Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown

Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown is a bitter, bitter disappointment. Instead of focusing on what made this series so important, the developers decided to imitate the most famous open world driving games but without having the slightest comparable capabilities. The result is a racer that can even be enjoyable at times, with a beautiful setting and an interesting progression system, but trivial in execution and spoiled on PC by enough problems to leave you baffled.

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown gives up what had distinguished the previous chapters to try to resemble experiences that have been successful in recent years, but unfortunately it has some obvious shortcomings. The production life cycle has just begun and the offer is destined to enrich and evolve significantly in the coming months. To date, however, we can only photograph the state of things, between a progression based on interesting ideas and not ideal in practice, a barely sufficient customization of the cars and a driving model that has not been able to fully satisfy us. In any case, part of the production potential is still unexpressed and we hope that post-launch support can improve the situation.

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is far and away the most ambitious driving game that developer KT Racing has ever put together, but it’s plagued with problems. Forced online requirements that feel needlessly punitive towards solo players, inconsistent and non-adjustable AI difficulty levels, a stale car list, and chore-like progression all conspire to undermine an otherwise robust driving model and eye-catching open world. The former home of the WRC series has come out swinging with Solar Crown, but unfortunately the studio may have flown a little too close to the sun.

It seems that the developers forgot the vibe of Test Drive Unlimited. Instead, the proposition they bring is a game that falls short of its rivals. Maybe a few months of support, patches and content will enhance what is currently a fairly average racing experience.

There was reason to be happy about the return of Test Drive Unlimited: offering a gigantic map based on the faithful reproduction of Hong Kong Island and always with this immersive aspect specific to the series, Solar Crown had good arguments to seduce. The bottom line is that the title relies on a repetitive and frustrating progression that almost never rewards the player brave enough to invest hours of hard work; worse still, its alarming technical aspect simply prevents us from enjoying the gameplay and artistic direction that are nevertheless successful. Instead, we will have to make do with a mandatory internet connection that degrades the experience to the point of sometimes making it unplayable and indigestible; we will also have to put up with uneven graphics and a broken framerate, bugs galore and an unbalanced AI that pushes to recurring nervous breakdowns. Fortunately, the sensations and effects of speed are good, the number of cars is correct and the environment pleasant, but it is difficult to appreciate them at their true value for all the pitfalls in question.