorcycles into its vehicle listing. While the motorcycle racing in Tourist Trophy made us a little nervous, in the preview build that we played the handling was much more arcade like, which will make auto racers a little more eager to try out some bikes as well. You can pull off both wheelies and endos with bikes for style points, but beware of oncoming traffic.
Test Drive Unlimited will feature over 125 vehicles, 90 of which will be available from the outset. Eden has “sort of” implemented vehicle damage, meaning your ride and any other real driver’s vehicles will not take damage, but if you slam into an AI vehicle it will take damage. Atari and Eden are blaming this partial damage on the fact that vehicle manufacturers won’t allow their rides to be torn apart, but c’mon now, there are games that are working around it. Regardless, while Atari isn’t releasing all vehicle manufactures right now, we do know that such notables like Aston Martin, Audi, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Lotus, Triumph, Mercedes, Maserati, Jaguar, Ford, Dodge, and Ducati will appear in the game. Wait, a Ferrari in Hawaii? Someone point me to Higgins’ house so I can relive my Magnum P.I. fantasies. Vehicles can be purchased from dealerships, from people online, as well as be offered as prizes for races.
Challenges will be spread across the island with some pre-built, and others custom made by the community. Once you have the ability to create challenges, you can create start and ending points of the challenge, as well as control more than 50 race variables including purse amounts and race rules. After your challenge is created you can then upload it online for your friends to try and reign supreme.
The experience in Test Drive Unlimited is quite customizable. It all begins in your house where you create and modify your avatar. Avatar creation is based much on the Tiger Woods model, and you can tweak almost every single element of your Avatar’s body you please. Atari has teamed up with such clothing designers as Ben Sherman and Marc Ecko so you can pimp your racers out in whatever fashion you choose. Want some new duds? Drive around and look for a new clothes shop.
Your home is also your connection to the Test Drive Unlimited online community. Here you can read about online challenges as well as challenge other racers. Rankings, successes, trophies, and your garage are all accessible from your home. You can also take photos and videos of your races and share them with your friends from your house. What if you don’t like your house? Simple. Buy a new one.
The one thing that makes us nervous about Test Drive Unlimited is the fact that it weighs so much on not only people buying the game, but having them play it over Xbox Live. If the community is large and very active it’s going to be a huge bonus for players, but if not, the experience could be stale. While we’ve watched this game progress for a long time, it’s improving quite a bit. We’ll have much more on Test Drive Unlimited before its September 2006 release, and to hold you over we’ve got over 20 minutes of direct feed widescreen movies….