Be Excellent To Each Other

If it's even a snifter as good as Unlimited, I'm a pre-orderin it. Yee haw! *blasts blunderbuss*

Someone actually liked TDU?

Me and Meaty Poo are totally bent for it.

That bends like a reid in the wind.



I tried to like it but it just seemed a bit lame. And slow, and slow to progress.

TBH had I not driven all accross the U.S.A in my car for real I probably would have liked it a whole lot more.

Ah, but you've probably played the shitty PC version and not the fantastic Xbox 360 version sir.

I was even impressed with the PSP version. Moar Test Drive pleze.

I need to go back to TDU, it's really good.

I flogged mine but I liked it for a while. It's a bit dry, like Boarderlands. Like all the elements but it needs a sauce.

I liked the fact I spent hours and hours around Hondszndoaondnoululaulauiausuaa racing and picking up lovely gurls, then looked at the sheer size of the rest of the map and cried with joy. Plus myp and I took a cruise up the East coast and were gobsmacked by the lovliness. From a launch title, too!

It's STILL one of the best driving games this 'generation'. Certainly it gives a real feeling of actually owning and driving around in an expensive supercar than any other racing game, because you're doing it on public streets and outpacing traffic as opposed to selecting something with nice stats from a menu and then sitting on the bumper to do 10 laps of a closed circuit.

The whole 'mansions' and 'buy your twatty avatar another Ben Sherman shirt' thing is mostly fluff but on a small level, again, there's a glimmer of feeling that jetset lifestyle. That peculiar thrill of loading the game up just to go and cruise for no reason, secretly hoping you'll encounter some other players who'll be impressed by your car and want to race you. Wondering if you'll take the Maserati, the Mclaren or the RUF out today. Driving said car along a winding coastal road straight out of a car commercial.

I used to go for cruises all the time with folks off the Atari forums, you'd all meet up at once place, lock to each other sessions and then just drive around in a big group, enjoying the banter and the scenery. Excellent stuff.

The only info I've seen of the sequel were a few shots of off-road buggies driving around a jungle.

Pedant-fix.

I remember the demo coming out some while after I bought my xbox. (And being put off the game by it. Mainly due to the online focus)

Really? I was intrigued by the 360, thought it was cool you could just push a button and get a copy of Gash Wars, and wanted to try Oblivion. But it was playing the TDU demo on a friend's 360 that convinced me that I wanted one.

I've driven around Oahu for real and I thought TDU was bloody fantastic.



I had the PC version, too. I wholeheartedly agree with what MeatyAngles said - it is one of the few driving games which is about the pleasure of just driving and exploring.

Not to mention actually including several variants of the same car (convertible versions, for example) because as you're driving for pleasure you might actually want a convertible and sod the increased weight!

Every so often the spunking across this game makes me think about buying it, but then I remember Dead Rising and don't.

Sir, I detest Dead Rising with a passion, but I love TDU. As everyone else has said, half the appeal is that you can start to believe in the virtual 'rich-as-fuck' lifestyle, of just popping out in the Ferrari for a drive round by the coast. It just so happens that the racing isn't too bad either.

My criticisms with the PC version are maybe a little unfair as it is essentially the same as the 360 version. I think my problem with it is just that, whereas the 360 version is simply a case of popping the disc in and going, the PC version requires hours of tinkering to setup your pad for it and tinker with the graphics options till you've got the best combination of graphics vs performance. Some people may consider all that to be an advantage of the PC version.

I really enjoyed TDU too, even though it took me an age to unlock the bike dealers as I couldn't see which of the car dealers I hadn't been to. Not sure if it was just my TV settings but the missing one must have only been very slightly greyed out as I couldn't tell.

Great game though, even though I've barely scratched the surface with the challenges on there. It's probably the only driving game I play with the in-car view too.

Only the first editions of the game came with the big paper map which is a HUGE help in finding the various tuners and dealers. I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to be without it, especially early on when you don't know your way around.

Zio is right, DrG. Ask Teh Egg if you don't believe us. It's a bit like a mixture of Forza's realism and posh cars with Burny Pee's driving around doing tasks.

What does installing a game have to do with gameplay and physics etc though?

As a package TDU had a lot to offer. As an actual hard core driving game though it offered little that I had not seen before. Yes the driving around an island may have seemed appealing to some but the handling, to me, wasn't quite right. And looking around me at reviews I see the same thing.

It seems to be one of those games you need to be able to feel. And if you don't it's just a limp racing game. It also had really annoying police AI.

Here. This is a review for the 360 version just incase you were biased.



Game play scored 7.5. Average.

Do you realise how many average racing games there are on the PC as a format? and how many great racing games there are on the PC?

Can I borrow your map, Poiks? It's one of the main reasons I haven't gone back to it.

There are masses of the buggers on consoles too. Although the handling probably isn't perfect, I still prefer it to the dry games of Forza, PGR and Gran Turismo etc

The game has numerous handling options to try, but to be honest that never seemed to be the point when I played it. As you say, as a package it has a lot to offer and I would argue it offers a lot more than many other driving games. And that's what it is really, it's a driving game more than a racing game.

Yeah, it is truly for the love of cars and driving and going somewhere and enjoying the trip than it is racing.

Don't waste your money on the hardcore mode DLC, it was known as the 'Dukes of Hazzard' mode on the official forums such are the ludicrousness of its physics (especially jumps)

I only played TDU enough to realise I didn't like the feel of any of it, so I gave up. I understand people love it, but I wasn't willing to put in the time and wanted instant rewards.

I should have, perhaps, uses the pad instead of the wheel so I could forgive the weird handling. But I didn't.

I will still give a sequel a chance.

Yeah, I gave up using the wheel. It's much better with a pad.

It has slightly unusual handling, but there are a lot of tweaking options... I found the one just below full realism (with steering sensitivity turned up) helped a lot. Once you get used to it, it's fine - a bit like Midnight Club LA took a bit of getting used to.

Oh man, I am gonna have to play it again when I get home, now.

TOP TIP TO ANYONE PLAYING TDU: Download all the free car packs off the marketplace. You get one of the cars available to purchase, but more importantly it adds the graphics of all the extra cars and bikes too (as otherwise you see a weird 'placeholder' car that resembles a mutant A6, or a bike with glowing red wheels)

Another tip would be to ignore the demo. It nearly put me off buying the full game.

I might play it myself when I get home - I'm just hoping that my brother's not got the disc or it'll be another evening trying to beat the last remaining bloody Peggle challenge.

The main thing that eventually put me off was the stories of how awkward it was to play with chums.

I tried to like this one, everyone else's enthusiasm was infectious but I really just couldn't get along with it. If I want to just admire the scenery then I'll get in my car and enjoy it in ultra hi-resolution 3D.

Next Beex meet at MarkG's house in Hawaii!

Games like TDU and Out Run are how I would like driving in real life to be. Certainly a lot more fun that traffic-filled roads, idiot drivers (ok, in games, I'm the idiot driver) and miserable weather round here.

But it just doesn't feel like driving or sightseeing, it just fell flat on both fronts for me. I have far more fun every time I go out for a drive in real life than I ever did in TDU. There's too much of a lack of interesting things to see or places to drive to for the "virtual tourism" aspect to work properly and the racing is a bit shit really. I'm happy that other people had a wonderful time with it but mostly it just irritated me.

Devilman: Really? The first demo enthralled me. That tantalising bit of straight highway where you try to go as fast as possible, or taking a Lamborghini offroad (slewing sideways down a hill, desperately trying to dodge trees and rocks, brilliant!), and the thought that this was just a tiny corner of a HUUUUUUGE island... I wanted more. Indeed, it (and Oblivion) were the two games I rushed out to get when I got my 360. And the other way around.

Dave: It's not quite so bad, once you learn its quirks.

For the proper races, you can just host a private game and that's it. It's for joining friends in public (or indeed ranked) games that you need to be sneakier. For one thing, when you enter a race icon on the map, searching for a game will only show you people racing that particular course UNLESS you go into the 'all world challenges' option on that screen and tick it. Only then will it show you ALL people racing ALL courses everywhere. For whoring purposes, you're doing ranked games which means you have to host a game and get your friend to join quickly before anyone else does and spoils your whoreage.

For meeting people in the game itself, the game runs the main world by instanced 'sessions', which are like little bubbles of space-time that can contain up to 8 people. As you move around the island in free roam, you and other people are automatically shuffled between these sessions based on how many people there are, how far away they are, etc (so, if you're in the same area as a session of five people you'll stay there, but if all the other people are a long way away, but there's another session right nearby you'll be moved into that closer session). This is so you will always have other players in the general vicinity to crash into while screaming 'RACE ME YOU FAGORT NIGGER'.

This does make landing in the same session as chums tough - but only if you do it in a crowded area. People naturally congregate around the starting areas in the southeast, especially the area seen in the demo, all of Honolulu, the infamous 'Waikiki drag strip' (the long straightaway by the golf course) and also the race track next to the airport. Every time I've tried to join someone from here in the game they've been in those areas so naturally there's a billion other players too and the odds of being stuck in their session is small. Go out into the countryside somewhere, though, and you'll not see many people and so you're much, much more likely to end up in the same session as your friend.

You can then 'lock' your sessions to each other so you won't be separated. This is how we used to do our big cruises; we'd meet at the lighthouse on the northwest corner (nobody was around) and then all lock to each other and then go for our cruise. Randoms would be added to and removed from our session as we moved past but we all stayed together from trips the length and breadth of the island.

Complicated? A bit, but it's a complicated game. A very good one, though. Like several folks have said, it's all about owning and enjoying the cars, which is a feeling you don't get nearly as much from Forza. I'd say it's closer to stuff like Midnight Club and GTA and Burnout as your car is something that you go out and have fun in, and look cool in while doing it. And given how many hot female hitchhikers our protagonists get (he's got Sting's Red Tube syndrome) it must be working.

(if anyone wonders, I've got my 'driving aid' set to hypersport which is minimal assists, steering sensitivity slightly above the middle, and tis fine.)

You can't get on with the virtual tourism thing? Fine, not everyone will. But given the roads are covered in ice right now, I can't use my real bike so I'll use my pretend one instead.

I was a relative latecomer to the 360 so I'm not sure which demo I've played but I found the handling of the car really off-putting. No idea which car it would've been though. Once I'd got the full game, I enjoyed progressing through the more modest cars first.

As an irrelevant aside, I once ended up in the rllmuk thread about GT5. And found myself reading about how the handling model was wrong because the feel of the front wheels wasn't right and some such wanky nonsense.

When did race games turn into fodder for whatever the equivalent of audiophiles are?

Speedophiles.

Since they started calling themselves "the real driving simulator"? If something calls itself a simulator then pointing out where it departs massively from the thing it is supposed to be simulating seems like perfectly valid criticism to me. If it was OutRun you were reading about then you'd have a point.

Except the people making the comments cannot have the foggiest whether they are right or not. Sitting in front of a screen, even with 250 quid wheels cannot replicate taking a corner at 80, 100, 150mph.

Well not having played the game I can't say but it's fair to say that some racing sims feel more 'right' than others.

Seeing 'Revenue Streams' and 'Namco' in the same quote worries me.

I tried to love the first one, but it never clicked with me. The handling was just horrible, and as an early game it didn't know how to get the best out of the console.

I will keep an eye on this one, however.

Oh God.

I'm keen to see how this game pans out though, I liked the first one but it kinda dried up.

Rumours suggest the island is Ibiza. Pah. It had better be Mallorca, or else.

Oh for fucking fuck's sake. I hope I get the chance to mow down some scum "avvin it larrrrrrge".

Ibiza would be excellent, actually.

Don't twist me melon, myp.

It would suit TDU's style right down to the ground, imo.

I dunno, it's a lot smaller than O'ahu. Mallorca is bigger, but has key features like proper motorways for testing your top speed on, and a nice mix of flat farmland and steep mountains.