As the player progressed through the game, they inevitably amassed an incredible car collection.
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This was a fine incentive to go for a spin, and even though driving within set events would clear up a decent portion of the roads available, the completionist player still had plenty of free driving to do. The reward was huge - a fabulous house with 10 garage spaces. Driving in unexplored areas contributed to the long-game achievement of uncovering all the island's roads - an epic task by any standard, but one that was always ticking away unobtrusively until the decision is taken to mop up the loose ends. Having to drive to car dealers, shops and real estate agents to access them sets an initial task list, and the process revealed Oahu's varied terrain, spurring further exploration. You can't even get your own house.įor the free-form driver, Eden's Oahu still offered challenges, albeit more leisurely ones. Nothing has matched Test Drive Unlimited for this - not even Forza Horizon with its vastly superior handling, as it has neither the freedom nor the scale of environment to offer the same proposition.
I could just see where the road takes me by arbitrarily deciding where to go at each junction, until I ended up in some far-flung endpoint with the sense of satisfaction that I'd really thrashed the car silly and racked up a decent amount of miles on the odometer. Even if the smoothness of the journey was subject to the horrors of a handling model that was "unique" (to be diplomatic about it), it wasn't so much about the quality of the simulation as it was the freedom to be driving somewhere, anywhere, and going fast. It was the joy of driving for the sake of driving, to feel the thrill of pushing the simulated machinery to the car's limits and my own, and without gamey intrusions to muddy the experience. A cheap thrill that drives early progress. It took me three quarters of an hour to arrive there (with a fair amount of offroad excursions and wince-inducing prangs), but pulling up in the lighthouse's car park and swinging the in-car camera around to look out to sea felt like I had achieved something - and that something felt very, very new and exciting. From my lowly starter house, I set off for the lighthouse in Oahu's northwest corner. When I got my copy, the first thing I did was grind away at race events until I could afford my first 'proper' sports car, the lovely Lotus Esprit V8.
There had also never been a game where you could do this with pals in tow, merrily chatting along the way. Certainly, there had never been a game where you could set a waypoint on a huge map and spend an hour getting there in a real-world performance car. The game's 1500 square kilometres of Hawaiian landmass and its vast and intricate system of roads meant the routes for driving really were unlimited, given the average human lifespan.
Whether that's a long voyage or short blast was up to you. It seems deceptively simple: you can just go for a drive. For the most part, Test Drive Unlimited delivered on its promises, but Eden Studio's greatest game set a milestone that few racing titles even dare to attempt: allowing virtual driving to be an open-ended, self-determined and leisurely pursuit. The promise was grand and manifold: a real-world locale, a vehicle list filled with exotica, thousands of kilometres of open road and a thriving population of actual humans to race against.
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