Test Drive Unlimited 2 - The Father of Modern Open World Driving

Hello there! For a few months I have been playing Test Drive Unlimited 2 from time to time.

Basically, this game was a mixed online and offline open word driving and racing game. Why did I way was? Well, the servers are dead, so only the offline component survived, in a way. You have to manually aptch the game so it runs, because the launcher it uses wants to download the latest patch from an Atari repository which does not exist anymore. There is a silver lining though: there is a mod you can install for the game which is called TDU: World (I'll provided a link for it at the end of this post) which tries to reenable all the online functionality, even offering servers for players to drive around together.

That was setting up the game, so it works in 2021, but what about acquiring it? That is a problem too, because the game used licensed cars and those licenses expired, so the only means of getting it is either a physical console game, which won't benefit from TDU: World, or a key from a reseller so you can activate it on Steam. Oh, the joys of digital distribution.

So yes, getting this thing is a proverbial pain in the ass, but once you get in you're greeted with the fantasy of driving a Ferrari down a desert road, nobody in your way to ruin the fun, and, of course, that was a dream. You are actually a car valet, who was in the right place at the right time, because the owner of the Ferrari you were fantasizing about is the host of Solar Crown, a reality TV/racing championship designed for rich assholes. They are missing a contestant, so you take their place. After that, you are taken to a used car dealership to pick your starter car and off you go, you are free to partake in all the game's systems. Yes, systems, you aren't only racing in this one, there is also a side of life sim mechanics, like: buying new houses and apartments, furnishing them, buying clothes for your character, getting haircuts, creating clubs with your friends (this one is not yet reinstated in TDU: World), going to an offshore casino and actually partaking in gambling. There is a lot to do, besides driving around.

Let's get back a bit though, this is a driving game in the first place: the driving itself is somewhat of a simcade model, meaning you can't just drift around every corner at full throttle, you have to manage your speed and also try to not break too hard, since you'll just spin out. There are also two terrain types: tarmac and dirt, and different car and bike classes suited for each, and a vehicle not suited for the terrain will underperform amssively. There is also a pretty lenient police system, which has a bar filling up when you do illegal stuff in the presence of a police car, but this is such a nonfactor that you can smash full speed into a cop and still not fill up that gauge to trigger a chase. A neat feature is the fact that before entering certain races, you have to take a license test for the class of vehicle in that race, showing you how it performs under different conditions, so you could familiarise yourself with driving it, so you donb't have to keep restarting the race later while figuring out the driving model. There is also car customisation, both performance and aesthetic, so you can inject some of your personality into your vehicle of choice.

Now, why do I call this the precursor of most open world racing games from today? This is quite simple to explain, but it will take a little while. Starting, Forza Horizon stole one mechanic wholesale from this, and that mechanic is world discovery: a road is greyed out until you drive over it, but ocne it is discovered, you can fast travel to it from the map screen. There is also the wreck car collectible: an area on the map is highlighted to contain it, and there is a radar-like system which tells you when you're getting closer, just like the barn finds in Forza Horizon, the derelicts in NFS: Payback and the hidden car parts in The Crew.

Continuing on the online precursor idea, the online mechanics also included the club system in TDU2, which allows you and some friends to level up a faction you created and even race against othe clubs, allowing the players to go around and do their own thing, group up for events, challenge eachoter to impromptu races, and also the aforementioned casino. All in all a pretty good time to be online in this game, but it being on community engineered servers, there are still a lot of bugs with the online at the moment, like a player being stuck between the shared open world instance and the race waiting room instance, basically rendering them playing a singleplayer game.

All in all, I would like to recommend this game, but there are numerous hoops you have to jump through to even getting it to run on modern systems, so it is up to you if you are interested in this. I'll also leave you with the fact that there is a new Test Drive Unlimited coming, but it is published by Nacon and I do not wish to support their shady business practices.

Images: cover, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

TDU: World: https://www.tduworld.com

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