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Test Drive Unlimited Review - Xbox 360

Ever been to Hawaii? The famous capital Honolulu is on the Hawaiian island Oahu. Oahu is the island mapped out road for road in Test Drive Unlimited. Complete with scenic views, waterfalls, and luscious beaches, Test Drive Unlimited is the cheapest and most legal way to go street racing in Ferraris and Lamborghinis in the streets of Honolulu and the massive highways spread all across the island. There are not only street races though, with a heap of gameplay modes Test Drive Unlimited will keep you hooked to your television for days.

Gameplay

Test Drive Unlimited starts you off in a queue of people ranging from male to female, tall to short, and all different cultural backgrounds to choose from. Don’t worry, you can edit your players appearance later on in the game (apart from their sex), so you’re not stuck with the corny looking characters that the developers have made. Once selecting your character, you board a plane and the plane takes off. After a quick nap, Honolulu Airport is in your sights, and the plane lands. Making your way out of the airport, the tutorial requires that you rent a car and buy a house. Once finally doing all of this, you must go buy your first car (using your rent-a-car to find the nearest dealership, and then finally the game starts.

When you begin, only a few missions are available. As you complete those missions, you explore more roads and unlock new missions. There are two ways to discover new missions: drive around the island, or rank up. As you unlock more Xbox 360 Achievements, you will rank up. The first three ranks are fairly easy to unlock with only a few hours of gameplay needed, but Expert and Champion ranks will require you to buy several cars and houses, complete many missions and compete in many races around Oahu. Champion rank requires 400 Xbox 360 game points, but it doesn’t end there. To unlock all of the game’s bonuses you can unlock a further “Ace” rank when getting the full 1000 Xbox 360 Achievement points for the game. This is only possible from strenuous hours of both offline and online play.

Test Drive Unlimited boasts as being a massively multiplayer online game, but this should not deter offline players from buying it. Completing the game offline is just as rewarding as online, the only main difference is that you don’t have as much competition in races, and can’t compete in races where you set your own stakes when playing offline. The civilian cars and police cars in offline mode provide more than enough realistic entertainment though, making Test Drive Unlimited a must for any racing enthusiast.

The cars in Test Drive Unlimited range from new to extremely old, with a G class of vehicles dedicated to “Greats”. They are the slowest cars (continued next page)