Test Drive
The resurrected Atari brand adds yet another winning notch to its quickly widening belt of games befitting the legendary label.
Published: June 12, 2002
There are few fantasies as firmly etched in my mind as the vision of myself screaming across the Golden Gate Bridge in a supped-up Shelby Cobra, wind in my hair, cops be damned as I screamed along at 100+ miles an hour. Joy of joys, Test Drive lets me act those fantasies out. Test Drive has lots of other things that happen to stimulate the vast pools of slightly recessed testosterone in me, helping add fuel to my naughty bits. Oddly enough, though, it does just as much to spark my ire most of the time, so it's this bizarre dichotomy of feelings that course through me as I race around the last few seconds of the last few tracks in the game. On the one hand, I'm going fast – no, scratch that – REALLY fast, but on the other, I'm often crashing into things, and a good half of the time, it's not necessarily my fault. Welcome to the seesaw of emotions that is Test Drive.
Without a doubt in my mind, this is the crowning achievement in a long and mixed history for one of the first games I ever played on anything other than the NES/Master System/Genesis/SNES consoles in days of yore. Test Drive 2 managed to suck me into a world of pixilated, monochromatic, choppy visuals and sounds that dared play themselves through a PC speaker. While my experience was on a rather antiquated Mac in the dimly lit basement of my then-recently married aunt and uncle, it was no less captivating, and helped broaden my taste in games to include that rare gem of crossover goodness: the PC game.
Since then, I've learned there's life beyond Nintendo and their dogmatic Power magazine, and it's served me well, helping me to experience any number of games on any number of platforms. Among those countless games lies the Test Drive series, which until now never really grabbed my attention for any extended amount of time, and certainly not as fervently as The Duel: Test Drive 2 did. With the numerically liberated moniker of simply "Test Drive," Pitbull Syndicate's series pushes into slightly new territory, brings back a few now-classic elements like the cop chases and radar, and even manages a slack-jawed reaction or two when it comes to showing off a programming and art team's attention to detail.
The concept of Test Drive is hardly complicated: simply race from one point to the next and make it there before anyone else. The type of race – be it a repetitive circuit, a linear dash or a massive point to point jaunt – may change, but there is one single goal that stands above all else, and that's to finish first. Test Drive manages to pluck a few minor modes out of its racing bag; like a Cop Chase, where you can hop into the shiny shoes of the 5-0 for a little smash and bash style justice to stop a group of street racers, or a simple drag race to see who's got better shifting skillz, or the ubiquitous 2-Player mode (with the same linear, circuit and drag races from the Single Player game intact), but largely it's a very standard racing experience.
That's not to say the game doesn't try to break away from mediocrity, and rarely does the game slip into any bouts of that dreaded "m" word, but there's nothing here that you wouldn't find in any other good arcade racing game – at least not in gameplay. Test Drive does manage an eyebrow-raising effort in the way of a half-cocked story about illegal street racing and a drag-racing con man from the oil-slicked streets of San Francisco by the name of Dennis Black (that's you) and his ascent to underground racing superstar, but the story rarely moves beyond snippets of infighting between members between races. I'm glad there is a story tying each of the nearly 50 races together, but don't expect anything epic. There are a few twists near the end, and the cars unlocked as you progress through do get a sense of personality from the clichéd racers that may have owned them in the past, but largely, the story is standard stuff.
Test Drive's story will take you from the hills and fog of The City by the Bay to the neon and concrete jungles of Tokyo and from the claustrophobic and twisty streets of London to the sun-drenched home of F1 races, Monte Carlo. Along the way, you'll procure any number of different cars to fit almost any fast and furious racer's taste, from nimble Japanese delights like the Toyota Supra, Subaru Impreza 22B or the dreamy Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec to burly American muscle cars like the Pontiac GTO, Plymouth Hemi Cuda and Chevy Chevelle to Brit screamers like the Jaguar XJ220, TVR Cerbera Speed 12, Aston Martin DB7 Vantage and Lotus Espirit V8. In all, you'll find 26 cars that cover just about every possible street racer's fantasy (albeit with a more heavy emphasis on American and British flavors than the sickeningly popular rice rockets that have cropped up in recent years), and each one handles more or less differently than others.
Handling, and indeed the overall feel of the game is set squarely in the corner of the arcade racer, so sim enthusiasts looking to tweak their machines to perfection need not apply. For the type of game, and generally the feel of the Test Drive series as a whole, this is a good thing, but I did have issues with traffic and little goofs with collision annoying the crap out of me (some cars have the disgusting habit of sticking to a wall like Velcro after hitting them head on). This is especially apparent later on in the game, when traffic stops becoming something fun to zip though (at least with anything lesser than the sinfully fun Jag XJ220), and starts becoming a reason for controller-cracking frustration – coming to a head during the final couple races, where you're forced to race with a single car that is neither as agile, quick to accelerate, or frankly as fun as the car you're up against. Because of random traffic, and often the slightly lazy nature of the cars you're driving (and rightly so, that couple-ton hunk of Detroit steel isn't going to corner on a dime at 10 miles an hour, much less 100), races can end up being less skill and more the luck of the draw. And I still wonder why the hell EVERY car was able to shove me around, no matter what car I drove (even cars that I drove previously and was shoved around in). It's annoying that you can't really shove back unless you're a cop.
And then there's the graphics. Test Drive is certainly a looker. It's not stunningly gorgeous, but the overall package, from the clean, simple and zippy menus (God bless the creamy smooth, elegant goodness of UK graphic design) to the usually brisk framerate (sometimes drops framerate and in resolution to that nasty interlaced effect from some first-gen PS2 games are prevalent, but they're usually only in effect for a second or two) keeps everything from disappointing your retinas. The car models are high-poly enough that everything is well-rounded and contoured well, enough, but the reflections are slightly wonky and the textures that are thrown on in place of cracks on doors and hoods (or for the Brits out there, bonnets) are low-res enough that they're obvious, with subtracts a bit from the illusion of ridiculously high-poly cars, but it's a minor gripe.
The cars are nice, of course, as well they should be since they're on the screen the majority of the time, but even more impressive is the attention to detail in the course designs. I can't tell you how incredibly cool it is to cut through the very parking lot of the Safeway (complete with accurate 70's diamond motif store name, though it's obviously not called Safeway in the game) I used to shop at every week or by the house I lived in on Lombard street when I lived in the Marina here in San Francisco, but I'll try: it's really, really, really, really, really, really cool. Really. Even the general feel of the track design is largely accurate. Liberties had to be taken to make things flow from one end to the next, but it's pretty damned impressive, and my hat's off to everyone at Pitbull for crafting something so true to life. Having not lived in London, Monte Carlo or Tokyo, I can't speak for those levels, but I'm hoping the same holds true for them.
Test Drive's soundtrack rocks, no doubt about it. Despite my bitter hatred for the majority of schlock being kicked out as rap nowadays, I found lots to enjoy that wasn't of the ear-bleedingly painful Ja Rule/DMX/Bubba Sparxxx variety. Being a fan of electronica and rock, I was surprised to find an interesting mix of old (Moby's "Oil 1"), semi-new (Saliva's "Click, Click, Boom") an unexpected surprise in the form of a song I hadn't heard from Alice Deejay, some old-school goodness from Young MC, and a handful of slight head-bobbers from Junkie XL and especially Aurora Borealis. Best of all, for the most part, Ja Rule's crappy half-assed monotone attempt at singing was kept restricted to the menus, where he was often nearly muted by the conversations pre- and post-race. The only real gripes I had were a) that if you were saddled with a song you didn't like during a race, there was no way to select a new one without restarting the race, and b) that each race seemed to recycle the same few songs, so if you had to re-race a level (which happened PLENTY of times, unfortunately) you were stuck with those same tired songs, and God help you if you found 'em all annoying. There was an option to mute the music outright, but there should have been some sort of jukebox option, or better still a playlist option (a la Gran Turismo 3).
Luckily, if you are forced to mute the music, there's lots of engine noise to soothe those tired eardrums. Engines can range from a light hum from some of the Japanese racers to low bubbling belches of roar from the American musclers to something that settled nicely in-between from the UK machines. The usual tire squeals, burnouts, metal-on-fiberglass crunches and wails from police sirens all filled their respective cues well (though I didn't think cops all over the world used the same siren sound as the US'). I've heard better effects in racing games during crashes and impacts (Burnout, anyone?), but as far as engine sounds go, there's few games that can match the stimulating power of one of Test Drives percolating idle revs. Nummy.
Test Drive is surprisingly fun, infuriatingly unpredictable, deliciously fun to listen to, and oft times relentlessly addictive (plenty of nights of trying to beat the game resulted in me staying up well past 3AM). You'll pay the price for the presentation in, on average, about 30 second load times the first time you get to a level, but you get to play Pong while you wait, so who's counting? Sim fans may not find Test Drive particularly interesting, but for those looking for a good, and somewhat lengthy arcade racer with some fun two-player options, you needn't look any farther than Test Drive.
Without a doubt in my mind, this is the crowning achievement in a long and mixed history for one of the first games I ever played on anything other than the NES/Master System/Genesis/SNES consoles in days of yore. Test Drive 2 managed to suck me into a world of pixilated, monochromatic, choppy visuals and sounds that dared play themselves through a PC speaker. While my experience was on a rather antiquated Mac in the dimly lit basement of my then-recently married aunt and uncle, it was no less captivating, and helped broaden my taste in games to include that rare gem of crossover goodness: the PC game.
Since then, I've learned there's life beyond Nintendo and their dogmatic Power magazine, and it's served me well, helping me to experience any number of games on any number of platforms. Among those countless games lies the Test Drive series, which until now never really grabbed my attention for any extended amount of time, and certainly not as fervently as The Duel: Test Drive 2 did. With the numerically liberated moniker of simply "Test Drive," Pitbull Syndicate's series pushes into slightly new territory, brings back a few now-classic elements like the cop chases and radar, and even manages a slack-jawed reaction or two when it comes to showing off a programming and art team's attention to detail.
The concept of Test Drive is hardly complicated: simply race from one point to the next and make it there before anyone else. The type of race – be it a repetitive circuit, a linear dash or a massive point to point jaunt – may change, but there is one single goal that stands above all else, and that's to finish first. Test Drive manages to pluck a few minor modes out of its racing bag; like a Cop Chase, where you can hop into the shiny shoes of the 5-0 for a little smash and bash style justice to stop a group of street racers, or a simple drag race to see who's got better shifting skillz, or the ubiquitous 2-Player mode (with the same linear, circuit and drag races from the Single Player game intact), but largely it's a very standard racing experience.
That's not to say the game doesn't try to break away from mediocrity, and rarely does the game slip into any bouts of that dreaded "m" word, but there's nothing here that you wouldn't find in any other good arcade racing game – at least not in gameplay. Test Drive does manage an eyebrow-raising effort in the way of a half-cocked story about illegal street racing and a drag-racing con man from the oil-slicked streets of San Francisco by the name of Dennis Black (that's you) and his ascent to underground racing superstar, but the story rarely moves beyond snippets of infighting between members between races. I'm glad there is a story tying each of the nearly 50 races together, but don't expect anything epic. There are a few twists near the end, and the cars unlocked as you progress through do get a sense of personality from the clichéd racers that may have owned them in the past, but largely, the story is standard stuff.
Test Drive's story will take you from the hills and fog of The City by the Bay to the neon and concrete jungles of Tokyo and from the claustrophobic and twisty streets of London to the sun-drenched home of F1 races, Monte Carlo. Along the way, you'll procure any number of different cars to fit almost any fast and furious racer's taste, from nimble Japanese delights like the Toyota Supra, Subaru Impreza 22B or the dreamy Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec to burly American muscle cars like the Pontiac GTO, Plymouth Hemi Cuda and Chevy Chevelle to Brit screamers like the Jaguar XJ220, TVR Cerbera Speed 12, Aston Martin DB7 Vantage and Lotus Espirit V8. In all, you'll find 26 cars that cover just about every possible street racer's fantasy (albeit with a more heavy emphasis on American and British flavors than the sickeningly popular rice rockets that have cropped up in recent years), and each one handles more or less differently than others.
Handling, and indeed the overall feel of the game is set squarely in the corner of the arcade racer, so sim enthusiasts looking to tweak their machines to perfection need not apply. For the type of game, and generally the feel of the Test Drive series as a whole, this is a good thing, but I did have issues with traffic and little goofs with collision annoying the crap out of me (some cars have the disgusting habit of sticking to a wall like Velcro after hitting them head on). This is especially apparent later on in the game, when traffic stops becoming something fun to zip though (at least with anything lesser than the sinfully fun Jag XJ220), and starts becoming a reason for controller-cracking frustration – coming to a head during the final couple races, where you're forced to race with a single car that is neither as agile, quick to accelerate, or frankly as fun as the car you're up against. Because of random traffic, and often the slightly lazy nature of the cars you're driving (and rightly so, that couple-ton hunk of Detroit steel isn't going to corner on a dime at 10 miles an hour, much less 100), races can end up being less skill and more the luck of the draw. And I still wonder why the hell EVERY car was able to shove me around, no matter what car I drove (even cars that I drove previously and was shoved around in). It's annoying that you can't really shove back unless you're a cop.
And then there's the graphics. Test Drive is certainly a looker. It's not stunningly gorgeous, but the overall package, from the clean, simple and zippy menus (God bless the creamy smooth, elegant goodness of UK graphic design) to the usually brisk framerate (sometimes drops framerate and in resolution to that nasty interlaced effect from some first-gen PS2 games are prevalent, but they're usually only in effect for a second or two) keeps everything from disappointing your retinas. The car models are high-poly enough that everything is well-rounded and contoured well, enough, but the reflections are slightly wonky and the textures that are thrown on in place of cracks on doors and hoods (or for the Brits out there, bonnets) are low-res enough that they're obvious, with subtracts a bit from the illusion of ridiculously high-poly cars, but it's a minor gripe.
The cars are nice, of course, as well they should be since they're on the screen the majority of the time, but even more impressive is the attention to detail in the course designs. I can't tell you how incredibly cool it is to cut through the very parking lot of the Safeway (complete with accurate 70's diamond motif store name, though it's obviously not called Safeway in the game) I used to shop at every week or by the house I lived in on Lombard street when I lived in the Marina here in San Francisco, but I'll try: it's really, really, really, really, really, really cool. Really. Even the general feel of the track design is largely accurate. Liberties had to be taken to make things flow from one end to the next, but it's pretty damned impressive, and my hat's off to everyone at Pitbull for crafting something so true to life. Having not lived in London, Monte Carlo or Tokyo, I can't speak for those levels, but I'm hoping the same holds true for them.
Test Drive's soundtrack rocks, no doubt about it. Despite my bitter hatred for the majority of schlock being kicked out as rap nowadays, I found lots to enjoy that wasn't of the ear-bleedingly painful Ja Rule/DMX/Bubba Sparxxx variety. Being a fan of electronica and rock, I was surprised to find an interesting mix of old (Moby's "Oil 1"), semi-new (Saliva's "Click, Click, Boom") an unexpected surprise in the form of a song I hadn't heard from Alice Deejay, some old-school goodness from Young MC, and a handful of slight head-bobbers from Junkie XL and especially Aurora Borealis. Best of all, for the most part, Ja Rule's crappy half-assed monotone attempt at singing was kept restricted to the menus, where he was often nearly muted by the conversations pre- and post-race. The only real gripes I had were a) that if you were saddled with a song you didn't like during a race, there was no way to select a new one without restarting the race, and b) that each race seemed to recycle the same few songs, so if you had to re-race a level (which happened PLENTY of times, unfortunately) you were stuck with those same tired songs, and God help you if you found 'em all annoying. There was an option to mute the music outright, but there should have been some sort of jukebox option, or better still a playlist option (a la Gran Turismo 3).
Luckily, if you are forced to mute the music, there's lots of engine noise to soothe those tired eardrums. Engines can range from a light hum from some of the Japanese racers to low bubbling belches of roar from the American musclers to something that settled nicely in-between from the UK machines. The usual tire squeals, burnouts, metal-on-fiberglass crunches and wails from police sirens all filled their respective cues well (though I didn't think cops all over the world used the same siren sound as the US'). I've heard better effects in racing games during crashes and impacts (Burnout, anyone?), but as far as engine sounds go, there's few games that can match the stimulating power of one of Test Drives percolating idle revs. Nummy.
Test Drive is surprisingly fun, infuriatingly unpredictable, deliciously fun to listen to, and oft times relentlessly addictive (plenty of nights of trying to beat the game resulted in me staying up well past 3AM). You'll pay the price for the presentation in, on average, about 30 second load times the first time you get to a level, but you get to play Pong while you wait, so who's counting? Sim fans may not find Test Drive particularly interesting, but for those looking for a good, and somewhat lengthy arcade racer with some fun two-player options, you needn't look any farther than Test Drive.
