Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is not the kind of comeback we were expecting. Review

Played on Xbox Series S

The last game in the Test Drive Unlimited series was released so long ago that since then all five parts of Forza Horizon and three The Crew have been released. Publishing house Nacon took quite a long time to revive the franchise: in 2016 it bought the rights from Atari, in 2018 it acquired the Kylotonn studio (authors of the WRC series), since it had not previously owned teams specializing in racing, and already in April 2020 has registered the trademark Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. Even the creative director of the new project was the same person who worked on the first two Test Drive Unlimited. But something went wrong: numerous postponements hinted that not everything was working out with the game, and the fears were confirmed.

⇡#City of luxury

One of the main problems is the excessive seriousness of what is happening. Forza Horizon is full of bright colors and happy people enjoying the ongoing festival. Those Need for Speeds that have an open world have little humor, but they try to dilute the seriousness with a quirky interface, graffiti and other details. In Solar Crown, pathos oozes from everywhere. Rich people greet you with sad faces and look at you like you’re a worm. Everyone has expensive suits and perfect posture. The workshops are more reminiscent of luxury salons, in which you’re not only afraid of getting the floor dirty, but you shouldn’t be there at all. The cars are only the coolest ones, which is why there are about a hundred of them in the game, and not half a thousand, as in the “Forts”.

They won’t let you drive for a long time in the car you were given at the beginning.

They didn’t come up with a plot – for some reason you were selected as a participant for the Solar Crown championship and invited to Hong Kong. After that, you go through races and complete other tasks for one of the two selected clans. That’s all. It is clear that the plot in racing is far from the most important thing, but in the end the final goal of the main character is unclear. Why is he involved in all this? Why was he invited? You just ride, gain reputation levels, listen to periodic briefings about new features, and ride again.

Hong Kong is a beautiful city and Solar Crown also looks great, especially at night. But gameplay-wise, Hong Kong here is absolutely dead. There are no passers-by, no spectators in the stands during the races, no police, and surprisingly little traffic. I don’t remember that I even once saw a traffic jam on the road – it is much more likely that there will be no cars nearby at all. And the locations are drawn in such a way that visually all areas of the city are similar to each other. At least outside of it the situation is better, especially when you get to the local jungle, where you drive off-road vehicles. But overall there is no feeling that this is a virtual Hong Kong – just some kind of faceless and dreary simulation.

It’s more pleasant to drive at night – the constant lack of traffic is not so noticeable

The structure of the “story mode” does not improve the situation either. You are required to earn reputation in order to unlock new races and other entertainment, for the completion of which you further earn reputation – a classic arcade racing cycle. But in Solar Crown this is especially sad – you open the mini-map, press a button and bring up a list of tasks that you simply complete one by one. Complete such and such a race in such and such a time. Win so many races. Overtake so many representatives of the enemy clan. When the task is completed, you are simply given a handful of experience points and an unnecessary sticker to decorate your car. Many similar games fit this description, but here everything is presented so dry and joyless that you don’t get any positive emotions from victories at all.

There are also entertainments in the open world, but they were simply borrowed from competitors. These include high-speed sections, scattered currency, and parts of abandoned cars – like in the latest The Crew, a radar appears near the mini-map, telling you the right direction with sounds. There’s not much fun in all this either, but sometimes you want to be distracted by such things. True, the more time you spend in the open world, the less you like it visually – in addition to poor traffic and a small number of people, what is striking is the poor rendering distance, due to which objects sometimes appear out of thin air. It’s a strange problem for a game whose creators abandoned previous generation consoles to focus on current platforms.

There are more people in salons than on the streets

It’s hard to find fault with racing. In each race, the developers seem to be trying to test your strength: then suddenly there is a sharp turn, then an obstacle appears on the way, or you can drive into something so that you will be able to return to the road only a few seconds later, when everyone has already overtaken you. It’s nice to drive cars, but it’s advisable not to drive off the asphalt – even if you run into some bush or demolish a flowerbed, driving becomes more difficult for a couple of seconds. The damage here is very bad (there is practically none), but we are already accustomed to this – manufacturers do not want to see their cars damaged. And dented cars do not fit into the luxurious atmosphere that the authors tried to create.

⇡#Bad connection

The controls aren’t too arcade-like, but the game can’t be called a simulator either—it’s not always possible to carelessly pick up speed, crash into walls on turns, and cut corners, but you also don’t need to drive too carefully. At some point, you will definitely hit something and want to quickly restart the race, but an unpleasant surprise will await you – the corresponding button is not available in most races. The fact is that in Solar Crown a lot is tied to multiplayer. There are no separate online modes here – instead, in regular story races you will be given either bots or live players. Accordingly, a quick restart is not possible – you must leave the race and restart it for the system to select opponents.

In racing, the game itself selects the appropriate soundtrack – sometimes it works out well

In this regard, Solar Crown requires a constant online connection, and this “trick,” as is usually the case, does not lead to anything good. Let’s start with the fact that the servers began to “die” even before the release of the regular version, when owners of the Gold edition had access to the game. With all due respect, the new Test Drive does not seem like a project that thousands of players rushed into, as was the case with SimCity and Diablo III that did not work at release, but it turned out that the servers were not ready to accept users: it was possible to ride around the open world, but the launch racing was accompanied by network errors. And if you were allowed into the race, then in the middle of the race you could be thrown back into the city. This happens even now, although much less frequently, but still.

There is no way to enable offline mode – even if you don’t have a console subscription. Without an active Xbox Live Gold, the game starts and runs, but for some reason it still tries to preserve online functionality at every turn – for example, although the search for live players in races without a subscription does not occur, quick restart of races is still not available. In general, the online component does not have any advantages and only makes the game worse – when you see the loading screen, you expect to stumble upon an error message rather than get into some building or start another race. Not to mention the fact that sooner or later the game’s servers will be turned off and it will be impossible to launch it at all.

You can’t escape connection failures even in a workshop

On the other hand, if this happens, the loss will be small. It’s not the worst race, but it does raise a lot of questions about why it exists. Usually in racing games they try to offer at least something new, even if sometimes it turns out absurd, like the boats and planes in The Crew 2. Solar Crown has no interesting ideas of its own. We have already seen clans, open worlds too, car parts scattered around the city are now everywhere, there are no unusual modes here, I don’t want to talk about the “story” at all. If you ask anyone how they imagine a standard racing game, they will describe Solar Crown exactly.

Therefore, you are more critical of everything here – even car upgrades. It’s clear that you certainly can’t come up with anything original here, but everything is very ordinary and boring: engines, brakes, exhaust pipes – everything is divided into categories (common, rare, epic, and so on), and the more expensive the part, the more significantly it affects characteristics such as acceleration and maximum speed. I liked the fact that when you buy a new car, you are immediately offered to customize it for yourself, including choosing the color and upholstery. But the longer you play through the game, the more often you come across insane prices for better cars. Prize money in races does not grow significantly, so everything ends up being a grind, which you don’t want to waste time on.

Installing off-road tires dramatically changes the vehicle’s handling off the pavement.

***

The last parts of the Test Drive series were not so great, so Nacon’s desire to revive the franchise seemed strange. But what’s even stranger is that against the backdrop of numerous Forza Horizon, The Crew and even the recent Need for Speed, the new product looks so losing. It’s not very beautiful, there are no new ideas, there are few cars, and there is even less entertainment in the open world. This also requires a constant Internet connection… But even if your connection is fine, the server can kick you out of the race at any time. Complete disappointment.

Advantages:

• A fairly large city with dozens of different races;
• Pleasant driving;
• Hundreds of luxury cars, the appearance of which can be customized to your taste.

Disadvantages:

• There is no story, and the progression system is very boring;
• Complete lack of original ideas – everything was taken from competitors;
• Most races cannot be quickly restarted – and other unpleasant surprises due to a constant online connection;
• There are few cars, and for the ones you have you have to save up foreign currency for too long;
• Dead open world – there are not even traffic jams.

Graphic arts

Sometimes the game looks great, but mostly you don’t understand why it didn’t appear on the last generation of consoles.

Sound

There are no big names among the music authors, but the soundtrack here is still better than in some Need for Speed. Remixes of classic compositions sound especially funny.

Single player game

If you do not have a console subscription, then you will participate in all races alone. However, the requirement for a constant Internet connection remains.

Estimated time of completion

From 40 hours – depends on how long you want to sit here after reaching the maximum reputation level.

Collective game

From time to time, races with bots are diluted by introducing other players. There are no separate online modes, so you will have to deal with crashes and communication errors at every step, even in showrooms and workshops.

General impression

A standard, extremely generic racing game that borrowed a lot from competitors and did not offer anything new. And even with the need for a constant online connection. Not a complete disaster, but I wanted something better.

Rating: 5.0 / 10

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