Test Drive Unlimited 2 Co-Op Review

When I started Test Drive Unlimited 2 (TDU2), I expected to play a racing game. Not necessarily just racing - I had heard stories that you could explore the whole of Ibiza. What I didn't expect to see is playing through a first-person dream sequence at your birthday party. The strangeness continued unabated - snapping me out of the dream (and first person mode, thankfully) to my real life - as a downtrodden valet. Shortly after being fired for 'dreaming on the job,' my employer immediately hired me for her reality racing show, and tested me by setting a waypoint on the map and having me drive to it in a specified amount of time. When I completed this task, inexplicably she bought me a run-down trailer to live out of, sending me back into first-person mode. This was all within the first 5 minutes of the game. What did I get myself into?

Lets’s begin with the racing portion of the game, story and multiplayer aside. At its core, the game feels dated. The driving mechanics are sluggish and I found myself struggling to make turns and accelerate properly, making getting around very frustrating. I have played my fair share of racing games and I spent most of my game in the ditch, usually as a result of an aberrant turn that was no fault of mine. I realized immediately that I couldn’t get my mind set into ‘arcade’ or ‘simulation’ mode because TDU2 cannot decide which type of game it is. The identity crisis of trying to incorporate arcade style racing into a simulation game with realistic controls ruins the driving experience, and for a racing game this is crippling. I’ll just say that I have had better racing experiences in the Grand Theft Auto series.

One you have slugged your way through your controls and driving mechanics don’t even think about starting a race. Before you can challenge other racers and start earning a reputation you have to pack a lunch, grab your backpack and head to driving school to get your proper licence. Again, I’m 30 minutes into the game and I still have not had a proper race. Finally after all the hassle I managed to find the first proper mission in the game. Each mission is broken up into several races varying from time trials to elimination modes. Place well enough in each of the six to eight races and you will be crowned champion and paid out your earnings. About half of the race styles I really enjoyed, usually when there were actual other racers present but the AI was terribly inconsistent. Sometimes I would get 1st place without trouble and other times I would struggle to make the podium. The imbalance of the race styles matched with frustrating driving mechanics really made me feel that they should have gone back to the drawing book on the gameplay side of things.

There is some variety to be had, Test Drive Unlimited 2 adds in offroad racing to the mxi, though again, you need to earn a license first to experience it.  You don't always have to race against other cars as there are challenges to be had as well - race against the clock, checkpoint, etc.  On top of this the social challenges make a return - picking up people and dropping them off at different locations to earn bonus cash.  

With the driving out of the way let me take you on a tour of the MMO side of the game. When I say MMO I really mean that TDU2 has a self-populating world and within this world you have an avatar that you can level up and customize. You are able to free roam throughout Ibiza in all of its glory, and for the most part the view is beautiful. You can drive anywhere, buy new cars, outfits and even real estate - all of which contribute to your Global Level and unlock customization options. Your character’s level is based on four distinct categories:

On the surface it seems like a cool way to experience the game and try to immerse the player in a beautifully crafted world. However, this system drops dead because NONE OF THESE TASKS ARE FUN TO DO. “You want to go start the next mission? Oh you can’t because you need to go buy some new shoes so you don’t look like a homeless person.” What I’m trying to state is that all I wanted to do was race but the game was making it very difficult to do so by putting barriers in front of me that were supposed to act as the carrot at the end of the stick that we gamers love.

When I hooked up with friends within the Test Drive Unlimited 2 world we explored the various multiplayer modes. One cool aspect is how you invite other players within the city to race, all you have to do is tap the A button to flash your high beams and you instantly challenge them. What really felt great was the ability to free roam with a pack of your friends, find a great spot to race, and immediately challenge each other to a car duel. Saying that there is “co-op” in the game is the most disappointing feature that I found, hands down. I really would not even call TDU2 a cooperative experience because there are only two things that you can do cooperatively. One mode has your co-op partner riding shotgun, wait for it...acting as your navigator. That’s it. Turn off your annoying GPS and grab a buddy because you now have yourself your very own navigator!

The other modes have each player in their own car and actually have to do with racing. Keep the Distance has each player staying within the distance of a couple of yards with car next to you, or if you’re the leader then the car behind you. Follow the Leader is a checkpoint race where the leader can see the next checkpoint and once he has crossed that checkpoint the team members will be given a certain amount of time to cross that checkpoint. Both race types are quite fun with some friends but it would have been great to have a more well developed and explored co-operative mode.  Both modes allow up to 8 cars to take part.

Regardless of the driving mechanics and a lacking online experience, TDU2 is riddled with bugs that caused me to finally put down the game. Sometimes the world would crash into the ocean (quite literally) and other times fellow racers would not even spawn until the race had already begun. I can deal with some bugs, but when I try and get on the servers to play online and I am consistently denied because they are ‘offline’ that is enough for me. The online stability would not be such a big issue if the game did not rely on such a heavy online component. It is really too bad because there was an immense amount of potential that I saw within the game.  While most of these are fixed by now, we still had issues almost a full month after release.

The Takeaway

The beautiful world of Ibiza is yours to be explored, if you can get past the ugly character models and terrible driving mechanics. I’m all for a living world that give you more to do than just race, but it needs to be more accessible and actually fun to do all the little extra things. Playing the game online must be done with friends unless you want to be driven away by random griefing players and don’t think for once that you are going to get a full coop experience out of this game because it is a joke. What is comes down to is that Test Drive Unlimited 2 is a racing game and the driving is lacking the visceral feel of rubber on pavement. There are some good ideas in this game but TDU2 just does not pull them off and it gets eaten alive by the bugs that are simply game breaking.