Live fast. Drive faster.

Test Drive Unlimited pioneered Eden Games’ vision of an open-world racing game with deep online integration for multiplayer connectivity, but TDU2 takes this Massively Open Online Racing (MOOR) genre to the next level. As long as you’re connected to the internet, the game is “always live,” allowing automatic content updates and seamless interaction with other players in free roam and racing challenges. They’ve also enhanced all aspects of the TDU lifestyle, including exploration, collecting cars and residences, as well as customizing your avatar. A new social feature turns locations like car dealerships, driving schools, clothing stores, and the like into public lobbies where you meet and interact with other players as you walk around in a first-person view.

Your “progress” through the game is measured by your global level, which is raised by earning experience in four basic categories of activity: competition (earning licenses and winning races), collection (buying cars and houses), discovery (exploring roads and finding treasure), and social (making friends and community participation). This means there’s a lot of stuff for completionists to sink their teeth into, but doing so might include having to earn points for decorating your homes and visiting the hairdresser…



The driving itself is definitely arcadey, despite what the game might try to convey to you at times. It does have a setting for various amounts of “driver assistance” that basically determines how easy hand-brake turns are to make or whether or not your car will spin out. The physics are very simplistic, causing you to stop dead in your tracks when you crash and slam down to the ground under an immense force of gravity if you manage to catch some air. I assume the latter is to prevent you from flipping your car, but the former is a real pain in the ass considering it can be caused by many common objects on the side of the road. Unfortunately, the same problem TDU had with most objects (lamp posts, bushes, fences) being absolutely indestructible has returned, meaning you stray from the pavement at your own risk.


As pretty as some of the pre-release screenshots are, it’s obvious that the majority of the graphical work went into making the cars look good. That’s the most important thing in a racing game, anyway, as it’s the only thing you can really see clearly while you’re speeding down the road. The landscape is more than acceptable, though, especially as far as what you can see off in the distance while you drive around. The HUD elements are a bit large for my tastes, but they don’t obscure your view of the road and can be disabled. In fact, combine that with the quite detailed cockpit view for extra immersion!


Between all of the offline and online race challenges, random encounters with other players, obsessively filling in the map with blue lines to denote what roads you’ve driven on, collecting cars, and, by extension, collecting houses, it looks like there is a TON of potential entertainment value in TDU2. Not to mention, when you’re finished with the Mediterranean island paradise of Ibiza (or whenever you’re allowed to move on, I’m not there yet), you’ve got another huge island from the first game to explore: Oahu, Hawaii. All in all, there’s over 2,000 miles of asphalt and dirt roads to conquer in dozens of licensed cars of varying classes.

missing My favorite Need For Speed games were the open world ones, and TDU takes that concept to the next level by integrating online features and connectivity with other players. I have seen that it gets a bit crowded around some areas such as driving schools, and colliding head on with another player while trying to rack up cash using FRIM (basically a stunt reward system) can be a bummer, but the immersion offered by not being the only reckless driver out there is well worth it. Make sure you turn off the floating name tags, though, since they can really clutter up the screen.

Stay tuned for the full review of Test Drive Unlimited 2, coming soon to FiringSquad!