Test Drive Unlimited Hands-On - Racing Around a Virtual Hawaii

After appearing on the Xbox 360 last year, Test Drive Unlimited is on course to arrive on the PC next month. This is an ambitious driving game because it not only features lots and lots of street racing, but it also captures other aspects of the racing lifestyle. Test Drive Unlimited will also drop you in the middle of a virtual Oahu and let you drive around that Hawaiian island to your heart's content or engage in numerous single-player and online races for prestige and bragging rights.

The gist of Test Drive Unlimited's story goes likes this: After you choose your character avatar (selecting between male and female characters waiting at an airport gate to board a flight to Hawaii), you'll arrive on Oahu with a lot of cash and a desire to buy a car and a place to live and start racing. You probably didn't expect real estate to play a part in a driving game, but it does in Test Drive Unlimited. The first thing you'll do is pick a rental car from what must be the world's must upscale car rental dealership, and then drive to the realtor's office to buy your first pad. From there, you can buy your first car, participate in various races around the island to earn more cash, buy faster cars, race in more prestigious races, and keep going for pretty much as long as you want.

The impressive thing about Test Drive Unlimited is how it immerses you in a virtual world that's modeled pretty darn close to the real thing. You can drive on any major road on the island, all the way from the urban landscape of Honolulu to the rural, tropical countryside. The level of detail is eye catching as you zip through picture-postcard environments. There's always something to see, from the majesty of Diamondhead in the distance, jumbo jets landing and taking off overhead, to freighters and ships sitting at anchor in the tranquil waters offshore. You also get a sense of driving in an inhabited world, as you will encounter traffic on the roads, though it is nowhere as dense as it is in the real world and there's a noticeable lack of pedestrians and bystanders. Still, this traffic gives you obstacles that have to be negotiated when you're screaming down the roadway at 80 miles per hour.

To make money, you can race in different types of challenges. Time trials require you to zip around a route as fast as possible, whereas race pits you against several other cars. If you want a challenge, simply call up the 3D map of the island and locate an available time trial or race. Once you select one, that race is locked in your car's navigation system and all you have to do is drive to the starting point to formally begin the challenge. What's really cool about this system is that Test Drive Unlimited blends the online and offline together. If you choose, the virtual Oahu that you race around will be inhabited by other players. If you meet up with another player, you can challenge him or her to a race, and suddenly you're in a head-to-head competition online.

The cash that you earn over the course of the game can go toward many things. You can customize the appearance of your avatar by buying and outfitting yourself with the latest fashions. But you'll most likely want to buy faster and more powerful cars. At your disposal will be a vast array of licensed luxury automobiles from manufacturers such as Alfa Romeo, Ascari, Aston Martin, Audi, GM, Ducati, Ferrari, and many, many more. These autos are all modeled in beautiful detail, and you have the added benefit of being able to customize your wheels, from the paint and rims to the interior. The more successful you are, the more cars you'll own, and you'll be able to park them in the garage of your residence. Just as the cars get more and more expensive the further you go in the game, so do the residences. You can first choose from a simple bungalow or a high-rise condominium, but you'll work your way up to more luxurious digs. In addition to prestige, the pricier residences offer bigger garages, letting you maintain a larger stable of cars.

You needn't worry about spending $100,000 on a car and then getting a scratch on it the minute you leave the dealership, either. Test Drive Unlimited has a very forgiving crash model, in that you basically can't. Sure, you can slam into trees or buildings at high speed, but that won't do any damage to your car. The main danger of crashing is that it can spell the difference between winning and losing a race or a time trial, since you lose valuable seconds backing up and getting back on the road and up to speed again. You can cause damage to other vehicles, though. Cause too much damage or drive too recklessly, and you will draw the attention of the police, at which point you can try to evade the fuzz. If you're caught, you won't get tossed into jail, though your bank account will take major damage from the ticket that you receive.

In terms of controls, you will definitely want to have a racing wheel or a gamepad. The controls are a bit tricky if you use the keyboard and mouse, as trying to drive a high-performance sports car using the left and right arrow keys to steer is a clumsy solution. It's far easier to simply plug a racing wheel or gamepad into your PC, though in the version we played we had to manually remap all the controls to the gamepad's analog sticks and buttons, a process that's rather cumbersome since there are so many different controls in the game to handle driving, the map, the menu interfaces, and the like.

We've already noted the sharp presentation value. Graphically, the visuals look as if they were lifted from last year's Xbox 360 version, and that's not a bad thing at all. However, one thing that you can't discern from the screenshots is the game's audio. Test Drive Unlimited has an excellent (one might even say "driving") soundtrack, as well as solid sound effects. Everything from the roar of engines to the squeal of tires during a drift sounds just right.

With so much to see and do in Test Drive Unlimited, it's an understatement to say that this is just another racing game. The integration between offline and online is a very cool concept, as you can seamlessly go from zipping around Oahu to soak in the sights to competing in a head-to-head match. The game is nearly finished and ready to go at this point, and it ships next month.