Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Demo Available On Steam

People expecting this to look decent and play well when it's made by the team that could never listen or get the wrc games right year on year make me laugh the way they're now realising. I said when the gameplay videos appeared that it wouldn't look anywhere near as good in reality or play well and I got slated for it.

Just tried it.

One of the worst title i tried this decade all category included lol

Downloaded. Saw that needed another account other than Steam just to get to the main menu - force closed. Uninstalled.

Wow, that was painful....uninstall.

It just feels like...lifeless.

I really hope it gets better but I have a horrible feeling that its not going to.

Seems like it needs a lot of system specs to be able to produce a fairly average looking game. The physics are absolute dogshit, the cars feel like you're just pivoting in the middle when you turn. I mean, I know its an arcade game but come on, its been in development for a fair while at this point and nobody has thought 'I know, lets make the cars have at least a little hint of realism when it comes to handling'?!

It probably wouldn't take much to actually turn this into a decent arcade game but honestly, if a demo is being released and its this boring/tedious, I feel like they've decided how they want it to be and thats that.

Shame really.

What a mess. Uninstalled.

Goof said:

It just feels like...lifeless.

I really hope it gets better but I have a horrible feeling that its not going to.

Seems like it needs a lot of system specs to be able to produce a fairly average looking game. The physics are absolute dogshit, the cars feel like you're just pivoting in the middle when you turn. I mean, I know its an arcade game but come on, its been in development for a fair while at this point and nobody has thought 'I know, lets make the cars have at least a little hint of realism when it comes to handling'?!

It probably wouldn't take much to actually turn this into a decent arcade game but honestly, if a demo is being released and its this boring/tedious, I feel like they've decided how they want it to be and thats that.

Shame really.

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Even first part had much better physics than this bullshit

Shame that it is terrible.

What an absolute shame... just played it and agree with all the uninstall comments above sadly.

The team must have put a lot of work into it, but wow, its really in need of a lot more work.

It really needs so much doing to it, its lifeless, hardly any traffic, zero pedestrians, handling is just very dull, poor (actually extremely poor) visuals, oh and what kind of dullard main character have they made us play as lol she is like some McDonalds worker from Peterborough.

How on earth has this been in development for so long with all those grandiose teaser videos etc...

The system spec sheet they gave out seems in the ballpark, albeit optimistically, but just shows how unoptimised the game is (for how it looks).

My system:
i7-11770 (4.9Ghz 8C16T)
RTX 3090 (Asus TUF)
64Gb DDR4 (3200)
ran off a 5,500Mb m.2 SSD

1440p on Ultra settings with TAA and in HDR saw CPU overall usage at 50% but the spread of load was uneven - mainly 60-70% on most cores, 30-40% on a few, and 80-90% on one core - GPU was constantly pegged at 100% usage (using around 10Gb VRAM) and I was averaging around 45-50fps, sometimes dipping into the 30s (even saw 29 at one point) and going upward to 52 at best.

I swapped out TAA for DLSS, and even on Ultra Performance and despite looking like a PS3 game the FPS only went up to 54/55 in the city and sometimes touched (but not remained) at 60 when outside of the city.

Back on TAA, lowering graphics to Medium saw a whopping boost of 5 fps, so now in the 55 area in the city and finally just about 60 outside of it. Only setting it to Low got 60 fps in built up areas, which is ridiculous.

Chase-cam might give you a handful more fps too, but a game like this where we ideally want to see and immerse ourselves inside the cars means taking an extra hit to performance.

When the graphics were maxed out it looked rather average, nothing particularly modern or special about it, but nothing directly wrong either - it just didn't look anywhere as good as the system usage would suggest it should be.

Only played briefly using a PS5 controller so couldn't say about wheel support / FFB (if there even is any). I didn't even look at control settings but as standard it felt just as basic and bland as the visuals, as in the handling was simply functional and unremarkable.

I got the TDU vibe from it so I think potential is there, but it came across a bit too old-school, as if this is a game from like 5 (or even 10+) years ago.

Hopefully it'll see more optimisation before launch, but right now it's probably just for fans of the series who want a throwback, who have a very beefy PC and rather modest expectations. This demo does not bode well at all for console players though, and being just 3 months from release it's quite possibly going to be yet another underperforming & underwhelming launch that may be salvageable with several patches in the following weeks / months. Sadly typical fare for nowadays.

Edit: Quick demo I just made for proof:

They try to trick us with the old " needs high end pc therefore graphics are next-gen!" Routine... Not falling for it, need 4 speed 2015, grid reboot, for a horizon are older arcade games that look better, With lower pc specs!

Reading the comments/first impressions and the system requirements one thing pops up in my mind: an unreal engine disaster again?

Literally everything about this game since day 1:

It's a lifeless and sterile fiasco with way too much cluttered menu.
Physics? It makes Forza Horizon feel like a sim. And I'm talking of Horizon 4, not even 5.
Graphics? All ultra on my 4090 and it looks like a lame 2015 console game with abysmal fps without upscalers or Frame Generation.
Also any upscaler is a blurry mess, even with sharpening.

One of the worse games I've ever tried in recent years.

Blerpa said:

It's a lifeless and sterile fiasco with way too much cluttered menu.
Physics? It makes Forza Horizon feel like a sim. And I'm talking of Horizon 4, not even 5.
Graphics? All ultra on my 4090 and it looks like a lame 2015 console game with abysmal fps without upscalers or Frame Generation.
Also any upscaler is a blurry mess, even with sharpening.

One of the worse games I've ever tried in recent years.

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Vs Pcars3?

(Too soon?)

I was looking forward to driving in the streets of Hong-Kong, but what a disappointment, the driving is awful, the worst arcade game of the last 10 years...uninstall

Just had a go.

5Ghz all cores on an i7-9600 with 3080 Ti, and I got 40-50fps with high settings.

For that, and the joy of a space heater sat next to me, I had the Hong Kong equivalent of Mid Town Madness.

As an old boy racer, I had a lot of nostalgia for this... but no way I'm paying the full rack rate for a 2000's game in every sense.

Oh and thanks for letting me use a 10min email Nacon, you can keep your spam.

"What are your expectations for the Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Steam demo?"
I had no expectations about the game it self, but I had the expectation that he demo would give me an idea of what this TDU is about.
Demo is doing its job. I hope that all interested will download and try for 2 main reasons.

1. It will demonstrate that all the negative comments, uninstalled after 5 minutes, bla bla bla, are crap.
2. This game, may or may not be, of interest to you.

It is not of interest to me, but it did run well on my very average system, recognized and properly set up my CSL DD without any intervention.
The driving is, I think, on par for the genre. To me, this is not a racing/driving game, it is a video game involving some driving.

Because we cannot trust any opinion but our own, having access to demo is golden, all video games should be like this.

Cote Dazur said:

"What are your expectations for the Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Steam demo?"
I had no expectations about the game it self, but I had the expectation that he demo would give me an idea of what this TDU is about.
Demo is doing its job. I hope that all interested will download and try for 2 main reasons.

1. It will demonstrate that all the negative comments, uninstalled after 5 minutes, bla bla bla, are crap.
2. This game, may or may not be, of interest to you.

It is not of interest to me, but it did run well on my very average system, recognized and properly set up my CSL DD without any intervention.
The driving is, I think, on par for the genre. To me, this is not a racing/driving game, it is a video game involving some driving.

Because we cannot trust any opinion but our own, having access to demo is golden, all video games should be like this.

Click to expand...

Are u sure, you played the same demo?

how poorly optimized the game have to be to require at least a 70 or 80 series?

forza horizon can run on high settings easily on a mid pc but this game require a high end pc just to run it wth