TDU: Solar Crown Gameplay Revealed

Today, Nacon held a live stream for the latest information surrounding Test Drive: Solar Crown which received a teaser a few days ago where I took the opportunity to share some of my opinions. So lets have a look at this stream which I missed and see if this game will hold up to its predecessors.

TDU: Solar Crown LiveStream

First of all, we get some in-engine footage which is a good start. In-engine footage is of course not the real gameplay experience but it most definitely does give us some more detail from the actual game. We get to see a couple of cars including the Nissan GTR R35, Ford F150 and Corvette Stingray but there is also some concern surrounding the graphics which the live chat pointed out. Personally, gameplay can easily trump poor graphics but when just focusing on the graphics they do look a bit outdated in some shots. The things I noticed are that the shadows and lighting on the cars appear a bit too harsh plus the reflections are quite weak as well. Of course, this is pre-alpha footage so its graphics can easily improve before release.

Actual Gameplay!

Following the in-engine footage we are once again met with Vivian Hughes from the teaser video who introduces us two our two gangs the Sharps and the Streets. For the Sharps, we meet Alain Jarniou, the creative director at KT Racing alongside Camille Courtier of KT Racing and Alan Boisto from Team VVV. We then meet the Streets which consists of ALEX VII a car enthusiast YouTuber alongside BlackPanthaa also a car enthusiast YouTuber and Guillaume Guinet, lead game designer at KT Racing. Following the introduction of our racers, we are given some actual gameplay footage with all 6 drivers racing through the streets of Hong Kong or crashing through the streets of Hong Kong would be more accurate.

Now I’ll bare in mind the fact that this is Alpha footage and a small dev team so I’ll try not to be too harsh. I’ve already mentioned graphics but the new perspective does amplify some of the concerns mostly around the lights on buildings. The lit-up windows don’t look like lit-up windows but more like PNGs of lit-up windows which is technically what they are. I might be nitpicking but something about them seems a bit off and I can’t quite put my finger on it. once we get to some daylight shots things do look a lot better but it also brings the emptiness of the city into light with no pedestrians, although considering the nightclub we get shown uses copy paste NPCs, this is likely just an Alpha thing.

Moving from graphics is the vehicle handling, which the TDU games were never that great at. With this game, the handling does appear to be very arcadey which isn’t a problem but it does lead to a floatiness that some people don’t like and likely explains why the 6 players were crashing a lot. This kind of handling can be unpredictable and is similar to that of The Crew which feels quite delayed.

I’m Not Convinced

All in all, I’m not sure this really feels like TDU and feels too similar to NFS, Forza or The Crew 2 which was made by some of the original TDU developers. The lack of houses, dealerships, stores and such that made TDU what it is, just places this game in a difficult position. Throughout the video the only thing that made me think “TDU” was the F.R.I.M score for doing stunts which allows you to rack up money for stunts that you have to bank in before you crash and lose it. F.R.I.M isn’t much to shout home about as it is a feature that almost every modern open-world racing game has an adaptation of.

Personally despite this being Alpha footage, I’m likely to avoid this game as it unfortunately just hasn’t been presented as a TDU game or by extension a unique game. Open-world racing games are all very fundamentally similar so to sell your game you need something unique or you just become the same as all the others. For example, Forza Horizon is an arcade racer but out of all the others, it is the most realistic in both gameplay and graphics. Need For Speed prides itself on wide customization options and fast-paced arcade-style racing. The Crew 2 offers diverse racing options with many motorsports from street racing to rally cross, motocross, touring cars and even extending beyond cars with planes and boats. These three titles offer their own unique features that separate them from the others but TDU Solar Crown, I don’t see much separating it other than its Hong Kong map which as far as I’m aware has only been previously used in Sleeping Dogs, another favourite of mine.

Hopefully, some improvements are made in the future to give the game more identity and considering they do now have more time to do so with the release date being pushed again to early 2024, there’s still some hope for houses and some of the core TDU things that made TDU work.

You can watch the stream yourself on youtube here, be sure to let me know your thoughts.