Test Drive Unlimited review

To celebrate avoiding a jail sentence yet again, we decide to buy something. But what? How about… a car! There’s a problem. We’re out of space in our garage. So, we just buy another house (my fourth, in fact). We don’t need the house itself, just the garage to keep more cars in. Cars, cars, lovely cars. Briefly, I visit the new house. We sit in the lounge, on our own, idly twirling an empty glass of water while we think about cars, watching a giant television set, which forever loops images of cars. The only signs that someone actually lives in this house are some magazines on the coffee table, which are all about cars. We pick up the phone and make a five-second call. We can’t remember what we said or to whom, but we’re pretty sure it was about cars. Friendship, food, love - none of these things matter here. There are only cars.

Being a game is an entirely secondary motivation to Test Drive Unlimited’s existence - its true raison d’être is collecting, driving, showing off and staring longingly at cars. It’s a very specific kind of porn, and it’s also quite brilliant. While something such as Gran Turismo or Forza Motorsport on the consoles appeals to the same auto-fetishistic mindset, all they really allow a player to do with their archive of beautiful vehicles is race them again and again.