Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown review – wasted potential

Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown doesn’t know what it wants to be. It’s a game of frustration and inconvenience, and while hurtling down a highway at almost 300kph is fun for a few fleeting moments, it doesn’t make up for the fact it feels stitched together at the last minute with incompatible parts. This attempt to combine racing and RPG elements is ambitious but never works in Test Drive’s favor.

You’re an up-and-coming driver handpicked by the ‘Solar Crown‘, an Illuminati-esque collection of elites on Hong Kong Island. They task you with climbing the ladder by competing in races across a sprawling open-world map.

You’re introduced early on to two opposing clans: Street and Sharp. The former is a hip and trendy underground faction with an affinity for nightclubs and neon lights, while the latter is all about formal wear and upmarket penthouses. It’s entirely superficial though, as while your choice to aid one over the other contributes to the ongoing tug-of-war between every player, it has next to no impact on the story. You can also leave your current clan whenever you like to join the other, losing any progress with your former pals in the process.

Progression as a whole is weak, as the grind is unnecessarily long, and the rewards feel negligible. New cars and upgrade parts are locked behind experience, but your options are limited until at least level 30. So rather than enjoying a steady stream of satisfying unlocks, you instead get a whole bunch in one go whenever you hit a multiple of ten.

This results in a feeling of stagnation, and since new cars are so expensive, you’re often left repeating races you’ve already completed to earn the game’s sole currency, Solar Coins. Then there’s clan reputation, which is how you work your way through the ranks of the Streets or the Sharps. As you climb, you can challenge other clan members to duels, which are essentially just head-to-head races. You also unlock loot, which mostly includes stickers for your car. In fact, stickers make up an overwhelming percentage of the game’s unlocks. It cannot be overstated how disappointing unlocking yet another basic cosmetic feels when you only have a handful of vehicles in your garage to don them.

Speaking of new vehicles, when you finally have enough cash to buy a better car, the real struggle begins. There are numerous car dealerships on Hong Kong Island, each specializing in a different type of vehicle, such as classic, British, Italian, or off-road cars. So you must visit each one to check out the available vehicles, then rather than select a car from a menu, you have to run on foot around this enormous open space, looking at each one individually. Being unable to compare all available Solar Crown cars in a menu and select which one to buy is a baffling design choice.

The behind-the-wheel experience is also sorely lacking. This isn’t a simulation game, which is fair, but it lacks the enjoyably over-the-top nature of the best arcade racers. There’s practically no damage model aside from cosmetic effects, most cars feel similar to drive when it comes to handling, and there’s little variety in activity types. Time trials, standard races, and domination races, where you earn points by being the first to pass through gat, are about the extent of it.

Then there’s the issue of Hong Kong Island being a surprisingly dull setting to drive around. You’ve got highways, city streets, and a few hilly climbs, but it’s all asphalt or gravel. Compare that to the gold standard for open-world racing games, Forza Horizon, with its breathtakingly gorgeous environments, wide variety of missions, and countless unique locales to discover throughout the world, and I’m left wondering why you’d ever play Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown in the first place.

Not to mention the lack of people on the streets; the only NPCs you’ll find are inside the clan hideouts and car dealerships, or every now and then you’ll see a huge group standing down an alleyway repeating basic animations. Since the number of cars on the road is low to ensure you can zoom around at top speed, the world feels completely dead.

Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown neglects the fundamentals, lacking a memorable world, engaging progression, and – most problematically – consistently enjoyable racing. Nacon and KT Racing have tried to emulate Forza’s triumphs but come up short across the board. It’s like pitting a PT Cruiser against a Ferrari F50 – the gulf in class is simply too severe.