By Jim Rossignol on May 28th, 2010 at 10:34 am.
Interesting times for racing games, what with the fantastical feature sets of Blur and Split/Second, and then open-worldiness descending this summer in the form of Test Drive Unlimited 2 (and, I suppose, in the form of the Need For Speed MMO). Eden Games have sent word that there’s a limited sign up for the beta phase of the new Test Drive Unlimited, although no details on exactly what that entails. Presumably, getting to play some of the game early, and for free, which is reason enough to take a nose. And the game is looking pretty interesting: the same drop-in open world island as before, and – unusually – the ability to get out of the car and walk around. What’s that good for in a racing game? Epic, pointless journeys perhaps? Maybe… Anyway, looks like sign-ups require Atari.com registration. Yay.
28/05/2010 at 10:54 Heliocentric says:
You can get out and push when your 8 million dollar car breaks down? I wonder how they manage people getting ran over.
28/05/2010 at 10:57 Adrian says:
Meh you have to be registered on their site to even sign up for the beta. no thanks
28/05/2010 at 16:36 Shivoa says:
If you’ve got a Cryptic account then that is already an Atari account for this (so not everyone needs to make a new account).
28/05/2010 at 11:01 AndrewC says:
Picnics!
28/05/2010 at 11:38 sleepygamer says:
Since I already had an Atari account, I signed up. I’m a big fan of racers, and although I never played the original, I thought it looked pretty damn good.
28/05/2010 at 12:02 WTF says:
As long as they have thrown away the god-awful physics of the first one and modelled the driving experience on, you know, actual cars, this should be good. The idea was sound first time around, but the implementation was poor.
28/05/2010 at 23:30 Jason Moyer says:
I thought the physics in the first game were pretty good actually. The low-polygon roads created weird issues when there were steep elevation changes, but the cars themselves seemed to handle like I’d expect from a lite-sim.
28/05/2010 at 12:21 Shadowcat says:
“Never get out of the car.”
28/05/2010 at 12:30 Collic says:
… Goddamn right.
28/05/2010 at 13:05 Max says:
Looks good, never played the first but I remember everyone saying it was good and all, thanks for letting us know about this.
Also for some reason there is absolutely no way to find out your old username for you have an account. For some reason its acceptable to forget your password, but your punished for not remembering your username.
In the end I had to use a disposable email.
28/05/2010 at 14:06 Rei Onryou says:
Will Jim do an article detailing his journey across the island by foot, a lá Fuel?
28/05/2010 at 14:54 Thermal Ions says:
Stupid Hardware Survey during the signup requires that you tick all consoles you own (Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, Wii). Of course if you have none of them, there’s no option for that is there, and you can’t complete the signup as it won’t let you not tick any.
Why do game publishers assume everyone has a console?
28/05/2010 at 19:47 Reno Brainz says:
They want us to lie…
28/05/2010 at 15:28 warth0g says:
I wasted a chunk of change on the first TDU.. it was pretty and I liked some of the ideas but you felt completely disconnected from the car you were driving.. as one of the earlier posters said, if they fix the driving model then fine. Dirt 2 showed that it is possible to have a fairly decent driving model in an arcade driving game…
28/05/2010 at 16:02 ZIGS says:
Atari huh? No thanks
28/05/2010 at 19:47 Sonic Goo says:
Change your tires!
Hitchhike!
28/05/2010 at 23:09 DarkNoghri says:
“What’s that good for in a racing game?”
FedEx missions, obviously. They’re sponsoring you, so you help with deliveries that must be made post-haste.
28/05/2010 at 23:35 Tetracell says:
The driving model in TDU didn’t feel odd at all to me, and I still play it quite a bit. I play with a logitech wheel though, I guess it could feel really weird playing with a controller. It has pretty good forcefeed back which gives a good feel for what the hell is going on.
29/05/2010 at 09:22 Jason Moyer says:
Other than iRacing, TDU is the only game I’ve found that actually works correctly with my wheel set to 900 degrees. The force feedback is fantastic, too. If the sequel cleans up the rough spots in the road surfaces, I expect it to be really good.