REVIEW – It may not seem obvious at first glance, but the Test Drive series is actually a true institution in the world of video games. Since 1987, its engine has been roaring, bringing joy to millions of players who have enjoyed no less than eleven episodes. Solar Crown is the twelfth, and it carries a significant responsibility: to uphold the series’ legacy while regaining its former success, twelve years after Test Drive Unlimited 2. It’s a tall order, and one that the game fails to fully meet. This review was based on the PlayStation 5 version.

Back in 2012, Eden Games released Test Drive Unlimited 2: the French studio, which has since shut its doors and then risen from the ashes to work on the Gear.Club series, captivated PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 players by taking them to Ibiza. Since then, aside from Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends (which was developed by the studio behind Project CARS), the series has been dormant, much to the disappointment of a dedicated fanbase.

Patience has been key, but good things come to those who wait. Even though it’s not called Test Drive Unlimited 3, Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown is still the long-awaited representative of the series, sought after for more than a decade. This time, the Parisian studio Kylotonn is in charge of the project, known for their recent WRC titles, and they bring an entirely new context: Hong Kong Island, recreated at a 1:1 scale. It’s an ambitious challenge for the company and an enticing proposition for players eager to dive back into a detailed experience where the love of cars meets role-playing elements—at least on paper.

Stars in the Eyes

Standing out among competitors isn’t easy, especially against open-world titans like Forza Horizon and The Crew. In response, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown revisits the concept of its predecessors, offering a deep immersion in the shoes… of the driver. Let’s explain: after creating and dressing up your character, you’re thrust into the Solar Crown, a prestigious racing competition whose latest edition takes place in and around Hong Kong. You’re given a truly luxurious suite, complete with a five-star wardrobe, and can stroll through your hotel in first-person view, enjoying various services. Similarly, dealerships are scattered across the map and can be visited in person: you walk up to each car, enter it, and admire the interior, much like in real life. The same goes for upgrade shops: the game’s main intention is to involve you, almost on a human level, in the Solar Crown experience.

However, this aspect is less fleshed out compared to TDU 2, and while the initiative is still refreshing and enjoyable, it slows down the entire navigation and gameplay experience. Where it would take mere seconds in other games to access a list of cars to buy or upgrade, here, you need to take the time to walk to the destination, select your car, and so on. It’s not purely negative, but rather a design choice that differentiates it from the competition… and this is, after all, the soul of Test Drive Unlimited. Still, one can legitimately question the value of the system, which feels somewhat trivial when viewed from a broader perspective. The hotel suites are simply pointless, the character’s modeling and animation are basic at best, and let’s be honest: dressing your avatar in different ways—with very limited options, no less—isn’t exactly thrilling. So much so that using it as a marketing point feels more like smoke and mirrors than anything substantial.

Slow and Painful

The problem, though, is that Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown places perhaps too much focus on things that don’t matter. Before we dive into the gameplay—arguably the most crucial element of any racing game and one of the areas where it succeeds—we need to address one of the two main issues: the progression system. At the beginning of the game, you have to choose between two factions: the Streets, based in a neon-lit club, and the Sharps, who hang out in a luxurious estate. The catch is that joining one faction or the other doesn’t make any real difference to your experience: there’s almost no interaction with your faction members, whom you end up caring little about, and there’s absolutely nothing to do in their respective hideouts. The only thing you gain is cosmetic—tribal stickers for your car, a beanie, a tank top—unlocked each time you level up.

The problem is that leveling up takes an absurd amount of time: new events and side quests unlock every five XP levels, but you’ll quickly find yourself replaying the same races over and over again to reach the next level. In other words, this frustrating progression forces you into a grinding loop, and the further you advance in the game, the longer it takes to gain XP. We spent hours upon hours redoing the same events, drained by the monotony, simply because we had already completed all the new quests and secondary objectives. Add to this the game’s clunky ergonomics, the meager cash and XP rewards, and the repetitive nature of the events—time trials, sprints, circuit races, with no special set pieces—and you’ve got a game that quickly becomes monotonous. Even buying a vehicle becomes a rare occurrence, given how little money you earn. And spending two hours doing the same thing repeatedly to win a pink cap for a poorly modeled character? That feels almost insulting.

Between Wins and Major Failures

Of course, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown has its successes, too. The gameplay is a positive aspect: it strikes a balance between arcade and simulation, with vehicles that behave very differently and sometimes require precise handling. The vehicle sounds are of good quality, and the sensation of speed is present, even with the game’s early cars. The inertia of the vehicles feels satisfying in hand—the DualSense on PS5 is very well utilized, bravo! You can even disable certain assists to increase realism, which slightly boosts your cash rewards at the end of each event.

But there’s always a catch, and Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is full of them. Let’s start with the vehicle physics, which can be downright absurd and extremely punishing. The slightest mistake or minor contact with a rock, and your car will flip end over end or spin straight into the sky. We wish we were exaggerating, but the situations we encountered were nothing short of surreal, leading to both amusement and extreme frustration. On top of that, the AI is unbalanced and sometimes outright unfair. On asphalt, your opponents’ difficulty is cranked up: at times, it’s illogical, with much lower-class vehicles accelerating like Formula 1 cars—and don’t even get us started on their aggressiveness, which is far from fair play. We lost count of the times the AI rammed into us mid-turn, pushing us off the road, leaving us with no choice but to do the same since there’s no penalty system in place. What’s more, all opponents are at level 60—the maximum level—with no option to adjust difficulty. We would have preferred a more gradual challenge as we progressed in our career, but instead, the game’s artificial difficulty spike feels like an attempt to artificially extend the playtime.

The Frustrations of Online Play

Why limit the system like this, and what’s the point, if not to pad the game’s length? Let’s also point out that the AI behaves strangely at times, making right-angle turns at the start of races, blocking your path, or inexplicably falling behind once they hit dirt roads instead of asphalt. All of this is further proof that the game has significant AI issues, leading to no small amount of frustration.

And because it must be said, the least the developers could have done was to allow for immediate race restarts when an overly punitive or aggressive AI knocks you out—or at the very least, let us pause the game. Neither is possible, due to the always-online requirement, even in single-player races. You’re forced to return to the open world, restart the event, and reenter the matchmaking system to try again. This cumbersome process weighs the game down when all we wanted was some fluidity and common sense.

This same always-online requirement is what crippled Solar Crown from the get-go: few test sessions have been as chaotic as ours. For days, we simply couldn’t access the game due to server issues; when we did, we often couldn’t finish an event without the race stats resetting. Stability has since improved greatly—you can now launch the game without a hitch, hooray—but the bugs persist. Sudden disconnects, events being canceled mid-race, autosave failures, crashes to the desktop: these were daily occurrences. We spent dozens of hours on the game, and the problems were consistent. Still not enough? The first gear sometimes fails to engage for no apparent reason, the rearview mirror shows a black screen, whole races go by without sound, and our character clips through the car during victory animations.

When Hong Kong Only Half Delivers

You would hope that Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown would be visually stunning, that the game’s artistic spectacle would make up for its major flaws, but the fact is, it’s just not that good-looking. On PS5, there’s noticeable pop-in, environmental details are blurry, and the vehicle models are a step behind the competition. Worst of all, the frame rate consistently throws a wrench into the works with painful, frequent drops. The cockpit view is simply unplayable due to the frame rate collapsing almost immediately.

To be fair, Hong Kong and its surrounding island provide a massive map that offers some great potential: you get the city, mountainous terrains, exotic beaches, and villages. There are also a few systems borrowed from competitors that work well, like the risk meter that allows you to earn money through drifts and near misses, or speed cameras that encourage you to pass them at top speed. Unfortunately, while the map holds enormous potential, it’s hard to enjoy it when the rest of the game lacks polish. We can only hope that the technical issues are improved with future updates, but after spending days, nights, and countless hours with the game, we came out feeling drained. Drained by a lack of finish and a frustrating progression system, betraying either a lack of time, budget, or something else entirely. If you’ve recently played The Crew Motorfest, Forza Horizon, or even Need for Speed Unbound, you’re likely to be disappointed with Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. And it hurts to say it because we were eagerly awaiting this release with high hopes.

-Gergely Herpai „BadSector-

Publisher: Nacon
Developer: Kylotonn
Style: Competition
Release: September 12, 2024.