Test Drive Unlimited Price Shame Exclusive!

Has anyone else noticed that the RRP for this game is $39.99 in the States and £49.99 in England?

My rudimentary maths concludes that us Brits are being charged nearly two and a half times as much - is that even allowed?

N.B. Thanks go to Stef for the headline

Of course it's allowed. Corporations play by their own rules these days - and the rule on pricing is "charge as much as the fools will pay."

You Europeans can complain about this all you like, but until you stop putting your hands in your pockets - nothing will change.

Either Microsoft is forcing achievements down developers throats or developers aren't trying that hard to make them seem not like a gimmick.

Just played the game for a couple of hours, and to be honest I'm not exactly rocked by it. At first it looks nice, handles okay and has a variety of challenges.

But real quick you get tired of the same challenges (race, time trial, speed trap, hitchhiker, shopper help, car delivery), especially as, with most races, once you're out in front you can ease of a little and take things more carefully. Hitchhiker and shopper are just timed A-B runs with a score on keeping to the road and not crashing. Car delivery is the same without a time limit. I'm sure you can unlock a load more, but after two hours I was a bit tired of it.

Then you start to see some of the flaws in the visuals - pop-up of trees not two hundred yards away, bushes that don't scale properly as you approach, but stay the same size for a while, making them look like they're shrinking. Then there's vertical blank tearing, clear jumps between level of detail (LOD) and really low LOD on distant mountain terrain (esp. compared with old PS2 games such as WRC)

Handling is also a bit wishy-washy - at low speeds you don't seem to have tight cornering and grip you'd expect, and at high speeds the drift is really tricky to pull off - it kind of finds itself somewhere between sim-like Gran Turismo handling and arcade-like Ridge Racer, but never knowing which way to go.

Cop chases can be fun, but unless you get three shields (the highest), it's way too easy to evade the cops for long enough to lose the heat. Oh, and you can blaze past a cop at 150mph, and they don't bat an eyelid - only hitting other traffic seems to ruffle their feathers.

If you're really interested, I'd suggest you try it out first before commiting the laughable 50 quid to it.

Actualy, Mr. "doesnt know stuff", Every game for the 360 has 1000 points worth of achievments. How they are earned through the game is entirely up to the developer/publisher. MS has certain games that it sites (oblivion for example) as good examples of achivemnt dispersal, but they in no way control them.

1game=1000 points. That's it.

_________

Yeh, I have the demo and I think it's pretty ropey as far as handling is concerned. I'd probably be willing to cough up $40 but certainly not £50. Apparently, the US price cut is to be subsidised by future downloadable content - does that mean we get all that in the box? I doubt it...

Did you play it online, Config?

Too bad, my many hours of joy playing Test Drive 4 via System Link on the original PS would have me hoping that the next Link-capable Test Drive iteration would prove more worthy.

*remembers Forza 2 is supposed to be coming out Octoberish...cheers up immensely...

They still mandate them on games and regulate the amount and point total-difficulty balancing. They have quite a hand in it. This has been cited everywhere. I can't really see a developer being stumped on what to give up 10 achievement points for and just end up with "SHOPPING SPREE - Buy three hawaiian shirts and get points!". It's a damn racing game, not Barbie's Credit Card Extravaganza. It's not like there's a shortage of oppportunities for points shoveling. Microsoft wants easy acheivements to entice and encourage people to play. They get a taste and then want more points. But come on, that really insults people's intelligence.

Then again, it may just be a rant and Activision or whoever crapped this game out maybe just didn't care or it was a last minute job. Opinions anyone?

Aw c'mon, don't bismirch Activision's name... they actually have a pretty good line-up this autumn. Test Drive comes from that last bastion of quality computer gaming Infogrames pretending to be Atari. Remember their other great games - don't forget Driv3r - and the outrageously high review scores it got from the Future rags that were given exclusive access to the game.

I mean, there's a search box over there ------>
that'll let you find stuff like out before you post.

damn, Forza 2 is prolly delayed...that sucks...

PS3 delayed till March..........M$ Gran Turismo delayed till Q1 2007 (March)

In Europe.


Globally.

Besides, I don't think MS need worry itself any more with a PS3 "spoiling" strategy - Sony has done this all on its own.

No, I didn't. You know how getting through this firewall can be :)

As far as I can see, this could be its saving grace. As you drive around the island in single player you occassionally get indicators showing where other drivers are. If you pass one, you can challenge them to a race for cash.

I figure that these will be real opponents when played over Live, which makes for quite a nice, living island full of other players.

Considering Europe is probably gonna be the biggest market for FM2 and GT3 i dont think it matters whether its global or not