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Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown isn’t just a racing game, it’s a lifestyle game. Developer Kylotonn has endeavoured to recreate Hong Kong Island along with its opulent luxury and underground street scene, and while the driving is where Solar Crown truly shines, it's the lifestyle and technical aspects of the game hold it back.

You step into the shoes of an upcoming racer, plucked off the streets and dropped into a spacious suite at the Solar Crown hotel. Your goal is clear: make a name for yourself on the streets of Hong Kong Island by racing and showing off in the Solar Crown competition.

The road to the top isn’t short. Unlike other racing games such as Forza Horizon 5 where you collect a new car every hour, Solar Crown is all about the bond you form with your rides. They cost a lot of money, so each purchase matters and you’ll spend loads of time in your first whip before you can buy another. Fortunately, you can test drive any car in the game as many times as you like before you buy it. You can ignore the stats because they don’t tell the full story — every vehicle in the game feels unique to drive, so you’d better spend the time finding and then saving up for your favourite.

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This is more of a sim driving game than an arcade one. There isn’t any realistic damage, but if you take a track car off-road it’ll spin out wildly. Even clipping a muddy bank or driving over a grass lane divider will cause you to wobble. The feedback of each type of terrain is brilliantly delivered by the DualSense’s haptics, with full rumble occurring along all of the controller, and the L2 paddle jittering rapidly if you brake too intensely before a tight corner. It makes it seem like you’re truly behind the wheel of each car, feeling the road beneath you.

There are many types of road to cruise along on Hong Kong Island. Narrow alleyways, wide highways, winding mountain roads, dusty off-road paths, and sandy beaches. The island is the perfect setting for a racing-cum-lifestyle game like this, and exploration is highly encouraged through the use of hidden collectibles that can net you a few new cars and extra in-game money. The Cantonese is mostly correct, and real-world locations are recreated faithfully — but unfortunately, the setting feels lacking.

Hong Kong literally translates to fragrant harbour in English, but no boats sail between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, just across the bay. Worse still, the iconic skyline of Kowloon is almost entirely hidden, nothing more than a mere silhouette obscured by the game’s shockingly low render distance. Setting the game solely on the Island is understandable, but the complete omission of the bright lights and towering skyscrapers across the water means much of the city's character is lost. The distance really isn’t that far, and even on a foggy day you can still see across the bay easily in real life.

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There’s also a shocking lack of people on the streets. Hong Kong Island is a crowded place, and what few NPCs there are stand mostly idle, moving in small, looping animations. They feel lifeless, and drain the city rather than add to it. Cantonese music is also absent; Hong Kong Island has a vibrant and diverse nightlife, but you wouldn’t know it based on the in-game radio.

Fortunately, the races help elevate the experience again. Each race comes with its own predetermined time of day and weather effects — the rain makes driving in cockpit view extremely challenging. The AI opponents are tough, so coming in first always feels like a hard-won, well-earned victory. There’s also a good variety of race types, from sprints, circuits, time attacks, and a domination mode that favours consistency over just crossing the finish line first. The tracks make full use of the island, often going from dark alleys to treacherous mountain roads, meaning you push your car to its limits in every event.

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While buying new cars takes some careful saving, upgrading your existing ones is relatively cheap. You unlock more performance and cosmetic parts as you level up your reputation, which you do by completing races and challenges around the island. The performance upgrades are fairly standard ‘make numbers go up’ fare, and the cosmetic changes are limited to rims, window tints, interior colours, and livery editing. The latter is a bit finicky, with some stickers becoming warped if they wrap around from the side to the back, or front to the side, etc., and while the selection feels limited at first, you unlock much more as you go.

Character customisation starts off similarly low key. You get a choice of masculine or feminine body type and can then edit your face and hairstyle. All clothing and hair options are available for either body type, which is a nice touch and means you can really inject some personality into your avatar. As with your cars, more clothing becomes available as you level up and when you join a clan, but it would be nice to see more accessories and even tattoo options.

The clan feature is what’s likely to keep the live service game exciting in the future. There are two: Streets and Sharps. These represent the underground subcultures and business luxury sides of Hong Kong Island. Joining one unlocks new race types that are separate to the Solar Crown competition, so these involve traffic and add an exciting dose of chaos. The clan’s identities don't really come through in the races, however. The AI opponents don’t put livery on their cars, so you can’t tell who you’re driving against at a glance, and this feels like a missed opportunity to add more character to the game and its setting.

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These are issues that should be solved by the inclusion of real players, but during the review period and even now into the early access window, Solar Crown has been plagued by technical issues. Logging in isn’t guaranteed, and most races need to be started several times before you’ll actually get into one, and even when you do, you may have to restart it if the server doesn't save your progress.

It doesn’t help that there’s no crossplay, so the pool of players you can interact with is severely limited — an odd choice for a game so apparently focused on its social aspects. You do spot other players driving around the island and hanging out in the hotel lobby or workshops, but at the moment, actually racing with others is unlikely.

Connectivity issues aside, there are regular frame rate drops on PS5, even when making use of the title's performance mode, and especially when in the cockpit view. This could be due to the car’s rear-view and wing mirrors rendering what’s behind you, but it creates a jarring experience when the game slows to a crawl as racers bunch up to round a tight corner. There’s also lots of building pop-in once they cross the render distance threshold — but otherwise everything, especially the cars, looks great.

Conclusion

Test Drive Unlimited: Solar Crown is an absolutely phenomenal driving experience when it works. Each car is unique and you spend so much time with them that you form a real bond with your machines. Races are hard-fought and the neon streets of Hong Kong Island fun enough to explore in free roam. Unfortunately, a variety of technical issues hamper the experience, and the lifestyle elements and overall atmosphere of Hong Kong Island leave much to be desired. This is an ongoing, live service game with many seasons planned, so hopefully a lot of these issues can be ironed out. Until then, though, it’s still a pleasure to drive around in your favourite car, just soaking up the road.

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