Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown – a funeral in style

The year 2024 will be remembered not only as a year of major layoffs in the gaming industry, but also as a year of total failures for major publishers and well-known developers. Unsuccessful releases of Alone in the Dark, Star Wars Outlaws (I still think it’s a good game), Foamstars, Skull & Bones, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. The absolute fiasco of Concord. Well, it seems that we can safely add Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown to this list. No miracle happened – this is an expensive, even lavish funeral for a once famous franchise. Rest in peace TDU!

The legend and its descendants

Test Drive Unlimited (2006) (Eden Games/Atari) and Test Drive Unlimited 2 (2011) (Eden Games/Atari) are true legends. These almost flawless open-world arcade car racing games laid the foundation that is now used by their descendants – the Forza Horizon series (first game released in 2012) by Playground Games and Xbox Game Studios and The Crew series (first game released in 2014), created by the people from the same Eden Games who founded the new Ivory Tower studio, which became part of Ubisoft. By and large, the latest Need for Speed, the very same Need for Speed Unbound (2022) (Criterion Games/Electronic Arts), borrowed a lot from Test Drive Unlimited.

The first rumors about the new part of TDU appeared in 2018, when Bigben Interactive, now known as Nacon (yes, this is the same Nacon that tried to steal the rights to The Sinking City from our Frogwares), took over the French studio Kylotonn (KT Racing is a trademark of Kylotonn), which had been working on car simulators for many years, such as the WRC series from 2015 to 2022. Even earlier, in 2016, Bigben Interactive acquired part of the intellectual property of the bankrupt Atari, which included the rights to the Test Drive and Test Drive Unlimited trademarks. It didn’t take a genius to put these two facts together. Moreover, Roman Vincent, President of Kylotonn, spoke directly on the occasion of the acquisition: “The long-term cooperation with Bigben, a symbol of a stable and good relationship between the teams; our specialization in 2WD and 4WD racing, as well as the use of prestigious brands (WRC, Isle of Man TT, V-Rally, Test Drive Unlimited) represent competitive advantages that will be strengthened by our integration.”

The first trailer for the new installment, which was given the rather strange name Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, appeared in July 2021, but it seems to be 100% fake and Kylotonn, which was supposed to complete support for WRC 10 (2021) and the development of WRC Generations (2022), has not even taken on this project yet. This is partially confirmed by the fact that the game was postponed to 2023 in early 2022, and to 2024 in mid-2023, and that even in the early 2024 trailers, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown looked completely raw.

But hope was still alive, because this is still Test Drive Unlimited, a legend that cannot be simply flushed down the toilet. I also wanted to travel around virtual Hong Kong, because since COVID-19 it has been almost impossible to get to this interesting city/district in reality.

Bad start

The troubles of Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown began even before the game was launched for the general public and affected primarily the nouveau riche who purchased the most expensive edition of the game Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown – Gold Edition, which gave early access to the race a week before the official launch on September 12, 2024. The problem affected the network part of the game, the owners of VIP passes simply could not connect to the server and start the game. Queues, inability to start the race, being thrown out of the online game, destroyed progress, missing cars, etc. Naturally, there was a quarrel and lowering of ratings, Kylotonn developers tried to fix the situation, and Nacon promised to compensate everyone.

If you think that with the full release of the game, the problems stopped, then think again. There were more players, but the servers were still buggy. Only on September 18, 2024, Kylotonn / Nacon sent the servers for maintenance and rolled out a patch that… broke everything. Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown became more or less playable only on September 20, and even then, errors still appear from time to time, progress disappears, and races do not start. So, while the Steam rating of Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown was close to 50/100 at the end of the unsuccessful VIP week, by September 20 it had dropped to 40/100. Players are demanding an Offline mode from developers and publishers, but it’s just ridiculous, who will make it for a game on a service with seasonal passes?

Hong Kong

Kylotonn / Nacon promised to bring the whole of Hong Kong to the Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown on a 1:1 scale and they did not deceive… well, almost. Not everyone knows that Hong Kong Island is actually a smaller part of the city of Hong Kong and, in general, a very small part of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, which stretches on the mainland almost to the border of the city of Shenzhen, where border crossings are located. The most famous night views of Hong Kong are taken from the mainland, from the peninsula and the Kowloon district, the same place where the infamous fortress city of Kowloon was located, and now a park. There are a lot of interesting things on the other side – a gorgeous promenade, the clock tower of the Kowloon railway station, the space museum, the cultural center and other museums, the port and one of the airports, and a bunch of skyscrapers and residential areas. Kowloon, as well as the bridges and tunnels connecting the two parts of the city, are indeed a bit lacking.

But the island of Hong Kong itself is really transferred to the game almost perfectly. Although the districts are a bit simplified, they are easily recognizable, but the main thing is that the developers managed to capture the mood of Hong Kong, especially at night and in the rain, when neon fills small slanted streets and glows in puddles. The very pop Solar Crown banners spoil the picture a bit, but in general, it is not bad.

The only thing is that there are VERY few cars and people in the virtual Hong Kong of Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. In reality, there should be two orders of magnitude more of both, but then it would be difficult to organize a race through the city streets.

Another thing that the developers should be praised for is the weather conditions, especially fogs, showers, and incredible tropical downpours. Racing under a dense wall of rain is something else.

In Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, it is also very pleasant to just drive around the city leisurely, exploring the neighborhood. Unfortunately, there are no taxi driver missions or car racing, as there were in TDU 1/2. What a shame!

Cars, riders and grind

The city is nice, but what about the racing? And this is where Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is not doing well. First of all, there are frankly not enough races in a game that doesn’t have a track editor and user-generated content, and they are “issued” in a few hours by the teaspoonful – 10 new races every 5 levels. And if at first the levels are relatively easy to gain, then starting from about level 20 it’s grind, grind, and grind again.

The problem is that there are too few races and they bring the same amount of experience and money, regardless of their length and complexity. Always. No more than 2,750 experience points and no more than 25K coins. Starting from level 20, you need 20K+ experience to the next level, so to get new races in five levels you need to win in… 50 races. Not bad.

The same goes for buying new cars. Some models cost more than 20 million, so to buy them you have to take part in… 1000 races. Yes, Forza Horizon 4/5 also had expensive cars, but thanks to weekly challenges and free spins, they could be obtained quite easily. Okay, there are also cash bonuses for exploring the world and completing quests, but… you’ll get a lot of gold.

In general, it seems that the authors of Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown did this on purpose, because the game simply has too few cars compared to its competitors. See for yourself: Forza Horizon 4 – over 700 cars, Forza Horizon 5 – over 800, The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest – over 600, Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo 7 – over 500. Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown – less than 100, including unique faction cars and cars from pre-order and expensive versions of the game. There are, for example, only two (2!) BMWs, three Jaguars, one (1!) Maserati, two Nissan, one Mini, and two Volkswagen, including one that still needs to be assembled from spare parts scattered around the island. Yes, more cars will most likely be added later, but will the game survive until then?

Okay, there aren’t many cars, so maybe they drive really well, because Kylotonn has been eating the dog on car simulators! Well, the cars do drive well. On asphalt and if there are no obstacles and other cars around. Because the physics of collisions in Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is a real nightmare, both with obstacles and other cars. It seems that during a collision, your car clings to the training grounds and can go into a flight that resembles the flight of an empty Nova Poshta box. By the way, during such a flight, you can see that the lower part of the cars is designed at the level of children’s cars. In a collision between cars, they behave like solid wooden blocks, no matter if it’s a side or head-on collision.

The physics of collisions is complemented by a catastrophic AI opponent. It behaves even more ridiculously than live players who want to ruin the game for others. AI drivers cannot enter a turn properly, constantly flying off the track, hitting fences, stones, and each other. Alternatively, they fly far ahead as if their cars were equipped with a jet engine.

Speaking of engines. Do you remember the upgrade system in Forza Horizon 4/5, some of which could significantly change not only the behavior of the car, but also its appearance. Forget it. Upgrades in Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown are like conditional power cards from Need for Speed Payback, so you just install the next one when you have access. The visual upgrades are a disaster – you can only change the color, interior color, wheels, and glass tint. The livery editor is terrible, and you can’t borrow liveries from other players. It’s like we’re back in the Stone Age. By the way, you can’t share screenshots in the game either, and the photo mode is not even activated in races.

So all these problems can be tolerated individually, but together, and with a terrible network code…

Nacom believes that Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown can compete with Forza Horizon, The Crew and… Grand Theft Auto VI through the system of clans and clan warriors… No, this is by no means the case. Forza Horizon 5 and The Crew Motorfest are in a completely different league. I don’t know what GTA VI has to do with it, it’s just pure marketing.

Bad finish

As we mentioned above, as of now, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown has a rating of 40/100 on Steam, 2.06/5 on the PlayStation Store, and 2.2/5 on the Xbox Store. Metacritic – from 52/100 to 55/100 depending on the platform. A rare unity of media and players.

But the worst thing is not even the ratings, but the fact that the game is losing players. In the first week, the number of players on Steam dropped from 5,300 at launch on September 12, 2024 to 2,750 with dips to 600 players as of September 20, when I write this review. For a game service, this is almost a death sentence.

Theoretically, players can join any race of each other, but in practice, in 100 races, I did this only 5-6 times. I couldn’t even complete the qualification for the rating mode, which is only 5 races, there are simply no players in this mode.

I actually feel really bad for Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. It really has a great name, I really like Hong Kong in the game. The developers’ plans are impressive, because among other things, they are going to return the series to Ibiza, where Test Drive Unlimited 2 took place, and maybe Oahu will come up, plus casinos, clan wars, motorcycles, player real estate, etc. Now I have my doubts that Nacon and Kylotonn will be able, and most importantly, will want to support the game for so long.

For me, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is the biggest gaming failure of 2024. Rest in peace, legend!