Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Preview – the first truly social racer?

thesixthaxis.com:

With a freshly announced release date in September, the long wait for a new Test Drive Unlimited is coming to an end. Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown will invite players to visit Hong Kong Island for a unique driving and racing experience.

You see, Solar Crown is as much about the racing as it is the social aspects. Most racing games only give a cursory nod to your avatar’s customisation with a bundle of race suits to wear, but Solar Crown doesn’t just let you change how you look when in the cockpit and on the podium, it invites you to step out of the car at various times. There’s the lobby of the Solar Hotel – a fictional spire built into the real-world setting – and there’s both open and private areas to the hubs for the Streets and the Sharps, the two rival car racing gangs of the city. You’ll even walk around car dealerships, the workshop where you can upgrade your car, and more.

Starting by picking a Nissan 370Z as my starter car, the handling is fun and accessible by default. Of course, racing game experts will want to switch to having fewer assists, letting more of a car’s natural tendencies come through as you push it to the ragged edge in a race. KT Racing promise individualised handling and characteristics for all of the more than 100 cars that will be in the game at launch, and I look forward to more time with the game to see how they’ve pulled this off.

After picking that first car, though, players will have to be willing to embrace a tangibly slower pace to the progression. Where modern Forza Horizon games will fling so many cars at you to the point that they become almost meaningless, Solar Crown wants to make everything feel earned and desirable. Getting a new car should be exciting, it should be something that you want to drive and master, to upgrade to the max over time as you look to rise up the rankings and the leaderboards.

Through upgrades, parts changes, and driving presets, cars will be adaptable. Of course, you can soup things up to become a