Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown review – When servers play ping-pong with you and the AI whips you with a rubber band

1 - Dismissed coldly by the servers 2 - When you are finally in...

I’m a fair person and have long been a lover and buyer of the TDU series, but what Nacon and KT Racing have now delivered as Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown exceeds even the limits of my trained ability to suffer as a Windows user of the very first generation. I waited for the first major patch and the latest server maintenance before writing a review. But at some point, even the last Mohican is softened up and gives up. And why all this?

First of all, without emotion: Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is an open-world racing game developed by KT Racing and published by Nacon. It is set on a detailed recreation of Hong Kong Island, which forms the main setting of the game. The game promises to create a “social” racing environment where players can not only compete against each other, but also build their virtual identity and reputation, similar to a social network. The setting of Solar Crown offers a mixture of urban, rural and mountain roads that can be driven on in different modes. People praise the attention to detail, but anyone who does has certainly never been to Hong Kong, including the developers.

Players can drive different cars from a wide range of vehicle classes and customize them to their preferences. The island is divided into different areas where rival factions battle for supremacy, integrating both single-player and multiplayer content. Speaking of territories: In Hong Kong, cabs are different colors depending on which area they are driving in. The red cabs are the most common and operate in the urban areas of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. Green cabs are intended for the New Territories, while blue cabs operate on Lantau Island, where the airport and Disneyland are located.

So each color represents a specific region, which helps passengers choose the right cab for their destination. But then why do you generally only see red cabs and then only as 4-seaters in the game? Yes, little things, but here they have merely copied clichés in the form of toy cars from souvenir stores. Yes, nitpicking, but I’m just taking the marketing at its word. Because just as the developers don’t seem to have a clue about Hong Kong, I’m sure none of them have ever driven a car, but I’ll come back to that later. But they can at least build error messages, at least that’s something…

Technically, the game relies on an always-online structure, which means that an internet connection is required to play the game. This decision has led to significant problems with the game, particularly server instability and disconnections. Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown takes us on an exciting journey, not only on the streets of Hong Kong, but above all into the technical depths of modern game development. Once again. And it’s easy to fall from the frying pan into the digital fire.

And it almost seems as if the developers have decided to put less emphasis on the racing experience and instead focus entirely on the server queues and timeout screens – after all, patience is an undervalued virtue these days, and Solar Crown wants to do its bit to change that. Or you can focus on “maintenance work”, which then takes up to 36 hours and has achieved nothing except saving electricity. You will have noticed that I put the frustration part first. More about the game comes afterwards, because it’s simply not worth it. Giving away so much potential actually deserves solitary confinement for everyone involved. Good idea, nice start, and after a media high-flyer, it crash-landed hard as a binary bedside rug. Shame.

The game is supposedly an “MMO”, which means “massively multiplayer online”. But if you actually expect to compete against other players, you’ll quickly realize that these mysterious “other players” either don’t exist or have been lost somewhere deep in the game’s code. Instead, you compete against the omnipresent, perfectly trained AI – the only instance that can be reliably reached. And there are races where the AI surrogate doesn’t even work. And then you wait a long 15 minutes only to realize that you are waiting in vain. The contradiction between the official player numbers and those who are actually online is glaring. Often enough, you might only see 4 or 5 riders on the map, but they disappear into the depths of the digital black hole faster than you can say pug. Nobody needs it, nobody wants it.

The reality looks like this: While cruising through the streets of Hong Kong to finally start a race against other players, online traffic in the lobbies is more of a pipe dream than reality. Even after several minutes of waiting in the queue – accompanied by the elegant “Login Error” soundtrack – you realize that the only company you can find is good old AI. And that’s not always enough. The problem isn’t that the servers are maliciously hiding the few human opponents – there just doesn’t seem to be anyone around. Sure, theoretically there are thousands of players, but practically? Well, most of them probably spend more time admiring the connection than actually racing. It could be that half the players are simply stuck in the queue, while the other half have already left the game in frustration. Or they’re just standing around doing everything but driving.

Technologically speaking, Solar Crown is a masterpiece of modern irony. The server structure is based on the “always online” principle, which means that the game simply cannot be played without an internet connection. You can’t even get in without it. And the best thing about it? Even with an internet connection, it’s often unplayable! Thanks to meticulous optimization, the game provides an incomparable timeout experience and regular disconnections that make the actual gameplay almost superfluous. For example, there are the six Crown Jewel challenges, whereby the longest race can last between 44 and 60 minutes, depending on your own skills. And not only once have I virtually bitten the edge of the table with rage when I was kicked out just before the finish. I simply won’t let that happen to me and my time.

Graphically impressive and equipped with dynamic weather effects, Solar Crown offers the perfect panorama for the time spent fretting over “login errors”. Perhaps the developers would have spent more time making these impressive graphics accessible to players instead of hiding them behind server problems and queues. But who wants a functioning game when you can have a technical challenge instead? And so you race against the all-too-perfect AI that is always at your disposal – as if it knows that it is the only real competition in this “MMO” racing game. While the player waits and waits to finally race against a real human, the server world remains as deserted as a race track after midnight. Ironically, Solar Crown shows us just how lonely life as a racer can be – at least online. So, enough lamenting, I did manage to get a few impressions together, so please scroll on…