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Test Drive Unlimited

Shiny arcade driving

Eden Games has really gone the extra mile with the game world. Landscapes look stunning and the draw distance can be several miles in many places. Textures, models and interiors of the drivable cars are very detailed, but the generic cars driving around as traffic and the textures of the buildings are a bit less impressive. In any case due to the massive amount of detail and the draw distance, the end result works great. Cars reflect their surroundings on their shiny surfaces and shadows from vehicles, buildings and trees are exceptionally well done and with HDR on, things look very nice.

The attention to detail with the world also uncovers some downsides - the world is so detailed that you begin to notice unrealistic details such as unlimited fuel (and the lack of working fuel stations), inability to use turning signals at intersections (rest of the traffic does use them, no such luck for the player) or the fact that there are no pedestrians at all. Even the hitchhikers and supermodels you can pick up for a ride appear as icons until you start the mission. Thankfully these are minor problems - this is an arcade game, not a simulation and the essential bits are there and everything works fine.

Whoops...

...officer, I barely nudged that car. Honest.

While random computer cars can be damaged in collisions with bits flying off, branded cars driven by the players or the computer opponents in races are indestructible - probably due to the limitations of the licensing agreements. Local police is also a bit selective - they will chase you if you crash into other cars, but beyond that they seem to be blind. Officers seem not to mind if you dodge around the traffic at 200 MPH or run red lights, even if you do it right in front of a patrol car. These are probably design decisions to keep the game fast-paced without turning the game into a constant police chase. Works for me, but simulation enthusiasts will snub the game as just another arcade racer even before we get down to the driving model of the cars - which also takes some liberties to keep the game easy to play. You can unlock a special hardcore mode once you reach Champion level for more realistic driving, but even that won't turn TDU into a simulation.

Graphics options? What graphics options?

Test Drive Unlimited was originally published on the Xbox 360, and I'm happy to say that the game looks pretty much identical between platforms. PC version supports widescreen and if you have suitable monitor, it's almost impossible to tell the versions apart.

Since the game was initially designed with Xbox 360's powerful Xenos graphics chip in mind, Test Drive Unlimited mocks older midrange video cards. While you can technically start the game on something like a GeForce 6600, it will not run with a drivable frame rate unless you turn the resolution down. Way down - we're talking 640x480 here. Also, while the manufacturer's recommendation is a 256MB card, the game does work on 128MB cards as well - if you don't mind the unplayable frame rate. There are almost no options to scale the graphics - you can change the resolution, turn HDR off and cut down the amount of grass around the roads, but that's it. There is no way to disable shadows or reflections, or to alter texture quality. This means you need some serious video card power to run the game at a playable frame rate (30fps+). There is hardly any visual difference between the "minimum" and "maximum" settings, since there are no settings that actually change anything visually - beyond the HDR on/off switch.

With Test Drive Unlimited, your CPU hardly matters. At 1280x1024 resolution, you'd have to go below a 2.8 Ghz Pentium 4 or a 3000+ Athlon 64 before you see any difference in performance and dual cores give no improvement either, as the engine is single-threaded. Crossfire and SLI should help, at least in theory, since the game is decisively video card-limited. Unfortunately our attempts to get the game running on Crossfire were greeted with crashes and graphical bugs, and according to third party reports, SLI doesn't work any better with the current available drivers.

All this translates to a real word recommendation of "You need a pretty beefy setup". Our recommendation (assuming the most common 1280x1240 native resolution display) is no less than Radeon X1800 or GeForce 7900GS, and even then you should expect less than 30fps at times unless you turn off the HDR effects. You might get by with a bit less if you are willing to drop the resolution down. It's unclear at this time if the performance is this poor due to some problem with the game, but the measured performance is consistent across wide range of hardware we tested. Our only system to go consistently past 60fps with HDR enabled happened to contain a GeForce 8800GTX. You have been warned.

Some kind of an analog controller is also essential. High-powered supercars are twitchy and with a keyboard you are stuck with a throttle pedal with just on or off as your options, and that just won't cut it. You can try the game out with just a keyboard, but it's almost impossible to drive any really fast cars without analog controls. The Xbox 360 pad is a good low-budget option as it has analog triggers for throttle and brakes, but the optimal tool is naturally a proper steering wheel setup. TDU offers full support for the Logitech's G25, including support for H-type shifter and clutch.

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