Test Drive Unlimited 2 is Atari’s latest attempt to expand its open-world racing universe, following up on the moderately successful original game that came out for Xbox 360 a few years back. It does expand in a few areas, but not enough when it comes to enjoying the game. Unfortunately, too many problems continue to surface that keep it from reaching its “unlimited” potential. Like the first game, you’re driving around a virtual paradise, trying to make your way up in the ranks of a special race tournament, battling ego-driven opponents and learning lessons from a driving instructor as you go along. The more competitions you enter and win, the more this virtual universe opens up, with new accessories, living quarters and, most important, cars to access. But it’s all for naught. The fact of the matter is, the story mode just isn’t that entertaining, and offers little reward for putting up with so many flaccid egos. The drivers themselves are beyond annoying, and even your driving instructor does very little to encourage you.
As a result, you’ll shy away from the tournament set-up and opt for more open-world racing instead. Here, you’ll find plenty of events to take part in, both time and skill based. However, not all is perfect there either. When you try to log in to Xbox Live to take on the competition, you’ll find that the servers aren’t quite up to snuff. Half the time we couldn’t even properly challenge someone to a race, as they would either disconnect and drop out or somehow gain an advantage that was impossible for us to overcome. As a result, we’d lose, stuck without any extra cash. There were even some points in the game where cars disappeared completely. It’s almost as if we were living in a ghost town. Even if the online component of the game worked properly, though, that doesn’t make up for Test Drive Unlimited 2’s lack of comprehensive driving controls. They’re okay, to be sure, and you’ll have no problem getting up to speed. However, the drifting set-up is terrible, either causing you to spin out entirely or drift off the road during an event, costing you several seconds or points in the process.
We got frustrated just trying to get through the training school exercise dealing with it. And considering most of the cars handle the same way (even the lavish sports models), there’s no improvement in sight. As for the rest of the game, it’s serviceable at best. Test Drive Unlimited 2 looks its best when it stays on the road, as you coast around the beautiful Ibiza island and take in the sights. The frame rate is solid, the cars look terrific, and it’s easy to see events from a mile away with a helpful HUD marker system. However, once you step out of the car, you have to deal with a lame first-person set-up with incredibly fake looking people. We could’ve easily done without this. The in-game music isn’t bad, featuring a variety of techno and dance tunes that’ll keep you racing. However, the dialogue is miserable, with most folks sounding too generic for their own good. Even the snobs sound more artificial than they look – and that’s saying something. Unless you were a huge fan of the original, Test Drive Unlimited 2 is probably a ride you can skip. Between huge problems with the servers (which should’ve been fixed before the game launched, honestly), an iffy control set-up and a boring lifestyle-led story mode, it just never feels like paradise.
