I find it impressive that the Test Drive series, which started way back in 1987, is still alive and kicking to this very day. Put this into perspective: Test Drive is older than Sonic, Ninja Gaiden, Prince of Persia, and many others. After many ownership changes over the years, Test Drive is now owned by Nacon, which entrusted the franchsie’s revival to KT Racing, the same folks behind the ever-improving WRC games… or at least up until Electronic Arts poached the franchise’s rights a while back. I was actually looking forward to a brand new Test Drive Unlimited, the precursor to all other open world racing games. After many delays, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is finally out… and it’s a massive disappointment.

Sorry for the anticlimatic intro, but there’s no other way to start off this review. Test Drive Unlimited is the game that paved the way to titles like Forza Horizon and The Crew, so it is a big deal in the racing gaming community. I loved the original, played it to death on my PSP back in the day. When KT Racing announced the franchise would return with an immense and (supposedly) loyal recreation of Hong Kong, there was no reason not to be excited. KT, after all, is actually a pretty good developer, able to craft impressive racing experiences with low budgets. Just imagine what they would be able to do with a bigger budget. That was my thought process. And there we have it, a game that could have worked, but it simply doesn’t.

I don’t know if Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown took too much time to develop, but some of its biggest issues are related to some absolutely baffling business decisions. Yes, business decisions. It’s not even related to how well the game plays because the controls are actually quite good, the sole saving grace that makes me feel, almost like a hopeless romantic, that this utter mess can be fixed. For starters, this freaking game demands a constant online connection, even when you’re playing it by yourself.

Now, this already would have been a poor decision even if the servers were working as intended, which they don’t. More than once I got kicked out from a session, out of nowhere, because of some unspecified server or connection issue. You can’t play it offline, and even if you just want to race against bots (which you can), you need to hop into an event, hope no one else logs into it, and then race against the AI. Every single event is open to other racers, and if they have a connection issue, the entire event goes kaput.

A shame, because, as previously mentioned, the gameplay is actually pretty good. It’s not as pristine as Forza Horizon, but then again, not many racing games are. The Hong Kong map is ginormous, and there are other means to increase your reputation (thus allowing you to buy more cars) than just hopping into races. Nothing original, but you can blast through speed cameras and look for wrecked classic cars hidden throughout the map. I actually liked the fact that these wrecks aren’t unlocked one at a time; you can explore the map and look for them right away. It was a neat way to look for more cars in my garage, as buying them in the normal campaign is a hassle.

The hassle in question is the fact Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown‘s progression system is lethargic. You don’t earn a lot of money per race, and some cars cost literal millions of credits. To make matters worse, the game charges you for a different paint job than the standard one seen in the car when you are buying it. Say, you want to buy a blue Alpine A110, but the game’s standard color is white; you gotta pay extra for the stupid paint job. Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown wants you to stick with it for a long time, and whilst I appreciate the fact there are no microtransactions or egregious real money practices, there was no need for the in-game economy to be this crappy.

Finally, another big issue: I played the game on a very capable PC, one able to play pretty much anything on high resolutions and graphical presets, and wasn’t able to come up with a suitable benchmark. Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is abnormally unoptimized. It demands way too much from your hardware to still struggle to render its visually dated open world at a decent framerate.

There were Forza Horizon titles on the Xbox 360 which looked as detailed as this game. Still, there were moments when the framerate would tank to the mid-20s for no reason. Characters look (and sound) like plastic robots and the textural work isn’t even that great. I had to resort to upscaling methods, but even then the framerate would struggle, with the game looking like a mushy mess.

What a huge disappointment. A pointless always online requirement, underwhelming car variety, and terrible progression system hinder what could have otherwise been a decent open-world racing game. I legitimately think that this can still be salvaged with a big fat update, removing some of these dated online requirements, rearranging the in-game economy, and reworking the visuals and GPU optimization to an acceptable degree. The gameplay itself is good, and the controls are actually decent. There is a foundation for something great in Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. It’s just buried under tons of glitches, pointless commercial decisions, and an undeniable amount of jank.

 

Graphics: 5.5 Abnormally unoptimized. It’s not a particularly impressive game in terms of its visuals, yet it demands ludicrous amounts of GPU power in order to still struggle to render its bland open world at a decent framerate.	Gameplay: 8.0 Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown might be a deeply flawed game, but its controls and physics are still great. It’s not Forza Horizon levels of good, but it’s better than, say, Gran Turismo 7.
Sound: 6.0 Whilst every single sound effect related to a car ended up being passable, the voice acting sounded like it had been created from an AI prompt. And sadly, there’s too much voice acting.	Fun Factor: 5.0 A pointless always online requirement, underwhelming car variety, and terrible progression system hinder what could have otherwise been a decent open-world racing game. Then again, even if it wasn’t that bad, there wouldn’t have been too much of a reason to play it over Forza Horizon, or even The Crew Motorfest…
Final Verdict: 6.0

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is available now on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

Reviewed on Intel i7-12700H, 16GB RAM, RTX 3060 6GB.

A copy of Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown was provided by the publisher.