- The clash of Beauty vs. Beast continues in the next installment of the Test drive series. Test Drive 5 pushes driving to new limits by adding high resolution graphics, branching roads, shortcuts, and photorealistic graphics featuring Multi-Dynamic Environment ping. Three new difficulty levels, customizable vehicles, real-world tracks, multiplayer gameplay, cop chases, realistic weather effects, breakable roadside objects, and the addition of an arcade and simulation mode provide a deep racing.
Product description
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The clash of Beauty vs. Beast continues in the next installment
of the Test drive series. Test Drive 5 pushes driving to new
limits by adding high resolution graphics, branching roads,
shortcuts, and photorealistic graphics featuring Multi-Dynamic
Environment ping. Three new difficulty levels, customizable
vehicles, real-world tracks, multiplayer gameplay, cop chases,
realistic weather effects, breakable roadside objects, and the
addition of an arcade and simulation mode provide a deep racing
game experience.
.com
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Test Drive 5 pushes driving to new limits by adding
high-resolution graphics, branching roads, shortcuts, nut
driving, andphotorealistic graphics with Multi-Dynamic
Environment ping. Three new difficulty levels, customizable
vehicles, and the addition of arcade and simulation modes provide
an even deeper racing game experience than in previous versions.
There are 28 licensed vehicles and over 17 real-world tracks. The
28 licensed cars include 14 exotic sports cars (all capable of
speeds of 180 mph) and 14 vintage muscle cars. The 17 exotic
tracks feature accurate re-creations from real-world locales.
Racing modes include single race competition and multiple league
modes.
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Review
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Let's face it. Racing games are a dime a dozen on the
PlayStation. Heck, they're a dime a dozen no matter what platform
you're playing on. That said, it takes a special kind of racer to
separate itself from the pack. Is Test Drive 5 that special kind
of racer? Hmmm. Good question.
As previous incarnations of the Test Drive series have revealed,
the cars in TD5 are all about power. Like EA's Need For Speed
series, Test Drive 5 offers you some hard-core horsepower to take
the twisties with. Not only does it give you the cream of the
crop, chosen from today's most desired cars, it also gives you a
y selection of the muscle power of yesteryear, hence the
choices: beauty or beast. As with any other racer, pick your car
and off you go.
Like any decent racer worth its salt, TD5 offers you the usual
rtunities to test your driving prowess: single race, time
trials, cup race. While quick starters will straight for the
single race, the real meat is found in the various cup races.
There are six different cups to try to win: championship cup, era
cup, challenge cup, pitbull cup, masters cup, and the ultimate
cup. Each cup has its own particular criteria for winning, and
your success will determine what secret cars and tracks are
unveiled for you. If playing by yourself isn't enough of a
challenge, you can always go to the split-screen two-player mode.
The controls in TD5 are as basic as they get, with the L2 button
functioning as a hand brake, which helps a great deal in
controlling your car through power slides. However, the cars
control kind of heavy, and analog really isn't much better.
Without any sort of tactile resistance in the analog pad, you'll
find yourself tapping the thing as much as you would the regular
D-pad.
The graphics in TD5 are better than the majority of the racing
games out there. Each car is rendered nicely, and the game even
uses a neo-specular highlighting, which is inconsistent in its
appearance. Sometimes the effect is used, while other times it is
not. The frame rate is kept up at a respectable 25 frames per
second though, which is pretty good when you consider that there
may be up to six cars onscreen at once. There are also some
pretty nice lighting effects when you're driving at night.
Unfortunately, the problem with Test Drive 5 is that it tries to
be too many racing games at once. It's a tactic that doesn't
really pay off; while it emulates other games fairly well, it
doesn't do anything particularly well. It tries to be Need For
Speed III, without the pure speed rush that NFSIII gives you. It
even offers a take on NFSIII's pursuit mode, only in TD5, you get
to be the cop. It tries to be Gran Turismo-esque in both its
graphic presentation and simulation aspect. However, without GT's
extensive customization options, TD5 comes off kind of shallow by
comparison. At times, incredibly enough, TD5 even tries to pull a
San Francisco Rush. An inclusion you'll soon discover when you're
zooming down a hill, one huge step at a time.
Now, all of these things would be great if the game weren't so
darn difficult. While controlling your car is fairly easy
(despite the extremely heavy handling), the computer AI has this
amazing way of being able to blow by you as if you were standing
still. It's almost as if your car has no acceleration whatsoever.
It's difficult enough to try to keep up with everyone, let alone
pass them, but scrape a wall, and your race is over. Sure, there
are shortcuts on every track, along with multiple paths, but this
game is way too cheap to be much fun for long.
In the end, when you think of all the other games that Test Drive
5 tries to emulate, you're thinking of at least three other
racing games that you should purchase before you go for this one.
While not a dismal failure by any means, the cheap AI and
unbalanced gameplay ensure that Test Drive 5 remains rental
material at best. --James Mielke
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