Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Discussion Thread

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Pepperoncini
Is it as bad as it looks or sounds?
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People can't play

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I got a bit lucky since my Gold edition preordered got canceled and refunded yesterday morning :cheers:
 
Famine
This is the discussion thread for an article on GTPlanet:

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Review: Hong Kong Phooey​

It’s been a bit over 13 years since the last game in the Test Drive Unlimited series, TDU2, and while that had something of a mixed reception it did gain a niche following. As such, the third game in the series has been one much anticipated on GTPlanet...
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Any theory on why game reviews often call this kind of games "even more of a sim than an arcade racer" and "a great driving experience"?

PushSquare: "Driving is where TDU really shines" and "It makes it seem like you’re truly behind the wheel of each car, feeling the road beneath you."
 
KAlex122
Any theory on why game reviews often call this kind of games "even more of a sim than an arcade racer" and "a great driving experience"?

PushSquare: "Driving is where TDU really shines" and "It makes it seem like you’re truly behind the wheel of each car, feeling the road beneath you."
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Game journalists on jack-of-all-trades sites are incompetent and don't play games for long enough. GTPlanet is specialized site and offer experienced player view in its reviews.

If you want meaningful review on racing game - look here or find some competent YouTuber.


Sounds review from Fastlane
 
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In all honesty I have been playing yesterday (day 2) without a single issue. I logged on in the morning, evening and night and could play without any problems. Also just now (when all servers are ment to be offline) I can just log in and play. That’s all on Xbox Series X and playing from Europe. Day 1 was different though as I also saw all the login issues / disconnects and waiting queues.

Having that said, I think the game deserves all the flak it currently gets. Personally my opinion is that it’s a mixed bag. I think games like FH5 and TCM are the better games, but I can see how TDUSC caters to a certain public as well.

Personally I never played a TDU game before (but I did play most FM, GT, FH, TC, GRID, NFS games from the last decade), so here is what I think about it :

PROS:
  • I like the Hong Kong map a lot, this is the first map that feels realistic to me.
  • I like the tougher economy (instead of winning wheelspin hypercars every 10 minutes).
  • I like the story element and cutscenes (similar as how I liked the live action video in GRID Legends).
  • I like the dealership setup and interior spaces, the clan interior spaces, even the hotel lobby.
  • Some car sounds are really pleasant to hear (like the gold edition Jaguar F-Type).
  • Every car feels distinct from each other (handling) (so far at rep level 17 and a dozen cars in my garage).
  • Character models are decent if you put in some effort to make your toon look decent.
  • I like the different rep chests, car wrecks etc scattered over the island for players to discover.
  • Graphics are decent and the effort that went into certain things (like a fully smashable fruit market I saw somewhere) is admirable.
  • The levelling pace for rep and clan rep seems decent.
  • In December 2024 Ibiza town (not the entire island) will be added, this is interesting so close after launch. I’m keeping an eye out for that.

CONS:
  • The online only and all issues that came with it is aweful. Even if I seem to be having less issues than the average Redditer, I have yet got to see the first player in a race! So for me this is just a singleplayer game (and that’s fine, but they should make it offline).
  • Car handling / car collisions are mediocre at best.
  • Game performance is bad (1080p 60 FPS on XSX in 2024 is unacceptable IMO)
  • The world feels rather empty and traffic seems to be filled with the same handful of cars (I’ve seen the same white van or red taxi hundreds of times already).
  • Solar Pass AKA Battle pass = 🤢🤮
  • Many rewards for various things are stickers for your cars. I you don’t care for painting your cars (like me) then these rewards are useless.
  • Often I see AI vehicles despawning right in front of me, what’s up with that?
  • The FRIM was persistent in the betas I think but now fades away fast if you don’t drift of dodge traffic, making it almost obsolete.

FUTURE:
* This game needs performance & graphics improvements, a “soft” solar pass progression on both time and money required, player housing in the future to survive IMO.


I don’t think it’s a lasting game for me, certainly if it requires too much of my time for those battle passes. And if I see what’s on the horizon then the Crew Motorfest map expansion and Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred interest me more than TDUSC. But for now, it’s actually quite fun to play and progress.
 
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KAlex122
Any theory on why game reviews often call this kind of games "even more of a sim than an arcade racer" and "a great driving experience"?

PushSquare: "Driving is where TDU really shines" and "It makes it seem like you’re truly behind the wheel of each car, feeling the road beneath you."
Click to expand...
No idea. I read some reviews which ran entirely contrary to what my experience was: one said it sucked that in an arcade game of this type you can't use the handbrake to drift corners, when in fact that's pretty much what you have to do. The idea of feeling the road beneath you when there's zero controller feedback (I tried jumping kerbs, hitting walls, smashing the destructibles, all with no effect) is laughable.

If you brake, you understeer. If you brake at the braking marker on the driving line (which the AI racers often don't follow anyway), you're dead. I won the first three races I did without braking at all (after I discovered that braking kills you), by just lifting off and letting cornering friction reduce my speed - with a dab of handbrake if I wasn't going to make it, or just slamming into any buildings on the outside. Which slows you less than driving through a traffic light does.

There is so much understeer that, as I said in the review, while parked up (I was listening to the Wreck radar beep), an NPC traffic Range Rover SVR coming the other way simply drove right off the outside of a 90-degree bend into fencing.

After that I had races where one or two AI would just **** off at a billion speed and I'd get third or second almost every time despite being at or near the PR limit. Frequently there were also two AI at the PR limit, but all the others were way off - yet in one race the car over 140 PR points off the limit could outdrag me on the straights, and clearly the cars had modifications that I couldn't access at my level. Like FM2023 at launch...

Speaking of NPCs, here's a short gif (a bit small, but I've not had chance to upload it to YT yet):

92pi2g.gif


How does that even work?

I mean, what you like in driving games is subjective, but I don't know how anyone - except maybe the one place that called it "Silver Crown" all through the review - can come away from this thinking it replicates driving an actual car in any meaningful way.

Except the Abarth 500, which does indeed do that.
 
I've got the game early today and was able to connect on my PS5, well, yeah mixed bag
  • The driving is okay but like Famine says, braking is weird, not really sim focus but it makes the driving pleasant
  • The map is great
  • sounds so far are good or even very good
  • graphics, map is OK, even on graphic mode it gets from ok to ugly at times, performance well even worse, not on par with TCM or FH , not even close, I think it could be OK in few months with patches and optimisation
  • connectivity, the worst part of the game, it's a pain to connect and even inside the game, the races are not working, I don't understand why the game is MMO focus, I want to play it solo !

I think the core game is good but it need more time, it is not ready yet
 
kartman21
I've got the game early today and was able to connect on my PS5, well, yeah mixed bag
  • The driving is okay but like Famine says, braking is weird, not really sim focus but it makes the driving pleasant
  • The map is great
  • sounds so far are good or even very good
  • graphics, map is OK, even on graphic mode it gets from ok to ugly at times, performance well even worse, not on par with TCM or FH , not even close, I think it could be OK in few months with patches and optimisation
  • connectivity, the worst part of the game, it's a pain to connect and even inside the game, the races are not working, I don't understand why the game is MMO focus, I want to play it solo !

I think the core game is good but it need more time, it is not ready yet
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Hope this game eventually redeems itself could be a good deep sale title in a year's time, but wont even consider it without solo content / mode.
 
Payout reduction? Is this really a thing?
So I read some posts on Reddit and came across this post about race payouts getting reduced by 50% after repeating the same event 4 times. So if a race pays 15k the first time than it only pays 7500 on 5th, 3800 on 6th and 1900 on 7th, and so on. This reduction influence XP and clan rep too.
Now this may be a thing to prevent early access players to get way ahead. But if this feature persist after official launch than this will be a deal breaker for me.
I don't know... what are you supposed to do in this game?
 
strela
Payout reduction? Is this really a thing?
So I read some posts on Reddit and came across this post about race payouts getting reduced by 50% after repeating the same event 4 times. So if a race pays 15k the first time than it only pays 7500 on 5th, 3800 on 6th and 1900 on 7th, and so on. This reduction influence XP and clan rep too.
Now this may be a thing to prevent early access players to get way ahead. But if this feature persist after official launch than this will be a deal breaker for me.
I don't know... what are you supposed to do in this game?
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The development team have said they want players to take a long time to be able to buy the hypercars in the game.
 
A long time as in: “I got fed up with the money grind and quit for a year then came back to give it another chance”?
 
MSZ
The development team have said they want players to take a long time to be able to buy the hypercars in the game.
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It's not about grinding. It's about races becoming obsolete. What are we supposed to do with those 180 races if they don't give you money or xp?
 
strela
It's not about grinding. It's about races becoming obsolete. What are we supposed to do with those 180 races if they don't give you money or xp?
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I’m worried that the cynical answer is “buy the season pass”. Or even worse “why are you still playing the game if you have raced every event more than 4x?”
 
skazz
I’m worried that the cynical answer is “buy the season pass”. Or even worse “why are you still playing the game if you have raced every event more than 4x?”
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I understand. Some enjoy the game for what it is. Saw players being glad they finally managed to log in after 5h of reloading the game. Gold edition owners being extremely happy they finally playing a game that doesn't throw cars at you every 5 min, just to rush their way to lv20 and unlock all those free cars.
And yeah, the first Battle pass is coming a week after launch. If you have VIP you have the first 20 levels unlocked automatically. It's so good when you have Gold.
 
Having had a chance to finally play this game, I can consider myself sufficiently whelmed
Other than the abysmal “RpG eXpERiEnCE” bs that makes trying to play this game solo about as painful as trying to headbutt my way through an azbantium wall, everything is exactly as good as I expected it to be and no better
I enjoy it, but I can definitely see why people wouldn’t
 
Mirai
sufficiently whelmed
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Yeah, I don't think that's unfair at all.

Nothing in it is game-breaking (except the part where the game was broken, but that wasn't a local issue), it's just a bunch of things that are not as good as they could be and you can deal with them. I can deal with it looking like a PS4 launch title both on-track and in the character models, I can deal with the crappy driving physics (although I'd deal a lot easier with a Rewind feature!), I can more-or-less deal with the always-PvP (but I can see why people can't/won't).

It's a playable game. It sounds pretty decent actually, and while stories might be cheesy it's not terrible and not massively impactful on the gameplay experience. The economy isn't that bad (FRIM being a thing, and everything being 10x higher-priced just looks bad when you see the price of cars but isn't actually that bad).

But we're in a long era where 73% is the average for games, so 65% metascore is bad and our 52% looks off compared to the 70s (meaning average) and weirdly higher scores when really it's just... we were whelmed.

I rated NFS Heat similarly, and I actually like that game for the most part.
 
Pepperoncini
I am totally bummed by this. I was itching for another racing game. Between this and CarX Street... not sure what to do. I guess I am back to Motorfest.
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Guess CarX's use of AI imagery and voices, as well it's grindy economy, a dealbraker for you?
 
What I can't understand is why we only have some random races (classical circuit and time attack) and not only one typical TDU style event like delivery, taxi, this is part of TDU DNA and it's missing

Physics is okay, but braking on low speed is wrong
There are a lot of graphical glitches, cars disappearing, artefacts
AI is off, and driving with randoms strangers could be worse...

I strongly hope this is still a pre release version and a huge patch will be out for the 12 with a lot of fixes, otherwise this is a shame

I think I will leave it in the cellar like a new bottle of Bordeaux to age till it's ok

PS : yes I'm French, wine, cheese this is our life :-P
 
inCloud
Its 20$ game made by few drunken Russians and their bear.
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Never heard of that game until mentioned in here, looks like more fun than TDUSC. :D For 19.20 EUR for the Deluxe Edition, I'm going to give it a try. 👍

Speaking of TDU: I just installed the original TDU on my Ally, which, despite the complete lack of GameSpy and servers, plays just fine without logging in whatsoever.
 
kartman21
not only one typical TDU style event like delivery, taxi, this is part of TDU DNA and it's missing
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Ah, you've reminded me of something there. I recall that, early on, there was an event called "delivery" but I don't recall it being anything except a time trial in my regular car. I only remember it because I thought it was going to be something interesting and wasn't.

Edit: Just booting the game up (from scratch again, as they wiped all preview progress despite saying the opposite of that) reminds me... why did they change Vivian Hughes from, like, an actual woman into a stereotype twentysomething Col. Wilma Deering cosplayer?
 
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Famine
Ah, you've reminded me of something there. I recall that, early on, there was an event called "delivery" but I don't recall it being anything except a time trial in my regular car. I only remember it because I thought it was going to be something interesting and wasn't.

Edit: Just booting the game up (from scratch again, as they wiped all preview progress despite saying the opposite of that) reminds me... why did they change Vivian Hughes from, like, an actual woman into a stereotype twentysomething Col. Wilma Deering cosplayer?
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It wasn't only a TT, it was delivering a expensive, rare and powerful car at a far away destination, no time, the point was delivering it in mint condition to have a huge payout, the tricky part was driving safe and don't have a heavy foot :-)
Taxi missions, yeah it was TT, but with nice pixelated girls ;-)

BTW sorry for your save, but from now, it's better to leave it till they fixed and finish their game

And yes fully agree for Vivian !

I also try the game with my wheel it's bad, really bad, despite vibrations there is no proper FFB, even TCM have a decent FFB !
 

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