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.