Test Drive Unlimited

I'd only owned a XBOX 360 for a couple of weeks before Test Drive Unlimited was released. In that time I'd played Project Gotham racing for a few hours...

A month later and I'd racked up over 100 hours playing time on Test Drive Unlimited. This driving game is currently streets ahead of all other driving games on any console.

The idea is simple, the whole game is set on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. You start the game off having arrived on the island and you have to rent a car to get you to a car sales room - where you buy your first car, then house, etc...

One really nice thing about this game is that the events (primarily races) are scattered all around the island and rather than navigating through a horrible series of menu's (Project Gotham style!) you simply drive to the event you want to take part in. As you drive around (using your GPS to assist you) you unlock (by driving past) new events, and so it goes on.

There are lots of cars to collect, in different classes - and many of the events can only be entered by cars in specific classes.

I've played this for well over 100 hours and it was fantastic. The only reason I'm not playing it now is that I've finished it (and I haven't finished a game since Chuckee Egg on the BBC Micro years ago, that's how addictive this game is!).

Hopefully an expansion pack with new challenges will happen.

Highly recommended.

Graphics are fantastic and truly next generation.

I've been thinking about how to write this review, how I could wax lyrical about the beautiful looks, adequate sound, astonishing size, and grand concepts, not to mention the seamless integration of online elements. This would all be valid, but it's also all been amply represented here by other reviewers...

Hence, I thought I'd talk about my experiences with it.

I have spent more time playing Test Drive Unlimited than any other game on the xbox 360. This is down to it's size and variety; I can happily spend time just driving around looking for the various showrooms and locations, checking out all the roads to discover all the events I can enter, and generally just having a fine time cruising in my favourite cars (the E Type Jaguar has to be up there with the best, for pure "feel" if nothing else!).

I've spent whole evenings with friends doing the same time trial over and over, trying to shave off every last millimetre from our route and knock every hundredth of a second from the time, all in the name of getting as high as possible on the online records chart for that particular event. At one point, I was the sixth fastest in the world at one particular stretch. There's no other feeling like that.

Finally, I love this game because, if I find a challenge that's too hard or annoying for me, I can simply go and do something else for a while, pick something more to my liking, mod a car, make some money to buy new cars, and then return to the troublesome race when I feel ike re-attacking the challenge.

This is possible the first racing game to also be a leisure-driving game, and for that if nothing else, it deserves your attention.

This is by far the best driving game you can get at the moment on the 360. The graphics are nothing short of breath taking when played on a HD TV. The 3D interiors are amazingly detailed, and the added feature of electric windows is quite fun. TDU also has some of the greatest cars ever made, any car fan should just buy this game for the beautiful 3D models. There are a lot of bugs though, especially online. The police are useless, the bikes are just terrible and its almost impossible to find your friends online. But stick to single player and just have fun bombing around the island in just about any classic car or supercar you can think of.

I chose to hire the game before buying it which was a good decision as i only played it for about 45 mins. The driving experience is boring with no feel of speed. The races are slow, boring, dull and not fun. After 20mins i started test driving the best cars you can buy but even the enzo ferrari was boring after a while.
DO NOT BUT THIS GAME!!!!!!

Very good game definetly worth buying very realisric especially on a hd tv graphics are brilliant and the cars are great too!! *****