Test Drive Unlimited 2

Once upon a time I bought an old Porsche, my marque of choice since childhood. It was a lovely piece of car, shapely and quite quick, but over the years I forged a turbulent love/hate relationship with the thing. See, as much as I was enamoured by its old-school swagger, it wasn't long before the car began its own weight-reduction program, with bits falling off with reckless abandon as I drove. Soon enough the initial excitement of driving a shiny exotic car had been replaced with burning frustration. The other side of the story, though, is that when things went smoothly, without losing a windscreen wiper or starter motor on the highway, driving that car was an absolute blast. That pretty much sums up the overly long metaphor that I am clumsily trying to weave before your very eyes: Test Drive Unlimited 2 is the gaming equivalent of the charming but unreliable Porsche which I so desperately wanted to love.

The first Test Drive Unlimited took brave strides to carve a niche for itself as a pioneering effort, taking the idea of a persistent online and offline game world set on a glamorous island, and unleashing the masses on its scenic highways and byways. The sequel takes that same concept and simply cranks every dial up to the maximum. More island, more speed, more fancy, more ridiculously expensive supercars... basically more everything that made the original what it was. If a game was to be scored on wealth of content alone, developer Eden Games would have a bona fide classic with Test Drive Unlimited 2.

For starters, the two islands available - Ibiza first, with Hawaii opening up later - are immense. Criss-crossed with a vast road network joining the different regions, running out of tarmac is definitely not a concern. The scale of this open world does lend itself to sessions of aimless joyriding, tearing along the Mediterranean coastline for ages, purely because you can. It's a pity though that the TDU2 versions of Ibiza and Hawaii aren't near as breathtakingly beautiful as their realworld counterparts. There are also far too many 'dead' sections - large expanses of terrain which offer nothing more than a place to slap a highway across. You really need to love driving your virtual supercars to siphon much pleasure out of these bland sections, but endure them you must, as you will need to explore the islands extremities if you want to experience all that TDU2 has to offer.

To make the most of the massive island playgrounds at your disposal, TDU2 is scattered with an enormous variety of game modes and things to keep you busy. Think of it as a racing game with Grand Theft Auto IV elements welded onto its chassis; a sandbox racer, if you will. Obviously most of your focus will be on racing, or at least driving, but there are also houses to buy and decorate, clothing stores to be found and devoured for the fashion-conscious driver, hair salons to be frequented, photo spots to be discovered, and even cosmetic surgery to be considered for when you need a nip and tuck. All of these places need to be found manually by driving the island flat, so don't expect to just be able to pop down to the hair salon to have your afro teased unless you've been there before and unlocked it on your map. This does make exploring the island more rewarding when you cruise into an undiscovered area and see the messages at the bottom of the screen showing car dealerships, stores, and so on, that have been revealed.

Obviously this game isn't just about donning the latest threads and driving around looking for mansions to buy. There's a racing game under all of that peripheral action, and it's equally content-laden. Races are divided based on vehicle classes and track types, ranging from the high speed asphalt events to the drift-heavy off-road races, as well as classic car events giving you the chance to try out some vintage metal. Progress is made by winning various championships in the different disciplines, each championship featuring a number of race types. Your standard checkpoint-to-checkpoint lap races make up the bulk of the events, but there are also timed sprints, lap elimination-style races, speedtrap events and more, but none of which we haven't seen before. The variety of vehicle classes do spice things up a bit though, because there is a huge difference in racing Aston Martins around a residential area at night over racing heavy SUVs along dusty trails in the hills with the sun glaring in your eyes.

Also keeping things interesting on the road, but for all the wrong reasons, is the universally erratic vehicle handling. Pulling away from the line will result in a terrifying concoction of smoke, screeching tires, lateral shift and very little forward motion, even in the slowest cars in the game. You really need to play with the throttle carefully to make a clean getaway. Likewise, it's near impossible to round any corner without kicking the tail out into a drift or hearing the wail of your tyres melting on the tarmac at anything beyond crawling speed. There is also a disconcerting floating feeling with the general handling, as if the cars are too light, and it makes it incredibly difficult to correct an over- or under- steer without fishtailing wildly into a wall.

As with some of the finer things in life, over time the fidgety handling becomes less of an issue as you learn to compensate for its problems. Once you do, there will be times where a neatly threaded sequence of corners will plaster a wry grin on your face, as will the illusion of speed attained in the more open sections of motorway. Off-road, where the general floatiness of the handling is more forgivable, there are real moments of driving pleasure, even if they are punctuated with frustration when you over correct your line and plough into an olive grove. Supercars are always tricky to keep pointing in the right direction, and unfortunately the inconsistent physics doesn't help much either. While it takes nothing short of space shuttle levels of power to nudge an opponent off the track, all it requires is a light brush with a sign post or opponent to send you careening into oblivion - painful when you've been holding on to first place for an entire race, for it all to end in tears on the final lap.

There is a ghost of a story holding all of this motorway mayhem together, by the way, before you start thinking it's just a series of unconnected races. In a typical rags-to-riches tale, you start off as a valet driver parking cars for the wealthy, with aspirations to make it to the big time of motorsport, the pinnacle of which being the Solar Crown championship. By a totally unbelievable twist of fate, your lowly blue-collar driver is soon ensconces into the world of fast cars, expensive mansions and good looking people. From there it's a matter of winning races, earning the cash, and upgrading your lifestyle to keep up with the proverbial Joneses. Unfortunately the whole "lifestyles of the rich and famous" vibe is let down by shoddy character models, laughable voice acting and a lack of polish in some aspects of the presentation.

The concept of building and customising your own island lifestyle is appealing, but it isn't as fully realised as you may hope. You can buy a villa up on the hill, but there's almost no reason to spend any time there, because it's about as functional as a movie set. In fact, limited interactivity is a recurring theme in the TDU2 world. The various car dealerships all look great - luxuriously furnished, with all the trimmings, flat screen TVs, glossy car manuals scattered on oak counters - but nothing you see can be interacted with besides the cars on the floor. It's the same with the upgrade garages, clothing stores and everything else. They create an illusion of a fully realised world, but it's just a front. They may as well have just given us a menu screen instead.

Still, we're not really here to pansy about in chic boutiques. The vehicles are meant to be the stars of the show, and any hot blooded car lover will agree that they deliver. Each vehicle has been authentically recreated, and they do look good, especially when on the move with reflections shining off the glimmering paintwork. Inside it's fair, but certainly not up to the standards of Forza 3, with some of the textures looking a bit sketchy. Considering the time that has gone into making the vehicle models, it's disappointing that there wasn't more effort put into the interior of the cars.

On a macro level, TDU2 is a case of "nice from far, but far from nice". Speeding through a small town everything looks fine, but pull over and have a closer look and suddenly the buildings reveal their below par textures and unimaginative designs. It's the same everywhere, as if you aren't supposed to look too closely or examine your surroundings. Distance pop up is rife, ruining the immersion of a fully realised open world. Head off the beaten track, and be prepared for miles and miles of brown. Brown trees, brown ground, brown bushes. As far as the eye can see. To be fair, none of this is terrible, but it feels like there was so much potential to make a truly stunning game world here, but it hasn't materialized. Believe me, I really wanted this game to be gorgeous, based on the press screens we've been seeing over the past months, but in reality it doesn't live up to expectations.

So, what we have so far is a fairly pretty open world racer with plenty to keep you occupied, but with a forgettable storyline, inconsistent handling and some lacklustre presentation values. Fair enough, but that's leaving out one of the most hyped aspects of the game: the social component. TDU2's vaunted massively multiplayer aspect was supposed to be what separated it from the crowd, with social hubs for gamers to park their cars and make friends, as well as drop-in/drop-out persistent world gaming, personalised teams and clubs to join and compete with, and more. Gamers are meant to be able to cruise together in packs, roaming the night streets and looking for action, or just pulling over and bragging about their sweet rides.

On paper this holds a lot of potential, but since launch day the mulitplayer component has been riddled with bugs, crippling this part of the game to the point that we can't fairly judge how well it functions. It's not universal, and many have enjoyed trouble-free online gaming, but the official forums are alight with gamers having no luck in the multiplayer department. In my experience I could see the other players, could crash into them in open play, and on a few occasions, could take part in races with a number of total strangers, but that's about it. Most of the races were unavailable, the clubs were closed, and a sombre warning of "the Test Drive Unlimited 2 servers are currently unavailable" was an all too regular occurrence. Still, I can see how these features could greatly improve the overall game experience, once the glitches have been eradicated.

I'll be honest, I went into this game expecting to be blown away, and in some ways that may have been my downfall. The island setting is stunning at first glance, but loses its shine under closer examination. On the other hand, the broad range of vehicles are faithfully recreated and look great on the road. It's a pity though that actually driving them is a lot like trying to steer a schizophrenic goat down a mountain pass. There is a whole lot to do on these two sun drenched islands, but sadly much of it is a case of quantity over quality. More time spent tweaking the core concepts instead would have been time well spent, because first impressions point to a potentially great open world racer which never really finds its feet. Things could improve greatly once the multiplayer is sorted out, but even then the underlying game is just a bit too bland to make this a must-buy title. All things considered, Test Drive Unlimited 2 could have, and should have been a far better game.

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