Ok, here's a quick and exclusive review of TDU2 for my Teamspeed brethren.

First I want to preface by saying that I am in my mid-30s and a long time, hard-core race simmer. I've been playing racing games since before the first Test Drive (the one in CGA where you drove stuff like the Countach or the 911 or the Esprit around mountain bends avoiding cops). I've played prob 90% of all racing games ever made. I know what to expect and I feel I can evaluate games fairly be it Outrun or Gran Turismo or Race WTCC on Xbox, PC, or Playstation....

I'll close the preface by saying this is just my opinion. YMMV. Everyone is different.


TDU2 is the WORST driving game I've ever played. The 70's arcade game Night Driver was better than this. Seriously. That's no exaggeration.

<<Spoiler Alert>> Do not read beyond this point if you want everything to be a surprise. I try to reveal as little as I can about plot, etc. Skip ahead to the Summary at the end if you prefer.

Graphics: 6/10 Not much of an improvement over TDU1. Colorful, detailed, but pixelated and badly aliased. Cars are half the quality of Gran Turismo detail, but that is expected. Character quality is Sims level, but I didn't get the game to buy clothes or hairstyles. Weather graphics are not bad. Light reflections and day/night transitions are good, but no better than TDU1.

Driving Model: 1/10 I'd give it a 0 if that made any kind of sense. First of all, you HAVE to play with a wheel. I prefer to play consoles with the controller, and my PC with the wheel. It's simply not fun at all playing TDU2 with the controller. But even with the wheel it is not just challenging, it is unrealistic. I'm not expecting a simulator experience, but I am expecting an arcade experience. This doesn't even deliver that. Cars oversteer at almost any speed. Forget driving in the wet. The driving model makes you feel like you either have to do some insane, unrecoverable drift with the e-brake or come to a near complete stop.

Online experience: 1/10 I came across a few cars but they are all so laggy they just appear as a car for a fraction of a second, then they disappear, then they reappear in a small puff of tire smoke as the physics model tries to reconcile the car coming into and out of existence. This is probably an "opening night" growing pain as the servers are overloaded. But TDU1 did not experience this that I ever saw (not this bad, anyway). I didn't bother trying to race anyone as obviously their server cannot handle it yet. Likely this will improve over time.

Career model: 7/10 The storyline, progression model, scoring, cash flow, etc are all fairly interesting. It's a shame I won't be playing this game anymore to experience any of it. The challenges are a lot like TDU1 where you build up your bankroll, buy houses with bigger garages, more cars, start clubs, etc. You also get points for exploring areas to find old wrecks, exploring new roads, doing drifts, not wrecking, etc. You must be a level 10/50 (or maybe it's 60..I forget) before the second island is exposed. You must pass racing license challenges in order to participate in progression races. The career system actually isn't bad and received some thought on how to improve it over TDU1.


Dialog/characters: 4/10 The writing isn't great and the plot isn't deep. You are a valet who sees himself as a race car driver. Within the first 2 minutes this plot line executes itself and you become a racer. I won't be playing enough to find out if there is anything substantial beyond that. But I doubt it would be worth it anyway.

Controls/etc: 2/10 You cannot customize your controls. The wheel settings have basic customization for amount of force feedback, axis response, etc. And that is a good thing to help compensate for the poor physics model. The walk-around controls are fixed and cannot be adjusted. Personally, I prefer "flight control" type of vertical axis for my view, which means down is up and up is down. You can't reverse the vertical axis. Movement is very simplified. Don't expect anything complex like any other first-person experience from any other game. This is a very flat, 2-D movement in space. It's very boring and for a game marketed as a social media transition between racing and "sims/secondlife" it fails miserably.





Summary: I give this game a 3/10 and that's being generous. Don't waste your money. Save it for Forza 4 in September (hopefully). Mortal Kombat comes out in April. Not a driving game but you'll forget about TDU2 when you play Mortal Kombat. Or pick up the latest NFS. I hear it's great. If you have a PS3 just keep playing Gran Turismo and don't even look at TDU2. Personally I'll wait for Forza 4 and try to forget about TDU2. I'm just glad I traded a bunch of old games towards this purchase so the price didn't sting as much when the game's poor quality revealed itself at home. If you're determined to play TDU2 just wait a few weeks. The Used rack at Gamestop will be littered with plenty of copies soon enough. At the very least get the demo and see if you can deal with it.


I'm really disappointed. I have been looking forward to TDU2 for a year now. TDU1 was great out of the gate on the consoles. And the PC version became great after some patches. The concept of TDU is incredible. A free roam world of cars, cruising, street racing, and socializing. But TDU2 seems as if they fired the entire crew from TDU1 and replaced the development team with interns and this is their first job, ever. I really, really hope they release a patch that equals at least a fundamental rewrite of the physics model for the console version. I'll give them a couple weeks to see if the developer makes motions in that direction, otherwise I'm just gonna sell this thing back to Gamestop ASAP.


Sorry to seem so negative. I tried to throw in some positive feedback where I could. Normally I find more good in even the worst games. But TDU2 had no excuse to fail. But it did. Big time.


If a substantial patch comes out for the Xbox version I'll re-review with hopes that they fix a lot of the issues.


Cheers

 

I'm actually right down the street in Ashburn, and work in Sterling.

Sent a message to you and All We'll Drive on XBOX LIVE

 

YouTube - Ferrari 16M Tunnel Rev - TDU2

 

Hmmm.... my copy is supposed to arrive tomorrow, but I think I'm gonna send it back immediately. I won't even bother trying it out.

Thanks for the review Smoky !

 

Awesome, I'll check later.

 

Cool. I'll add you and maybe we can play other games. Planning on getting Forza4?

My pleasure. Anything I can do to help save folks some money. Like I said, maybe after some patches this game with be worth a few moments of time. But by then you'll be able to get it used at least. I'm in the same boat though. I waited for this game for a year. The first TDU was great. What a let down.

 

Most def. !!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Just beat all the cups!!!!

Guess all that's left is the photo locations, time bombs, and wrecks, etc.

Haven't seen anybody else online here yet. I think i can afford to start the club if people are interested. XBOX 360 version.

 

Ive been a fan of the series, once they fix the kinks.. this game will be ace in my book.

 

Don't get me wrong, I have been waiting and following this game on their forums since they started the official forum in the summer, but am I the only one that is honestly creeped out by the women avatars in the game? They are frickin creepy. The voice acting doesn't help, everything other than that is exceedingly above average for me, I just can't stand the creepy women that sit in the car and smile at you creepily when you test drive a car! AHH!