There’s a very particular style and tone to Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. Where open world racing games can generally be divided into two camps – Forza Horizon and games that want to be Forza Horizon – Test Drive Unlimited is the outlier. It’s not a game that will throw expensive cars at you as a reward for clumsily rampaging across town, but rather wants you to care about the cars you own, rendering them with meticulous attention to detail.
All of that said, you’ll still get to live out the fantasy of earning and owning wild hypercars and getting into countless illegal street races on the roads of Hong Kong Island.
Speaking of Hong Kong Island, anyone whose awareness of the region is largely derived from cinema will likely be surprised at the breadth and diversity of environments that you’ll find within Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. Yes, you’ll absolutely be racing through Central Hong Kong and the forest of skyscrapers that dominates the skyline and waterfront, but so much of Hong Kong Island is outside of the main metropolises. There’s over 650km of roads rendered in the game, and from skimming across the map, maybe 70-80% of that feels like it’s outside of the cities and towns. Oh, and that’s before counting the smaller trails that you’ll venture down when hunting for collectables, like abandoned classic cars to rebuild and claim them for your garage.
We had just a glimpse of what the setting of Solar Crown has to offer – whisked around a handful of locations on a whistle-stop tour to showcase the game’s key features in a one-hour hands-on session – but quickly got to understand what it aims to be as a game.
Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is essentially an MMO, an always online driving and racing game where everything and everyone is always connected. Online open-world racing games have become the norm in recent years, but you’re typically playing solo first and opting into online multiplayer. That’s not the case with Solar Crown, where almost every race event you take part in will feature matchmaking, with AI backfilling spaces as a backup. Thankfully your race goal and objective will be adjusted to suit the skill of your opponents, but if you’re used to bullying the AI and rampaging to first place in every race, you’ll have another thing coming in Solar Crown.
A key part of the game will be mastering your car. Early on in the game, you’ll have a fast car, perhaps a Nissan 370Z ’09, as I was handed the keys to, and that will be your workhorse as you choose and ingratiate yourself with the clan of your choice – the Streets or the Sharps – upgrading the car with numerous parts so that it can handle greater challenges or has different attributes, but at the same time eyeing up the next purchase, the next car that will propel you to higher tiers of racing.
I was able to leap ahead to the Koenigsegg Agera RS ’17, with KT Racing’s physics and handling models ensuring that there’s more of the raw power of a ludicrous hypercar such as this coming through to your fingers and thumbs on the gamepad. Add to that the day-night cycle being accompanied by dynamic weather, and you’ll potentially have a real handful when driving in the wet or heading off road down a hidden path. Thankfully you can switch things like tyres on-the-fly so your car can be better suited to the conditions. OK, so an Agera RS is never really going to be an off-road monster, but I’m sure you can find one to save up for and buy.
There’s a great attention to detail in recreating all the game’s cars digitally that goes far beyond the handling model and the fully modelled exteriors and interiors – you can view these in any of the game’s car showrooms, and take cars out for a quick 2 minute test drive before buying. Any convertible can have the roof opened in the moment, but in the instances where this is a motorised element, it will only do so in the same conditions as in real life – as in, you can’t be zooming down a motorway at 150mph while the roof becomes a surprise spoiler. You can also trigger your signals before you manoeuvre and (while it didn’t do this in this particular build) they will automatically stop blinking after you’ve turned.
But then this game is only partly about the driving, the cars and the racing. The MMO aspect means it gets to be just as much about shared spaces and car culture in general. When you load into the game, you’ll start off in your room at the fictional Solar Crown hotel – a devastatingly imposing spire within the real world setting. Similarly, there’s shared spaces at the two clan headquarters, with the Sharps set up in a posh hotel, while the Streets engage in what’s sure to be an unending underground rave. Any player can visit these spaces, but each has an inner sanctum only accessible to members of that specific clan, and further access to those who rise up the ranks, besting six leaders in a head-to-head race.
One further neat little touch within Solar Crown comes over the radio. Six radio stations exist in the game, each with extensive playlists featuring around 10 hours of music. That’s pretty great in its own right, but the neat trick is that this is synced up for groups of players, so you’ll all be hearing the music at the same time.
And that kind of says it all about Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. Yes, it’s a game in which you drive and race around Hong Kong, but it’s also a game that will be best when you engage and actively share that space with other players. It’s not always about being first, it’s not always about racing rivalries, sometimes it’s nice to just hang out and drive together.
