Test Drive Unlimited 2 will be released immediately for Windows.

shortylickens

No Lifer
Jul 15, 2003
82,854
17,365
136
No waiting around for a year like TDU 1.
Its out this fall.
http://www.testdriveunlimited2.com/faq

Takes place on the island of Ibiza. Looks to have everything the first one did and more. BMW's and Porshes were sorely missed.
Of course, they need lots of money so it looks like most of the good shit will be in downloadable content. I suspect we will see this puppy on Steam right away.

Its not a big deal. I gladly paid 20 bucks for all the extra cars in TDU. Most of them were quite nice, some were silly, like Lexus. Totally useless. But many classes has new leaders, like the Audi S6 in the E class, the Lamborghini Countach in D, I know C class had a bunch of new stuff, and of course an improved Koenigsegg for the A class. Not to mention a couple extra McLarens and the Mercedes Benz GTR.

If you guys love racing games, TDU is well worth the bargain bin price, and TDU 2 looks to be just as good for gameplay. Screenshots look even nicer than Grid, but I dont care too much.

And maybe this time they can get the MMO part right.


EDIT:
Bump for review of the game, now that we have it.
 
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fatpat268

Diamond Member
Jan 14, 2006
5,853
0
71
I played the crap out of TDU... not sure if I'd do the same for TDU2 again.
 

Barfo

Lifer
Jan 4, 2005
27,554
212
106
Loved TDU, though I seriously doubt it looks like GRID, too much burden for today's computers with a world the size of TDU's. I loved the original, might check this one out.
 

NYHoustonman

Platinum Member
Dec 8, 2002
2,642
0
0
Played too much TDU as well - probably drove 5k+ miles in total (had one of those achievements, anyway...). Can't wait for this to come out - I just hope they don't go overboard with the social aspects I've seen in the trailer. Put more work into the physics model first!
 

ArchAngel777

Diamond Member
Dec 24, 2000
5,223
61
91
Played too much TDU as well - probably drove 5k+ miles in total (had one of those achievements, anyway...). Can't wait for this to come out - I just hope they don't go overboard with the social aspects I've seen in the trailer. Put more work into the physics model first!

You and me both... I remember that you enjoyed the game quite a bit as well. I hated the DRM on that title though.... I bought the game from Atari and there was a 2 time install limit. After my second install, I have to call Digital River and read them a 35 digit code for them to unlock it again. :-/

Looking forward to this title!
 

NYHoustonman

Platinum Member
Dec 8, 2002
2,642
0
0
You and me both... I remember that you enjoyed the game quite a bit as well. I hated the DRM on that title though.... I bought the game from Atari and there was a 2 time install limit. After my second install, I have to call Digital River and read them a 35 digit code for them to unlock it again. :-/

Looking forward to this title!

Every once in a while I fire the game back up and I have to go through this same process :\. This has happened 4-5 times now... pretty irritating.
 

shortylickens

No Lifer
Jul 15, 2003
82,854
17,365
136
BUMP!

Read the date, newbs!


Tried to find one of the more recent threads on TDU 2, but this seemed like the most recent one that was applicable.

Alright, first the good:
.......... (comments pending)


Next, the bad:
Amazingly an already dumb console game was further dumbed down and consolized. I'll start right at the beginning of the game. I was forced to endure a painful story mode that contributes nothing to anything, least of all my enjoyment. Apparently you dream of being friends with a rich girl who in reality treats you like shit but at least she gives you her Ferarri. Or not, apparently that was just the dream. But you do get to drive her Ferarri to daddy's press event and she lets you join the races. All this nonsense takes about 10 minutes, and near as I can tell you have to do it for every single game you ever start.

After talking some shit to you she sends you to her buddy who sells cheap cars. You get a choice between a beautiful vintage muscle car that may have been impressive 40 years ago (Mustang), a more modern, proper sports car that for some reason seems to suck balls only in TDU 2 and nowhere else (the Lotus), or a crappy old italian compact that amazingly performs better than either race car. I picked that one, in fire engine red (no choice of color in this game, at least not yet). You are required to take it to your shitty little house immediately. Along the way you can play with the clunky radio system that only has two stations and they both talk NON FUCKING STOP! I turned it off. Apparently on some cars you can move the convertible top up and down, but those are few & far between. Windows can also go up and down while on the road, which was lacking in the previous game. Of course given that you never hear any wind noise and cant actually feel the breeze rushing through your hair, I wonder why they bother.

In your shitty little house you are forced to explore all the aspects of changing the sofa cover and gloss on your plastic floor. Outfuckingstanding. I am so glad I can finally do that now.
You also see your wardrobe with nothing in it. Good news (this should be up above) is they ditched the coupon system and now you buy clothes with actual money, which makes infinitely more sense. Of course, its still a fucking racing game and being able to change clothes is utterly god damn pointless, but whatever. Thats a minor annoying cuz you can completely ignore it. Also in order to get around inside any building you now have to walk around as if it were a FPS, instead of just clicking over with the shoulder buttons and automatically moving to the appropriate area.
You also learn about how to advance. Apparently instead of just racing and building up achievement points like in the first game (a system I didnt particularly love but was still functional) you now are required to achieve points in specific areas like socializing, collecting and a number of other accomplishments that dont have a fucking thing to do with actual racing. The racing itself only gets you 15 levels out of a possible 60.

As you can probably deduce I am already irritated immeasurably with the game and I havent actually started playing it yet.

Now on to the garage so I can get my car and leave this shithole. 2 minutes of slow cumbersome walking (so much fun in a racing game) and I finally get out of there. BUT NOT SO FAST! Now I have to go to driving school.
You read that right, before you can actually do anything you have to get a drivers license, so you can zip around the island at 3 times the speed limit busting down signs and nailing other cars.
Long slow tedious drive and we are there.

At the driving school I had to do 6 mind numbing events and a final test in the car I specifically did not want to drive (the clunky slow classic Mustang) which include confusing directions and asinine requirements. The driving school shows different levels and implies you can eventually go race on Hawaii again, but I have no idea how. In fact I may very well lose my temper and give up before that point.

After the drivers license you should be free to do whatever you want, right? No such luck, now you have to compete in the C4 event (I have no idea what that even means, the classes in TDU 1 were so much easier to understand) and that involves a handful of forced races most of which so far arent at all interesting or fun. Oh, and that god awful driving meter is back again, screaming at you with harsh sound effects every single time you fuck up. Luckily in this version they actually show you how much time it adds to your final, instead of an arbitrary number you will only figure out at the end of the race when its too late to do anything about it. Thats a nice touch but an even better solution would be to dump the system entirely.

Alright, enough pissing on the game play. Am too mad. Maybe I should pick on the menu and config system.

TDU 1 didnt have much in the way of customizing and yet somehow they managed to strip it down even further for the sequel. The annoying HDR lighting overkill seems to be forced on all the time. If its able to be disabled I havent figured out how to fucking do it yet. Ditto the obnoxious blur effect as you speed up. Very few choices in volume control as opposed to TDU 1. Seems now like ALL sound effects are controlled with one slider, as opposed to separate levels for engine, road noise, traffic, brakes and such like they had in the first game.

It seems like so far as gameplay elements are concerned, they ripped off all the current popular racing games (poorly) and shoved half-assed elements together in an effort to compete with everything, when they should have just focused on taking everything that made TDU good and improved it. I will play more and get back to you guys, but right now this is looking to be a huge disappointment for old fans of Test Drive, and a big snooze for anyone new to the genre of free roaming car sims.
 

Barfo

Lifer
Jan 4, 2005
27,554
212
106
Hey shorty, how are the graphics and performance? Sucks that you're forced to play through the intro and do the "social" stuff in order to advance. Looks like I'll wait until it's $10 or less to pick it up.
 

KaOTiK

Lifer
Feb 5, 2001
10,877
8
81
wow, I had no idea it was gonna be that....bad

I was looking forward too it but had put it on the wait for awesome steam sale to pick it up list, but now, I'll put it on the wait for super awesome steam sale to pick it up for practically nothing list.
 

ArchAngel777

Diamond Member
Dec 24, 2000
5,223
61
91
wow, I had no idea it was gonna be that....bad

I was looking forward too it but had put it on the wait for awesome steam sale to pick it up list, but now, I'll put it on the wait for super awesome steam sale to pick it up for practically nothing list.

ROFL, same here... Loved the review Shorty! You saved me so much money.
 

Skurge

Diamond Member
Aug 17, 2009
5,195
1
71
Wow, good thing i didn't pre-order this after enjoying TDU1.

How is the car handling? I hope they improved it, the 2st game felt like the cars had no weight or suspension.
 

shortylickens

No Lifer
Jul 15, 2003
82,854
17,365
136
Thats EXACTLY what it is. Its a bastard mutant child of The Sims, GTA and other racing games where you dont actually do much racing. They make you go through so much bullshit before you can actually play the game and then when you do, there isnt much fun stuff.

In the first one when you unlocked Rookie, Amatuer, Pro, Expert and such, all of the available races immediately popped up on the map screen. Now you have to hunt for them. Most of the things that get you points are completely unrelated to racing. For example under Collections (1 of the 4 categories and with 15 levels total) you need to get 5 haircuts, then 10, then 20. You also need to have cosmetic surgery 4 times. Collect 10, 20, 100 pieces of clothes (or more I think) AND, your closet in this game is limited. you need to buy more houses and more furniture in each house just to hold the fucking clothes you cant even see so you can get your Collection Points. I didnt care for gathering clothes in the first game and they made it a hundred times more annoying in this game.

The houses are much prettier and you can now walk around in them, but its still a god damn racing game, and the houses dont matter. Also, you can buy a yacht. It holds 100 pieces of clothing and I think 8 cars. 5 million bucks. Horrible deal for the money when you look at the garage space.

One of the categories is exploring. In the first game you had to cover 500, 1000, 2000 and 5000 miles to get achievement points, and also unlock all the roads by driving on them. Very annoying. They made it even more annoying and complicated in TDU 2.

You are now required to socialize in online stuff whether you want to or not. You will miss out on 1/4th of the points in the game if you ignore it, meaning you cant possibly get to max level and unlock the best cars and race events.
You have to create and share 15 events, join and beat 50 of them, join a club, compete in your club, compete with other clubs, all online. I am hoping someone makes a game hacker to give me those achievements.

Cops are now psychic. If you bash a sign post 100 miles into the middle of nowhere, they magically know it.

The special race events themselves are a little more convoluted and not at all like a proper Test Drive game. People randomly call you on your cell phone and you have 5 minutes to race to their location just so you can start the fucking event. In other words a bad ripoff of GTA.

The regular events (race, timed, speed) seem to be very sparse so far, either that or you have to discover them while randomly driving around. Ditto the auto sales.

Oh, forgot about that. Apparently they added SUV's and off roading to the game. And a whole set of special drivers licenses you have to unlock before you can even use them. I dont care much for off roading in a game like this. If they wanted to make an off road game, they just should have done it, instead of shoe-horning it into a street game. I didnt care much for the bikes in TDU 1, but at least they were used on the same streets as the cars and in many matches you could choose to use a bike or car.

Again, you cannot get all achievement points and move up in level unless you do the offroad challenges and collections.

GOOD NEWS!
The graphics are much improved in this game, which is a double edged sword. Like I said above, you cannot disable the ultra-annoying HDR light like you could in TDU 1. Get used to having constant sun glare during the day. And motion blur whenever you're over 60 mph (which of course in a racing game is all the time). Again another feature that was killable in the first game. The rain was amusing until it killed me, and night driving isnt nearly as cool as I thought it would be. Near as I can tell theres no way to advance time to race during the day in dry weather. BUT, thankfully they included a weather report on your home computer, which is at your house, which you have to visit every time you wanna know what the weather is or how much daylight you have left.

I thought the physics were much better but they arent. Some scripted events look cooler, especially with regard to crashes. But the handling and braking and sliding are actually much worse. You dont control your vehicles like you used to. And you vehicle can now be permanently damaged and dirtied. OH JOY! Now for the fun task of having it washed and fixed all the time. I have no idea if these services cost money or not. Still havent found a place to do it.
Its a shame with improved physics they chose to limit your controls relative to the first game.
Oh, and while you may run around the island using Assisted, Sport, or Hardcore controls, in the driving tests you will always be forced to use Sport.


At the car dealerships you have to walk around in FPS mode (no running) to talk to anyone or look at the cars. You can still test drive anything you want for two minutes, even if its a special car you would normally have to unlock. Again they dont care if you speed or beat up the car.

Overall a huge disappointment. It feels as if they were trying to be like everyone else instead of making a good game better. I'd be happy if they just took TDU 1, removed the bullshit like giving rides to models and hitchers, removed the points required by online play, dumped the requirements for clothing & collecting cars you dont even want, and added a shitload of races and some new cars. They took care of one of those things with the official expansion pack that added about 30 cars (most of which were crapola), but everything seemed to require a sequel.
Now we have the sequel and they added even more crap to the original crap I hated, and killed all the fun parts, like you know, actually driving around and racing.

Wait for the bargain bin, people. This game will be there soon enough. And I pity all the poor bastards who spent 60 bucks for the console version. They will be the most angry.

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
EDIT:
OK, it seems you do have a carwash, it costs 1500 bucks. Plastic surgery on your face costs 300 dollars. Still dont know how to repair cosmetic damage by itself. Actually it seems to sometimes happen randomly on its own.
 
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Throckmorton

Lifer
Aug 23, 2007
16,830
3
0
Thanks for the review shortylickens. Sucks about the HDR, unrealistic police, having to play online, etc.

I like the sandbox stuff more than racing though. I never figured out how to race against other players in TDU1...
 

shortylickens

No Lifer
Jul 15, 2003
82,854
17,365
136
Does your virtual bitch at least give you head while you drive around

No, and she's as annoying as ever this time. She bugs you every 5 seconds if you do something your arent supposed to. And if you take down the voice volume, you also squelch all the other voices that you may actually want to hear.


Physics are better in the sense that you can now roll and tumble and spin but not the actual on road handling. The vehicles also seem to swerve more realistically. There is no damage aside from cosmetic. The suspension isnt as realistic as Grid, and slightly worse than TDU 1.

The environment is much prettier. The character models are a lot better but of course in a racing game that doesnt matter. The cars look slightly better but not so much that you'd be convinced they spent 4 whole years working on this game. The houses and garages are prettier. The incidental cars (civilians) look a LOT better, but of course you tend to pass them at a hundred miles an hour so its not like you have time to appreciate them. The inside of stores and services look nicer but now you have to manually walk around them to get stuff done.

The menu is too pretty. Stuff vibrates and pulses when you click on it. I hate that. Obvious consolitis influence.

The HUD is too squished to the middle of the screen. The GPS display and speedometer/tachometer cannot be moved out further towards the edge, very annoying.
Ditto the timer and race progress at the top of the screen. Too far in, cant be moved.
 
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blinblue

Senior member
Jul 7, 2006
889
0
76
I got it on release day as well. Rather frustrating to get it started. For some unknown reason it started in windowed mode (!). Able to fix that by pressing Alt-Enter, but still, seriously.

It does suffer from Consolitus, the menus a bit annoying to navigate by mouse. I get a feeling sorta like claustrophobia when trying to use the menus. However, on the whole it isn't too bad.

It took me a while to get my G27 set up how I wanted it, they could have made the keybinding process a little easier. For some reason it wouldn't let me bind "s" to walk backward. I could get a,w, and d just fine, but it wouldn't do anything when I tried 's', weird.

The intro is very cringe worthy, but it seems like things get back to "normal" fairly quickly after that.

Oh, and the damage is reversed when you press the "back to road" button, it is not permanent and doesn't cost anything to fix.

Still have to tweak some settings for the G27, right now the force feedback feels too weak.

I wish you could increase the draw distance, I hate seeing things obviously pop in and out. But otherwise the graphics are fairly nice (certainly an upgrade from TDU1)

I've only just started playing, I'm optimistic that I'll grow to like it a lot. I really enjoyed TDU1 as a means to just relax and cruise around for the fun of it. Once i get used to the changes in TDU2, I'm fairly sure I'll like it a lot more.


Oh, and one more annoyance, every time I load the game it requires a UAC prompt.
 
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shortylickens

No Lifer
Jul 15, 2003
82,854
17,365
136
http://attackofthefanboy.com/news/test-drive-unlimited-2-review/

His writing is atrocious, and he's clearly a hardcore console fanboy. His number one requirement is pretty graphics and number 2 requirement is believable voice acting. In a racing game these should be far behind quality of game play and physics. But he ended up liking the game overall, mostly cuz you can customize your hair and house.
However, he was more critical of the handling than I was.

EDIT:
I forgot, theres only two radio stations in the game and on both of them the DJ's talk more than they play music. I will certainly have to see if I can play my own.
 
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coldmeat

Diamond Member
Jul 10, 2007
9,214
78
91
I'm about to try it, will post here with my thoughts.

edit: right off the bat, starts windowed and tells me to "push start to play". lol this is going to be bad.

edit2: I can't seem to find any way for it to detect my MOMO, so I have to go through the control options and manually bind all of the controls to the wheel.
 
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coldmeat

Diamond Member
Jul 10, 2007
9,214
78
91
I can't get my MOMO to work at all. I can manually bind the buttons, but they don't work. From what I can tell, nobody can get theirs to work, even though it's listed as supported in the readme.

edit: ok, apparently if you don't actually click "save" it doesn't apply the changes to the controls. So if you change the settings, but don't "save" them, they stay changed in the options menu, even after you exit, but the changes don't apply to the game.

So I got the buttons working but now it doesn't recognize that my brake and gas are different buttons.
 
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blinblue

Senior member
Jul 7, 2006
889
0
76
Braking seems to be way too powerful. You can go from 100 to 0 in like a second... Still trying to get the driving to feel right with the G27, but thankfully they give enough options to twiddle with.

There are some nice touches that they put in, like your headlights turn on automatically when you go through a tunnel.