Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Game Review – Full Tank, But the Finish Line’s Far

There’s no shortage of racing titles if you want to burn rubber. Whether you’re looking for an arcade racer – with options like Forza Horizon and The Crew – or the ultimate experience from a simulator – with exceptional titles such as Gran Turismo 7 and Forza Motorsport – the world of racing is covered across plenty of games. While it may seem like a saturated market, many cult classics still form a large enough chunk of the space where games are kept alive through the dedication of their fanbase and modders. Nacon, realising this potential, has reborn the Test Drive franchise, some 12 years after the last official release from the series. Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown continues the trend from TDU2 as a “lifestyle game”, offering many more side quests than straight-out racing. But does such a title still have the fans’ backing among modern racers?

What’s Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown About?

Starting Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown feels like any other racing title. You meet some agent looking for a prospective driver, and your name pops up among the crowd. You have a brief introduction, a race to prove your worth and a series of tasks to familiarise yourself with the environment, gameplay and controls. So far, so good. 

You receive a new car to set yourself up with – a choice between three. Soon after that, you’re almost literally thrown to the streets without much else to do. You have to rank up with a vague understanding of your new environment, not knowing the best course of action required next. As such, I set out to explore the world in a 1:1 recreation of Hong Kong island. More on that later. 

Drawing on experience from similar titles, I drive around the world aimlessly, choosing to traverse the expansive highways to unlock the various districts within the city. This assists with increasing your rank in three ways: exploring new areas gives rewards, with new roads also adding rewards with each new percentage explored. Driving fast, narrowly missing passing vehicles and performing some skills add points to your rank. Things seem to be going well, but 30 minutes later, I’ve only ranked up a further two levels on the scale – needing a total of five to begin the next phase of the game. 

It takes about two hours to reach this, which finally unlocks the ability to commence with races. And herein begins the next challenge. 

Getting To Go Racing, Eventually

After a quick breather, having crunched two straight hours to get to this point, I finally began my first race against the competition. With the difficulty increased from the default settings, I’m confident I can reach the goals in the tasks provided and finish within the top three. I achieve this, but only just. 

A few races into Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, I realised the car I’d chosen to compete with was not ideal. I chose the cheapest option, hoping to upgrade it to my specifications with the funds left in the assigned budget. I was wrong. Unlike every other title before it, I’m not allowed to upgrade yet. For that, I have to reach level 10. I have to grind out a few more races, going through the entire set available after level 5. I’m left having to repeat the ones I find most straightforward, as the lack of upgrade on my car leaves me battling for mid-table in each race, making the task of levelling up quite a challenge. 

Another two to three hours later, I reached level 10. Success. I can now enter one of the many workshops I had passed traversing the map but couldn’t. Thankfully, the repeat races gave me sufficient funds to purchase what I thought I needed. But there’s another problem. After level 10, I can only upgrade one portion of the car’s specifications: the engine. And with only one upgrade in that section, I’m again left with a shortfall in the capabilities of my car’s performance. 

Fast-forward another two hours of grinding in Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, and a bit better off than before, I finally reach level 15 and can now upgrade much more of the car’s parts, although only for the first category. This is a frustrating endeavour, but the reward is a relief. 

Level 15 also unlocks the next phase of the game, choosing your clan. A choice between two, you now have to race for wins to bring street cred to your clan as you battle others online. Except for one big problem – there don’t appear to be many online in my timezone. And those I encounter seem much further progressed than I am and have no chance of competing head-to-head. Within the selected races on the map, everything falls back to racing against the computer AI within 10-15 seconds on the countdown clock. At least I don’t have to worry about waiting in empty lobbies for an extended period before each race begins. 

The Gameplay

Starting, everything in Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown felt good. I had no qualms. Then, after the introduction was completed, I struggled to adjust to the gameplay. 

To be clear, I have no issues with the difficulty of a more simulator approach to driving. It feels a lot better from that perspective. At the same time, the car felt bogged down and erratic under braking. The first challenge was balancing the throttle and steering angle around turns. However, this is natural. You learn how cars handle and what is needed as you fine-tune your racing style. The one aspect I still couldn’t grasp was the braking. Driving around the same circuit several times, I figured out all the best racing lines and where to gain on the opponents in front. But arriving at each braking zone was a lottery. It would sometimes brake extremely heavy, almost a near stop as I turned in. The next time, the braking was much lighter, causing me to crash into the surrounding trucks or walls that make up the scenery around the city circuits. My only action to prevent being overtaken during instances was to block the racing line, hoping to affect the driver behind me. It mainly worked but became a point of frustration early on. 

More often than not, the roads are wet, either from the current rain or the remains of the rain once it has stopped. Hardly ever during the 20 hours of gameplay (5 hours in Beta and 15 hours in Early Release) were there sufficient moments of dry racing. This could account for much of my braking issues, but it still wouldn’t be such a mixed bag, changing every lap. 

Despite the gameplay challenges in Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, I managed to get around it for the most part. It wasn’t ideal and can be eased out once you reach higher levels, upgrade your car a bit more and finally unlock the option of different setups for each race. 

As mentioned earlier, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is a “lifestyle game.” Beyond simply pitching up in your car at your next marker and racing, there are other aspects of the game. Players are expected to visit hotels, clubs, and other points of interest and discuss them with other in-game characters. Whether this is a good or bad feature, it’s inescapable. This is how you’ll buy cars and interact with your agent and club members.  

The Graphics

As mentioned, KT Racing developers created a 1:1 version of Hong Kong for Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. As such, it delivered over 500km of roads to race and traverse, which created plenty of opportunity for exploration – if that’s your thing. Like many other games, I like to side-quest and cover most of the map before seriously starting to race. While the primary focus was to complete as much of the game during the review period, I still took enough time to enjoy the sights and scenery. 

The surrounding environment, filled with trees, expansive roads, shoreline and more, created a great escape from my early repetitiveness in attempting to level up and progress in the game. A neat addition, carried on from the previous Test Drive game, was the inclusion of wrecks. This is another excellent excuse to explore more of the city and landscape, attempting to find your following wreck site among all the concrete. 

The graphics became an issue due to it not feeling fluent and snappy enough. With many instances of lag, glitches and tears that frequently pop up, it feels like that game is still within the Beta phase. This makes driving around, especially during racing, feel like quite the task. Moreover, rather than just having braking issues, the cars feel extremely heavy because they are not as responsive as they could, primarily due to the slow processing of the environment. 

This was always evident throughout. When you’re driving, the rendering of the surrounding buildings and the road in the distance didn’t always render on time or at all on occasion. The feeling of tardiness couldn’t be escaped, even when switching modes and walking within the buildings. Whether walking or jogging, it’s hard to feel in control. Approaching a marker and aligning your character to interact with it is even more challenging. I found myself having to either back up or pan sideways to be then able to trigger. Having to go through all this in selecting your car, leaving your hotel room to enter the lobby and eventually exit the building, or discussing your next move with club members feels clunky. It doesn’t help that when you’re engaging with other characters. They have all the dialogue while your mute character stands blankly between speeches. It looks pretty creepy. 

For a world that looks quite beautiful, it sure doesn’t feel that way. There’s a disconnect between what Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown looks like and how it feels due to the graphics and its processing. 

Is Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Worth Playing?

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown delivers a highly mixed bag as a racing title. It doesn’t quite fit any racer category and aims to do much more than just race cars. The idea is solid enough, but it fails in execution. The constant need to progress your level to unlock more aspects of the game was a thorn in my side. And while it looked the part, it didn’t feel that way most of the time. 

You get into the game more as it progresses, but there are far too many faults to be happy with the product in its current form. I’m not yet convinced whether there will be an online element to the game once it officially releases, as the city is almost empty, devoid of other racers, encountering another player every hour or so. When that happens, you can tell they’re eager to interact, following you around for a few minutes before the novelty disappears. Yes, you could do a few head-to-head races if you choose, but with the gap in performance between cars, it’s a struggle to compete and makes no sense to continue after being convincingly beaten the first time. 

There is still plenty of potential for Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown to succeed. The underlying elements are all there, and things can improve with a few major bug fixes and patches. It’s not dead-on-arrival, but it might just be if the work isn’t done to fix the issues.

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