Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown

I'm more up in arms about the map in FH5 still being so small. I hope that this new team doesn't make the same mistake. I'd like them to have a map at least as big as Ibiza, if not Oahu. I never really spent any time in my houses or buying clothes for my avatar in the TDU games, anyway.
 
Armenius said:
I'm more up in arms about the map in FH5 still being so small. I hope that this new team doesn't make the same mistake. I'd like them to have a map at least as big as Ibiza, if not Oahu. I never really spent any time in my houses or buying clothes for my avatar in the TDU games, anyway.
Click to expand...
Yeah that was the draw of TDU. A HUGE map... like you can actually explore the damn thing. They should go for gold and model Mallorca or Puerto Rico.

Edit: I see gambling chips... Monaco? Maybe Macau/Hong Kong?
 
Last edited:
schizrade said:
Yeah that was the draw of TDU. A HUGE map... like you can actually explore the damn thing. They should go for gold and model Mallorca or Puerto Rico.

Edit: I see gambling chips... Monaco? Maybe Macau/Hong Kong?
Click to expand...
Monaco or Macau would certainly be something, especially if they accurately represent the traffic. But Monaco is only 0.7 mi² and Macau is 44.5 mi². Macau would be as big as the Mexico map in FH5. Maybe as introductory areas, but not for the meat of the game.
 
Armenius said:
Monaco or Macau would certainly be something, especially if they accurately represent the traffic. But Monaco is only 0.7 mi² and Macau is 44.5 mi². Macau would be as big as the Mexico map in FH5. Maybe as introductory areas, but not for the meat of the game.
Click to expand...
Yeah I'm just thinking of big gambling places... i hope its not las vegas lol.

Mallorca would be awesome. Really good geography.
 
Nacon Connect has revealed that the next TDU takes place on Hong Kong Island. Hong Kong Island is only a little over 34 mi² with 447 km of road that is spread out quite sparsely along the island, so this is disappointing. If it was connected to mainland Hong Kong it could be quite interesting.

 
A densely populated city is not my idea of a good driving road either. Quite lame. And besides they are driving on the wrong fucking side of the road, that'll never fly with me.
 
the video looks cool. seems like it might be a good vr game too where you push the cars features and pretend you own the car.
 
M76 said:
A densely populated city is not my idea of a good driving road either. Quite lame. And besides they are driving on the wrong fucking side of the road, that'll never fly with me.
Click to expand...
Yep they completely missed the mark with this bizarre decision :/
 
M76 said:
A densely populated city is not my idea of a good driving road either. Quite lame. And besides they are driving on the wrong fucking side of the road, that'll never fly with me.
Click to expand...
Hong Kong Island isn't completely dense. The north side of the island facing the mainland is dense city, but it gets sparse in the middle and more residential to the south. It will be interesting to romp around in, in my opinion, since up to this point games like this have been mostly all country roads.
 
Armenius said:
Hong Kong Island isn't completely dense. The north side of the island facing the mainland is dense city, but it gets sparse in the middle and more residential to the south. It will be interesting to romp around in, in my opinion, since up to this point games like this have been mostly all country roads.
Click to expand...
TDU had the dense city and the country roads both. This is a huge scaling back from there. There won't even be a place on the map to fully open up the throttle if they are going to be faithful to the real world location. The longest strech of relatively straight road is about half a mile. Like playing golf on a football pitch. :(

Meh, at least we have a date and it is sooner than I'd have guessed.
 
A 30-minute presentation of the game, including the first gameplay footage, will be streamed at 19:00 CEST (UTC +2) this Wednesday (13:00 EDT/10:00 PDT).

 
There's a game I haven't thought of in a minute.
I last played a Test Drive on the PS1. 5 & 6 were the last ones I played, one was in Paris I think.

Are they still arcade style racing games? (yeah I'm too lazy and drunk to look it up.)
 
CAD4466HK said:
There's a game I haven't thought of in a minute.
I last played a Test Drive on the PS1. 5 & 6 were the last ones I played, one was in Paris I think.

Are they still arcade style racing games? (yeah I'm too lazy and drunk to look it up.)
Click to expand...
The Test Drive Unlimited series was simcade like Forza Horizon. The physics in the first TDU were closer to Forza Motorsport than Horizon. TDU2 was pushed out the door by the publisher before it was finished, so the game has some oddities with the physics, but it's still good. Solar Crown is being developed by a completely different developer, though, so we'll have to see how it plays. The developer produces primarily sim racing titles like TT Isle of Man, so it probably leans more toward sim like the original TDU. TDU modeled the entire island of Oahu to scale, and TDU2 included a fully scale model of Ibiza in addition to Oahu.
 
Looking pretty good. Anybody recognize the person portraying Vivian Hughes? 😍

 
Last edited:
That looked patently horrific.

  1. It instantly comes off as a Forza Horizon clone instead of TDU. Racing a C8 on dirt and jumps? WTF is this? TDU was on the side of simcade not this unrealistic crap.
  2. The graphics looks awfully dated, PS3 level if I'm being generous, or mobile game if I'm not.
  3. The physics are just not there, cars seem to have no weight and accelerate way too fast. Not to mention pivoting around their cg when turning.
  4. Sound effects are absolutely horrendous, perhaps why they try to cover it up with their constant jabbering and laughing
  5. The video focuses more on the people fooling around instead of actually showing the game, but credit where credit is due, they managed to demonstrate every reason why I refuse to engage with the multiplayer aspect of games.
  6. Even though they are presumably connected through a lan look at that netcode, cars jump all over the place during racing.
  7. Despite the dated graphics random stutters are happening, in the inner city it looks like it's running at 15 fps.
  8. They completely miss the lifestyle part of TDU, buying houses, outfits, driving to showrooms, instead you have this spaceship looking complex where you have a room? WTF is this street racer academy?
What a giant and utter disappointment. From being cautiously optimistic I instantly went to maybe I'll try the demo, I'll go and remove it from my steam wishlist right now.
Looking at the video comments and ratio they got I'm certainly not alone with this assessment.
 
M76 said:
That looked patently horrific.

  1. It instantly comes off as a Forza Horizon clone instead of TDU. Racing a C8 on dirt and jumps? WTF is this? TDU was on the side of simcade not this unrealistic crap.
  2. The graphics looks awfully dated, PS3 level if I'm being generous, or mobile game if I'm not.
  3. The physics are just not there, cars seem to have no weight and accelerate way too fast. Not to mention pivoting around their cg when turning.
  4. Sound effects are absolutely horrendous, perhaps why they try to cover it up with their constant jabbering and laughing
  5. The video focuses more on the people fooling around instead of actually showing the game, but credit where credit is due, they managed to demonstrate every reason why I refuse to engage with the multiplayer aspect of games.
  6. Even though they are presumably connected through a lan look at that netcode, cars jump all over the place during racing.
  7. Despite the dated graphics random stutters are happening, in the inner city it looks like it's running at 15 fps.
  8. They completely miss the lifestyle part of TDU, buying houses, outfits, driving to showrooms, instead you have this spaceship looking complex where you have a room? WTF is this street racer academy?
What a giant and utter disappointment. From being cautiously optimistic I instantly went to maybe I'll try the demo, I'll go and remove it from my steam wishlist right now.
Looking at the video comments and ratio they got I'm certainly not alone with this assessment.
Click to expand...
It's an alpha version. Looks about as "bad" as the Destiny alpha when I played that, and look how good that game turned out at release.
 
Armenius said:
It's an alpha version. Looks about as "bad" as the Destiny alpha when I played that, and look how good that game turned out at release.
Click to expand...
I don't know what glasses you are wearing but this looks significantly worse than any racing game that came out in the past 5 years.
Alpha version is feature ready. Maybe they can fix the netcode and the bad performance, but the rest is unlikely to change significantly.
Destiny is not even in the same genre. And I only played it once for 5 minutes, so that means nothing to me.

Anyway I could excuse the graphics if the physics looked promising or the other features, but there is literally nothing in the video that would impress me.
 
Graphically, it definitely looks pretty dated. Along the lines of a last-gen console title. Some things look okay while others look almost like a Switch game. Hopefully that's really, really, early footage. I'm okay with more arcade-y racing titles, but I also believe that killer graphics should be the hallmark of a game like this.
 
He says this is the ALPHA version - so it's not even BETA yet?

Hopfully we'll see it in 2025 since it is already almost 2024...

He also referenced the "Streets" vs the "Sharks", so somebody in development is 50+ to ID that West Side Story ref.
- yikes there was a remake in 2021 & I know it's hard to believe but it's more gay than the original from 1961


View: https://youtu.be/nXe4OsFH8KQ?si=6j1FzjbkDWWDvUhT
 
Last edited:
usa all day said:
He says this is the ALPHA version - so it's not even BETA yet?

Hopfully we'll see it in 2025 since it is already almost 2024...

He also referenced the "Streets" vs the "Sharks", so somebody in development is 50+ to ID that West Side Story ref.
- yikes there was a remake in 2021 & I know it's hard to believe but it's more gay than the original from 1961


View: https://youtu.be/nXe4OsFH8KQ?si=6j1FzjbkDWWDvUhT
Click to expand...

Alpha means feature complete. In other words they have everything they want in the game, now they're just polishing it. You can tell as the graphics and performance look much improved in the latest videos compared to the initial reveal. It's almost as if I said something similar when comparing it to the Destiny alpha vs. beta a few posts up.
 
So BETA comes before ALPHA?

I thought it was Alpha, Beta, Release candidate 1, 2, X, Final, patch 1, 2, 3, infinity
 
usa all day said:
So BETA comes before ALPHA?

I thought it was Alpha, Beta, Release candidate 1, 2, X, Final, patch 1, 2, 3, infinity
Click to expand...
You have the order correct. Beta is for bug testing and stress testing. The game itself is complete at that point, which is why I always have to laugh when people say the game can change after they participate in a beta test.
 
Looks much better than in the awful live reveal event. Now it's all down to the handling and physics which can only really be judged hands-on.
 
If I just saw the video without titles, I'd say it is a trailer for Forza Horizon 9 or The Crew 6. It just seems so generic. TDU doesn't need off-road racing. They should stop trying to mimic other, lesser games.
 
M76 said:
If I just saw the video without titles, I'd say it is a trailer for Forza Horizon 9 or The Crew 6. It just seems so generic. TDU doesn't need off-road racing. They should stop trying to mimic other, lesser games.
Click to expand...
TDU2 had offroad racing. It came out a year before the original Forza Horizon and 3 years before The Crew.
 
Thanks for the perfect thread bump Armenius. I wasn't tracking this game. The thread started in 2020 and now the game is a few months away... It's almost like I time traveled. :D
 
pendragon1 said:
looks nice but the whole "social/lifestyle" thing is putting me off.
Click to expand...
That has always been a core part of the Unlimited series. You only need to interact with that mechanic as much as you need to make progress, though, which included buying houses in the first two games. You don't have to interact with other players if you don't want to. How much of that has changed with Solar Crown I have yet to see, but the previews really don't look much different aside from the social hubs that were added.
 
Tried the demo, here is the breakdown. TLDR: No way this is ready for a September launch. There are too many bugs and functions not working.

The Bad:

  1. It requires an account I entered one of my throw away emails and it didn't even send an email to it. But it lets me play the game anyway. It never asked me to log in after that, I never set a password. Strange.
  2. The controls menu is non functional, as soon as you navigate away from it, it reverts back to defaults. Despite of this it detects the steering wheel and it even functions in game as an input method, you are just stuck with the default settings.
  3. The free roam traffic appears out of nowhere and disappears in front of you, and there seems to be no more than two types of traffic car. No police either as far as I could tell so far.
  4. The graphics of interiors are definitely early 2010s at best. The cars look good enough to me, the environment is a mixed bag, depending on the TOD and weather it can look awful to pretty good (I've tried to take screenshots but steam's default screen capture didn't work)
  5. Your avatar looks like an androgynous blob. And customization (which only unlocks later) is only for the face (not that it helps that much either, you can barely make your avatar look human, let alone good looking). The female body shape is definitely DEI influenced, looks more trans than woman. And OFC it is not called female, just model 1,2,3,4, etc)
  6. The matchmaking is non functional, it forces you to wait 1 minute for other players, but in the end you race against AI even in the first race which is supposed to be crawling with players given that it's free for all. I Think I've seen two other players in the entire world in an hour. Of course I'd rather the Multiplayer could be turned off completely and play offline but I guess that's too much to hope for.
  7. The AI is laughably slow and the challenges easy. You can be first in a race by 5 seconds with a leisurely sunday drive.
  8. I always thought setting the game in a left hand drive country is a huge blunder, and I stick to that assassment. Most of the world drives on the right side, this is confusing, and annoying, and I don't want to get used to it. Especially given that most of the car models you drive in game also have the steering wheel on the left. Plus there is no use denying it the map feels tiny compared to TDU.
The good:

  1. They seem to have the right idea about what the game should be. I can see this being good if a few issues are fixed, starting with the non functional controls menu and the awful avatars.
  2. You can play with a steering wheel without any hardship, this already makes it better than any NFS or Forza game that came out in the last two decades.
  3. The physics have a good foundation, the car handles predictably, it is clear that there is a good physics model running here that has been dumbed down to accommodate casuals instead of crap pretending to be real physics a'la The Crew or FM.
Conclusion:

It has potential but I'm not holding out hope that it will materialize as anything good, it will release unfinished, unpolished and go down as a giant flop, which will prevent any similar game from getting greenlit anywhere for at least 10 years. When the issue won't be the concept, but the execution.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top