Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Discussion Thread

[Famine]

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 ;-)

Yes, I mean in SC; I saw the event was called "delivery" and thought it would be a delivery mission, but it wasn't. I'll have to recheck to see where it was but it's relatively early on. As I recall it was a point-to-point through the docks.

Edit: I'll check later. The servers keep falling over in the preliminary races, which are exclusively against the AI, and not saving. Managed to complete the first, but the second keeps crashing - once about 200m from the finish.

 

[carlosy]

Never heard of that game until mentioned in here, looks like more fun than TDUSC. 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.

Yeah, me neither. Just watched a few videos and it actually doesn't look that bad. Especially the visual tuning seems to be quite extensive. And they even have full steering wheel animation.

 

[NLxAROSA]

Col. Wilma Deering

I can hear the opening theme in my head while reading this. And nog GenZ/Alpha will understand without having to Google.

 

[RogsR34UK]

I am slowly progressing. I don’t play the game very often (for obvious reasons) although getting in seems more reliable. I have joined a Clan and unlocked over 10% of the roads. There are still save issues. I visited some places just now to unlock Fast Travel and when I Quit they hadn’t unlocked. I just hope they are prepared for the official release day, assuming anyone is going to be new to the game then!

 

[manifest86]

And another half baked review with a reviewer that doesnt know how to drive. Some of the best physics you could ask for on a wheel. Grind is fun and meaningful. The whole thing kong island is just amazing to drive through when you put it all together with the graphics. I understand not every one is having the same good time I'm having but I hope others do because we need more arcade racers that have this kind of theme that make maps and races with flow.

 

[JC_Dude]

I feel like most reviews I read/watched said the underlying game is fun, but significant connection issues simply can't be glossed over given it's an always online game. You can't just assume things will get better because this industry has seen things like this drag on, so until there's evidence they completely fixed the servers, it shouldn't be recommended.

 

[Famine]

And another half baked review with a reviewer that doesnt know how to drive.

I've been driving for 30 years (less a week), professionally - road-testing cars, including supercars, for not only GTPlanet but outlets like carwow and the Press Association - for more than a decade. Not to mention all the racing game stuff and reviews; I even won the journo race at GT Academy UK in 2012.

If you have a different opinion of the game's driving "mannerisms", fine. Have it without being boorish and abusive.

 

[RogsR34UK]

I have just had a 3 hour plus session with the game and have not had any issues. I was basically unlocking roads and have now driven 40% of them. I just reached Level 20 Reputation which means I now have access to all the cars in the Gold edition. I got in the Audi and, of course, had to lower the roof.

I like the car handling. I do think it is better than Motorfest. With that game I am not convinced that AWD cars have all the wheels driven. They are in TDU, both the F Type and Range Rover handle like an AWD car should. Handbrake 180s are easily manageable (useful when unlocking the roads).

I have visited all the Meeting Points and Gas Stations and as far as I can see, all Dealerships and Upgrade Shops.

As long as there is no deterioration when the game goes fully live I will be happy with it.

 

[Confus]

And another half baked review with a reviewer that doesnt know how to drive. Some of the best physics you could ask for on a wheel. Grind is fun and meaningful. The whole thing kong island is just amazing to drive through when you put it all together with the graphics. I understand not every one is having the same good time I'm having but I hope others do because we need more arcade racers that have this kind of theme that make maps and races with flow.

Interesting that your first and only comment is to defend a recently-released game that hasn't seen the best reviews.

 

[Veinz]

Some of the best physics you could ask for on a wheel.

Somehow, I doubt that this is true.

 

[kartman21]

Somehow, I doubt that this is true.

well, if you expect nothing, yes it's great :-)
Seriously, on PS5 with TGT, it's a joke

 

[Veinz]

well, if you expect nothing, yes it's great :-)
Seriously, on PS5 with TGT, it's a joke

I tried the demo with my csl dd and it was just bad, similar to how Forza Horizon or Need for Speed feels on a wheel.

My expectations weren’t high though tbf. This is a game for controllers.

 

[inCloud]

Interesting that your first and only comment is to defend a recently-released game that hasn't seen the best reviews.

Gold edition is 80$? Its hard to justify 80$ for 52/100 game, some could be insulted by this.

 

[breyzipp]

Rep rank 40 now, clan rank 9, both wrecks restored, 80% of the roads unlocked and 21 cars in my garage. I’m absolutely hooked on this game. 😁 This is hands down the best open world racing game map I’ve ever seen, period. I thought the TCM map already blew the one from FH5 out of the water, well the TDUSC map is again from another level.

The game is by no means perfect: server connection issues, brutally hard AI at rep rank 30+, wacky physics when you hit obstacles, poor graphics/performance on console, but hey, it’s a lot of fun.

 

[ScottPuss20]

This game has a laundry list of issues that are both baffling and ridiculous:
-You can't restart races
-AI cars are broken
-The off-road physics are total garbage
-You can't grind races as the rewards will be reduced after a while
-You can get kicked out of a race if you lose connection to the server
-The game can't run at a smooth 60 FPS
-The game can't run at 4K resolution, even on PC's
-Upgrading your car takes far too long
-The XP rewards aren't weighted properly
-Braking kills your momentum
-The graphics are really bad in some areas
-The lighting can be overly saturated at times
-You can't adjust the difficulty

Forza Motorsport may have problems but at least it runs properly. TDUSC on the other hand is a complete disaster as it can't even get the basics right. I want to drive around the map but I just can't bring myself to buy the game.

 

[GBalao888]

This game has a laundry list of issues that are both baffling and ridiculous:
-You can't restart races
-AI cars are broken
-The off-road physics are total garbage
-You can't grind races as the rewards will be reduced after a while
-You can get kicked out of a race if you lose connection to the server
-The game can't run at a smooth 60 FPS
-The game can't run at 4K resolution, even on PC's
-Upgrading your car takes far too long
-The XP rewards aren't weighted properly
-Braking kills your momentum
-The graphics are really bad in some areas
-The lighting can be overly saturated at times

Forza Motorsport may have problems but at least it runs properly. TDUSC on the other hand is a complete disaster as it can't even get the basics right. I want to drive around the map but I just can't bring myself to buy the game.

At this point, TDU Solar Crown is probably more "built from the ground up" than FM8.

Forza really gave that phrase quite a bad meaning.

 

[Famine]

Unless you have a desperate need to hear me speak, you can just mute this - and there's only about 2 minutes of me speaking, cut up into smaller 20s chunks here and there.

It's basically three videos of early game races, including the offroad one, just so you can see the weirdly inconsistent graphics (on PS5) and odd physics.

 

[NLxAROSA]

Gold edition is 80$? Its hard to justify 80$ for 52/100 game, some could be insulted by this.

CarX Street Deluxe is only 20 EUR right now. And it has 64/100 score at the moment. And devs actually fixed most complaints about the economy already, so I expect the score to rise over time. Having a lot of fun with it. Did I mention it runs fine on a handheld?

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

The lighting is so outdated, looks like a mobile game.

The sense I get is that they are using allllll of the tricks but haven't actually optimized any of them. Like the AO is all over the place, the cube maps are bad, the SSR is all over the place, the LODs are terrible, etc, the foliage density is WAY too ambitious. It looks like an early alpha dev build.

 

[Famine]

The sense I get is that they are using allllll of the tricks but haven't actually optimized any of them. Like the AO is all over the place, the cube maps are bad, the SSR is all over the place, the LODs are terrible, etc, the foliage density is WAY too ambitious. It looks like an early alpha dev build.

There's other really odd things going on too. I've had the car (mainly the rear screen) reflecting signs which just aren't there, and sometimes things that are there but which should be blocked by other objects (notably the cargo containers inside which you'll find one of the 300SL wrecks, near the Streets HQ).

 

[RogsR34UK]

As much as I like the game, I am getting a little tired of having to revisit a Meeting Point to gain Fast Travel. I go there Fast Travel away and back yet the next time I fire up the game it is locked. I do have the Trophy for visiting everything. Is this just a PS5 thing?

I did unlock the two wrecks yesterday. I haven’t done races for a while but am Rep 24 and Clan 4 from just going around the map and picking up the “Icons”. Over 3 million to spend when I get around to buying some cars. Just over 50% of the roads unlocked so far.

 

[VXR]

Now I've been able to get on - and a rejected refund request by Xbox - I've actually enjoyed it to an extent. Just driving around, unlocking roads and finding coins etc is a nice experience. The racing leaves me cold, however and the car list is so sparse, I'm not sure how long it'll hold my interest. There's such a big jump from the Abarth and Cooper to the Mustang and upwards that it feels hollow.

The car sounds are great, definitely been enjoying those. Especially the Abarth.

 

[chengman]

One thing I really cannot get over is the flames shooting out of the exhaust during upshifts. I understand it shouldn't be a sim racer but come on... I thought we stopped that 15 years ago?

 

[ImaRobot]

One thing I really cannot get over is the flames shooting out of the exhaust during upshifts. I understand it shouldn't be a sim racer but come on... I thought we stopped that 15 years ago?

Aren't basically all modern console arcade and simcade games still doing this? I don't remember it ever being gone.

 

[RogsR34UK]

Surprise, surprise… Login Error. They obviously didn’t learn enough from the Early Access debacle.

 

[nukleabomb]

awkward timing there

 

[Pepperoncini]

awkward timing there

Have they patched it to fix it yet?

 

[Famine]

awkward timing there

Shocked that we've not broken our pullquote duck on that one. Shocked, I tell you.

 

[sasuta]

Logitech G27 support was problematic in beta. FFB was not working. Does anyone know how it is in the full version game?

 

[strela]

The trailer:

The review:
"an absolutely phenomenal driving experience when it works. 6/10"

And they turned off the comments.

What they think this will do to potential buyers? Do they even care at this point? I'm actually sad this is happening. And tonight users review starts on Metacritic. If only they could turn off those too....