Thought for the Day: Lorena

How better to celebrate the long-overdue release of TDU2? If there was a Bennett medal for "Thought for the Day of the Year" (now there's an idea) this would have it sewn up, no doubt about it.

On the Subject of Test Drive Unlimited 2

Sophie Howard and... someone else

Some time ago I picked up a steering wheel, just for shits and giggles. One of the games I bought to go with it was Test Drive Unlimited, which I didn't know much about but which was a driving game, and that's all that mattered at the time. I think I also bought DiRT and GTR2.
Of those 3, TDU turned out to be my favourite by far. GTR2 is undoubtedly great if you want the full-on sim experience, and DiRT (and the sequel, and similarly GRiD) are great for more focused, high-octane competition fun, but TDU's free-roaming sandbox gameplay really struck a chord with me. Sure, the racing is fun, and it feeds the collecting bug as you earn money to buy progressively more exotic supercars, not to mention houses to put them in, but it's great that I can load it up, pick a nice motor and simply drive around seeing the sights.
So of course I was looking forward to the sequel, which I also didn't really know much about. I steered clear of the beta because I'm not a desperate poser cock, so all I really knew was that it was delayed several times, and that there were a few vaguely pretty screen shots floating around.
They've run out of excuses to delay it now apparently, so we have the game in our grubby mitts (virtual mitts at least, when it's on Steam).
I have to say that it has been a curious experience so far. There was an initial massive tidal wave of furious hate online, largely perpetuated by one person from what I can tell, and someone who it seems has thrown his toys out of the pram because Eden wouldn't do what he said during the beta. He (I won't give him the oxygen of publicity by naming him) has popped up pretty much everywhere I've looked where TDU has been mentioned. As a result I'll admit that I was perhaps more apprehensive than I ought to have been when I first approached the game. The curious part is how I've come to like the game very much, despite the vocal minority of haters, and despite its various flaws.

Let's start with what is perhaps the most fundamental aspect of a driving game, which is the handling of the cars. I'm not one to start firing my AK into the air in disgust just because a driving game dares to be a game rather than a military-grade simulation. TDU was always a bit light in the physics department, and TDU2 definitely continues in that vein.
However I will concede there's a valid argument to be had that adding an additional, "proper" sim mode wouldn't have hurt the game at all. There are already 3 driving modes in the game, "Something I've forgotten", "Sport" and "Hardcore". It doesn't seem like it would have killed them to add a "Realism" option or similar. That way casual players (probably including myself) could opt for a less punishing mode while the GTR2 fans could get their simulation fix and everyone would be happy.
But the point is that while the handling isn't really improved over the original game, I don't really think it's any worse. I know some people disagree, but that's their look-out.

One interesting feature of TDU2 is the addition of off-road driving (and racing) as a fully-fledged part of the game. In TDU you could drive off-road, but there wasn't really any reason to. Now there are designated off-road tracks all over the island, a separate vehicle class for off-roaders and corresponding competitions. And I have to say that when it comes to the racing aspect of the game, off-road has definitely been the most fun for me so far. It's like a somewhat less punishing (i.e. easier) version of DiRT, and while you can argue the physical realism all you want, the fact is that's it's just damned good fun.

Less good fun are some of the other competition challenges. I hated the speed trap competitions in TDU and they're back in the sequel. I'm not really that fond of time-trials either, to be honest. I prefer a good, old-fashioned race. And it seems that they've done away with the vehicle delivery missions which is a shame, not so much because they were fun (they were fine as long as you didn't run into an invisible car or bottom-out for no reason on a perfectly flat road and lose the perfect score bonus) but they were a good way to gain a decent cash injection and keep the new cars coming. One thing I've found in TDU2 is that it's a lot slower to get going when it comes to making money. It's not at all helped by the fact that you can't seem to sell or otherwise dispose of the shitty cars you win in duels, which means you run out of parking spaces before you can afford to buy more houses if you don't keep ploughing through the competitions. And you can't enter competitions without appropriate cars, which you can't buy if you don't have any spare parking spaces, and which you can't afford if you have to blow all your money on houses. It could have done with a bit of fine-tuning in that department.

One thing about which most players seem to be in agreement is the half-arsed support for steering wheels. As far as I'm concerned the only way to play any driving game which isn't an unapologetic arcade racer like Burnout is with a wheel. You can dick around with a pad and a 3rd-person view if you must, and that might even be a better option if all you care about is competitive performance, but at heart TDU2 still has the gentle touring appeal of its predecessor, and nothing beats cruising around Ibiza (or Oahu) with a proper steering wheel.
Unfortunately the wheel support in TDU is very hit or miss. I've seen complaints that it flat-out doesn't work with some wheels at all, and others (like my admittedly basic but perfectly serviceable Momo) are usable but aren't recognised or configured automatically. It took me about half an hour of tweaking the control options to get a comfortable feel, not helped by a "sensitivity" slider which ought to be re-labelled "insensitivity" because it blatantly operates in the wrong direction. And I still dip in now and again to make further adjustments.
And then there's the force feedback, or more importantly the lack thereof. There's an option for feedback strength, but from what I can tell it doesn't so much affect "feedback" as "tension". There's a vague sense of the wheel being heavier or lighter to turn depending on speed, but there's absolutely no actual feedback. In the original TDU, as with most reasonable driving games, the wheel would happily buck all over the place if you hit something, or if you started to lose the tail end and let go of the wheel you could watch it turn of its own accord in response to the motion of the car. It may have been a little heavy-handed, but it was also very satisfying. TDU2 has lost that quality entirely, and instead the support appears to be limited to little more than the generic rumble that you get on a pad.
It's very disappointing when a sequel does away with options which were available in its predecessor. Mass Effect 2 was guilty of that, although that game made up for some of its shortcomings by shining in other areas. When it comes to controller support TDU2 feels like a game which has been designed around a console pad rather than a wheel, and that's just disgusting. By all means make it playable for console monkeys or poor people who can't afford a basic wheel, but not at the expense of the high-end functionality.

Other minor complaints include the automatic gearbox, which will happily sit on the starting line screaming its arse off for a good second before shifting in first, while you watch everyone else power off into the distance. Or else it'll stay in too high a gear for much too long if you lose speed on an incline or corner. In TDU you could force a gear change if you wanted to, even in auto, but that's no longer an option with my wheel at least.
Also there appears to be a distinct lack of traffic in TDU. In fact once I seemed to lose all the traffic entirely, maybe due to a server issue or something, but in general it's very light. It seemed like there was more on Oahu when I got around to unlocking that. But it could do with more, and preferably with better AI which doesn't drive into you quite as much.

TDU2 is noticeably prettier than TDU, although not to a jaw-dropping extent. There's more of a vague sense of polish and less aggressive lighting. And of course there's full day/night now which is a huge improvement, not to mention some decent variety in the weather including rain and even proper thunderstorms. Definitely a good thing, as the night driving in particular adds a lot to the racing, and the wet roads are very nicely rendered.
I suspected that Ibiza was slightly smaller than the Oahu of the original game, but I needn't have worried because I didn't realise that at level 10 (out of 60) you unlock the airport, and with it the option to fly back to Hawaii. So TDU2 includes the whole area of TDU in addition to its own island, which is quite impressive. And Ibiza has some great panoramas and nice little Mediterranean villages to make it feel fresh and new, while Hawaii obviously benefits from the graphical improvements.

In the grand scheme of things I'm still in the early stages of the game, and because 15 of the 60 levels are basically tied to the online multiplayer I doubt I'll ever progress to the "end", but I've definitely settled in and I'm finding it a very pleasant experience. I hope they patch in some better wheel support (especially force feedback), and preferably, if unlikely, better and more voluminous traffic. And lose the speed trap challenges, and also the ones where you have to get points for near-misses, drifting etc (no chance, sadly).