PlayStation 3 Review: Test Drive Unlimited 2 - Page 6

The police presence has returned, and is more brutal and refined than ever.  I find it difficult sometimes to initiate a pursuit; the game implies that if a cop witnesses any traffic violation, they will watch you and eventually give chase if you keep it up, but the only way I could attract their attention is by ramming a cop car deliberately, or the car immediately in front of a cop.  Once they start after you, though, it's no picnic.  Rather than the progressively aggressive setup in the original TDU, these cops will throw everything they have at you as soon as you get on their bad side.  Roadblocks, ramming, EMP, and overwhelming you into a corner feels downright abusive the first few times you encounter it, and makes the cops from Hot Pursuit comparitively look like wimps.  They also added a helicopter to the mix that can somehow magically pin you down if you spend too much time off-road.  Granted, going cross-country in the first TDU was a good way to lose a particularly persistent tail, so this does make it more challenging at least.  If you do manage to escape, successive getaways will start to build you a reputation.  Apparently you can also progress as a cop yourself, chasing down outlaws and bringing swift justice to their offenders, but I've not found a way to initiate this in single player, and it would make more sense as a multiplayer mode.  From what I've seen, this one mode is as much if not more fun than the entirety of the recent Need for Speed that tried the same thing as its entire focus.

Buying houses to increase garage space is a feature I was never crazy about in this franchise, and it's perhaps more tedious the second time around, as you'll be hoarding cash for some special car you want to buy, reach that point, go to the dealership, and find out you can't buy it because you need more garage space, and paying for that is going to eat up most of what you just earned.  Ugh.  They still haven't given players the option to change cars on the fly.  To do so, you have to go to the house that contains the car you want to access it, and it's not always immediately obvious which cars are at which houses.  Tedious.
 
It is possible to earn some free money using the F.R.I.M. reward system while driving, which awards you cash for taking risks like narrowly missing traffic or drifting around corners or speeding excessively.  However, this is only available in free roam mode, seldom nets you more than a hundred bucks here and there, and there were races where I really wished it were still turned on, as I'd taken some unnecessary risks only to be reminded there was no pay-out for it.  This contasts against the system in the PS2 version of TDU where you would earn points toward leveling up for simply driving on the road, drifting, drafting, or doing other dangerous stuff, whether it was in an event or just free roaming.  Another quirk to the F.R.I.M. system is that, since if you hit something while earning and haven't banked the money yet you lose it, it's aggravating that object collision isn't consistent.  For example, you could cruise down the street taking out every street sign on the block and not lose your F.R.I.M. balance accrual, but if you so much as brush up against a shrub, you lose it all.  Similarly, GPS navigation is voiced audibly in free roam, but not during events.  What?  Lastly, this is the first racing game I've seen in years where drafting doesn't work.  Not only are you not rewarded for it, but it also won't give you a speed advantage on the player in front of you that I've noticed.

Article Author: Mark Buckingham

Mark Buckingham is an avid freelancer, gamer, tech-head, reader, movie watcher, pianist, guitarist, and hockey player.

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