Also on: PC, Xbox Series X
Publisher: Nacon
Developer: KT Racing
Medium: Digital/Disc
Players: 1-16
Online: Yes
ESRB: E10+
You kind of have to feel sorry for the Test Drive series. While it was never the best racing game franchise, it was still a pretty prolific one, with twenty games released between 1987 and 2012. The series has been on hiatus for the last twelve years – a period of time that just happens to coincide with the Forza Horizon series coming out and basically doing everything Test Drive Unlimited sought to do, but way better. And as much as I’d like to say that Solar Crown finds the series back and better than ever, the fact is that Solar Crown shows it’s been lapped – and then some – by Forza Horizon.
There are a lot of reasons for this, but the biggest is that Forza Horizon feels like it takes place in a living, breathing, vibrant world, whereas Solar Crown feels cold and sterile. Solar Crown may take place in Hong Kong – known famously for being one of the most densely populated places on Earth – but its version of Hong Kong feels empty. Whether you’re in a race or simply driving around the city, it constantly feels like you’re driving around lots of vacant, soulless streets. The game may brag that it’s recreated Hong Kong, but this is a version of Hong Kong where there are few signs of life. Likewise, the cars all look shiny and new; you may sustain a bit of cosmetic damage now and then, but for the most part everything has an unnatural glow about it.
It also doesn’t help that Solar Crown’s physics are absurd and its controls are awful and unpredictable. We’re talking about a game where the best way to approach tough turns is to simply take them sharply and slam yourself into the nearest building, because, almost invariably, you’ll just bounce off in the right direction with a minimal loss in speed. In fact, virtually nothing can slow you down – trees, planters, fences, whatever, all of them crumble the moment you hit them. Weirdly, this doesn’t apply to low walls or other small concrete objects – those are apparently your Kryptonite, since they stop you dead in your tracks.
As someone whose approach to racing games is generally “floor it and see what happens,” you’d think this might appeal to me, but I can’t say that it did. As much as I liked being able to bounce off buildings with no damage to my car, handling cars felt like another matter. Drifting was a constant adventure; you can swerve around a corner, holding your brakes, and have nothing happen other than coming to an abrupt stop, but you can also turn your wheel ever-so-slightly and suddenly find yourself in a tailspin. It makes for an unpleasantly unpredictable experience.
All of these issues, of course, don’t even touch on the hoops that Solar Crown makes you jump through to play the game. To start, you have to create an account with Nacon to even play the game – there’s no skipping past the sign-up screen, it’s mandatory.
On top of that, the game is always online, even if you’re playing solo. This might not be the worst thing in the world if it weren’t for the fact that the servers only seem to work intermittently. This meant there were times when I tried to start playing Solar Crown and I simply couldn’t because the game didn’t see my internet connection. And it’s not like getting into the game was a guarantee of success, either: sometimes races simply wouldn’t start, while other times I’d get booted mid-race for no apparent reason. It’s a pretty unacceptable level of performance for a game that’s being sold for money.
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You’d also better hope that the game continues to recognize your internet connection for awhile while you’re playing Solar Crown, too, because this game is full of grinding. The whole point of the game is to build up your street cred enough to be able to join a clan and buy better gear and better cars, and the only way to do that is to slowly move up level by level. The good news, I guess, is that Solar Crown doesn’t go easy on you in terms of leveling up even at the beginning of the game, so you’ll quickly get used to grinding your way through races even for the smallest of rewards, but that’s obviously stretching the very definition of what “good news” means.
It all adds up to make you wonder why Test Drive Unlimited even bothered returning from the grave. Even if it worked perfectly, there’s nothing that Solar Crown adds to the world of Forza Horizon-style racers – and the fact it doesn’t come close to working perfectly makes it all the worse.
Nacon provided us with a Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown PS5 code for review purposes.
