Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown was provided by Nacon for review. Thank you!
Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown has been one of the most eagerly anticipated racing games. With the Test Drive series lying dormant for over ten years, I wondered if Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown would bring the series back to its former glory experienced on the PS2 and Xbox 360, offering players a large map to explore, a car collection to build, houses to buy, and a social experience as you meet other drivers.
Sadly, while Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown does tick some boxes, I think most fans will be left wanting.
Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown seems awkward between the classic open-world racer of Test Drive Unlimited 1/2 and the modern open-world racers of The Crew and Forza Horizon series. It tries to be a jack of all trades and becomes a master of none.
The car physics, for example, is a highlight for me. The cars are made to feel weighty and realistic, and it feels good to drive them. The sounds are pretty decent, too. They're not as good as The Crew Motorfest sounds, but they help drive home the power of your cars.
Unfortunately, although the car physics are reminiscent of the Test Drive Unlimited games of the past, the open world is straight out of what you might find in Forza Horizon or The Crew: a more dense environment with plenty of debris and clutter. The two don't mix well. In Forza or The Crew, you can largely push through most debris with little penalty, but with Test Drive, in the pursuit of realism, hitting a safety barrier or a lamppost can easily halve your speed from 140 MPH to 70 MPH, ruining your race.
When driving through downtown Hong Kong, there are plenty of lamp posts, barriers, fences, hedges, and lines of trees. It becomes very difficult to avoid them. It is frustrating that a slight slip-up can cause such a catastrophic result, and it can quickly descend into figuring out how to go around the 90-degree corner without touching any bushes or scenery.
The game's AI exemplifies issues like this. The game uses a performance point system, similar to what almost all racers do now. But in Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, the AI with more performance points seems to mean, "We go faster on straight now." You may have your car at the performance point ceiling for the event, but that doesn't mean an AI won't breeze past you going 30 MPH faster than you are, only to brake excessively for the upcoming corner so you can overtake easily.
The AI seems to operate on a different level to players, having impossibly fast cars occasionally and then purposefully slowing down at points that allow players to catch up. It feels like you're playing a racing game from the '90s or '00s when this kind of thing was common before developers figured out how to make competent AI that followed the same rules as the player had to. The fact that many events have cars at performance level 400 and others at 550, competing at the same speed as each other, proves that the AI is programmed to go at set speeds and isn't using their car. It isn't very pleasant.
Perhaps the most egregious of all is that this game has no AI difficulty option. So, if you find the AI too difficult or easy, you'll just have to deal with it. If you're not an experienced racing game player and losing every race, you can't do anything about it.
This may be a victim of the game's online-only, almost MMO-like setup. The game tries to matchmake every time you start a race, with the developers clearly intending for you to play with players, and the AI is only a fallback if no players are found. Unfortunately, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown did not have a very good launch, and player numbers are thin, meaning you likely won't find any players to play with. In all the races I did for this review, I found 0 players while matchmaking, so you best hope you can compete with the AI.
If you were like me, you would probably be excited to hear that the world of Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown was a 1:1 recreation of Hong Kong Island. Unfortunately, what makes Hong Kong, well, Hong Kong, is the bright lights and the bustling streets. This is a heavily urbanized area, and the game just does not pull that off. The world is empty and bland, there are no pedestrians to speak of, and traffic is light, likely for gameplay purposes. There's also no traffic during the races, which is pretty disappointing. And with traffic being handled server-side, I occasionally experienced some lagging and random pop-outs.
Yes, some of the streets light up in some colors at night, but even then, there's a tremendous lack of bright signage for shops and businesses. Occasionally, your car will light up pink as you pass a certain store on the side of the road, but that's about it. The fact that the developers seemed not to emphasize the critical points of the city of Hong Kong makes you feel like they may not have even researched the area properly or at least didn't care enough to represent it well.
There's also a feeling of blandness and emptiness in what you can do. Games like Forza Horizon have activities in the game world, such as drift events, jumps, slaloms, and speed cameras/zones. Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown seems to have limited itself to just Speed Cameras and the odd collectible immediately highlighted on your map whenever you go anywhere near it. You get bonus reputation for exploring and finding all the roads in the game, but it feels like there isn't much point in doing so, as there's not much to find beyond the odd car wreck that you can restore and some credits lying around.
I went exploring in the rural, driving offroad, which felt a bit too icy for my liking, and there was just... nothing. On the dirt roads, there was no traffic or any hidden secrets. No special places were hiding some treasure, no hidden buildings that unlocked a new feature. There just seems to be very little reason to explore the world.
Unlike previous Test Drive Unlimited games, you can't find houses to buy that expand your garage space, which is a crying shame, as I know that was a much-requested feature of many fans of the series, including myself.
The progression is also a bit of a bugbear with me, with most cars (nearly all) being locked behind level walls, meaning you need to earn enough reputation to buy a car, not just credits. You may have been able to afford that car you saw, but to purchase an upgrade to your first car, you'll need to play for several hours to earn enough reputation. By this point, you'll have finally earned the right to buy that Alfa Romeo 4C with that powerful 240HP engine... Except I started in a Nissan 370Z with a 350HP engine...
Visually, the game looks okay, but I can't tell you too much beyond that because Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is an unoptimized mess. Running at 1080p Medium settings, my Ryzen 5 5600G and RX 6600XT PC varied between 25 FPS and 60 FPS, depending on my area. Given that I can run Forza Horizon 5 at 1440p Ultra at a rock solid 60 FPS, AND it looks better, this is a pretty dire set of affairs. I couldn't test and see how it looks on High or Ultra, as I don't have access to a high-end gaming PC that can handle that, even at 720p.
Lastly, there are indoor environments, and my main question is... why? This is a driving/racing game, yet every car showroom, the clan headquarters, your hotel room, the hotel lobby, the workshop where you tune your car, you get the idea. They ALL have walkable areas where you have to park up, go inside, and then slowly stroll over to the console and press a button to do something that should have just popped up as a menu as soon as you entered the building.
Like many things in Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, it feels like poor game design and a little pointless. I'm playing a racing game, not an RPG, and I don't want to wander through the interior of buildings, meet NPCs I don't care about, and be given new quests.
Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown does have some potential. It's billed as a live-service game, as you might expect these days, with the first year's roadmap already planned out, which includes adding an in-game casino and map expansions. But rather than add all this new content, I think they need to fix its underlying faults first by improving the AI, giving us difficulty options, stopping dictating what cars players can and cannot buy, and adding more reasons to explore the game world such as additional activities and buyable houses or worthwhile secrets to find, and at least doing some optimization to what is a mess of a game right now.
Unfortunately, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown uses the SARD Anti-Cheat method, an AI-powered Kernel-Level Anti-Cheat that does not, and likely never will, support Linux. Playing it is impossible on Linux devices such as the Steam Deck.
Besides driving assists such as Traction Control, ABS, and a Suggested Racing Line, the only accessibility option in Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is the ability to turn subtitles on/off.
Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown could be so much more than it is. But the game feels rushed, with some poor game design choices here and there, such as locking most of the cars behind a high-level cap, meaning players will need to play hours just to drive... a Corvette... With the lack of activities in the game, you have little choice but to grind races repeatedly to earn credits and reputation to buy a single car.
The reputation gained from exploration is low, and the credits that can be earned are non-existent, with a race earning several times what a single secret credit pickup rewards you. While driving around in free-roam can be fun, there's no progression to be made, unlike in other games in this genre, so it feels largely pointless.
Suppose you have friends who are also going to get the game. In that case, it might be more of a fun time, but as a single-player game in which many people will be given a low player count, I can't recommend you look at Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown right now. The AI is poor, there's a lack of variety in the activities you can do, and the game's general performance isn't great.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
If you enjoyed this review, be sure to check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety of game reviews and news that are sure to help your gaming experience. Whether you're looking for news, tips and tutorials, game settings and reviews, or just want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, we've got your back.
Monster Jam Showdown was provided by PLAION. for review. Thank you!
There's quite a stigma attached to Monster Truck games these days. After having what seems like a deluge of low-quality titles on the PS2 and Wii systems, I certainly had a negative view of any game that was focused on Monster Trucks. Fortunately, Monster Jam Showdown is a game trying to buck the trend, and it was a surprisingly good time.
Monster Jam Showdown feels like a love letter to Monster Trucks in general. The driving model feels fun and great, with a bouncy suspension keeping the trucks bouncing after hard landings and drifting around the corners. The game's driving can be complex or simple, depending on how you have your assists set up, with the game asking you to steer both the front and rear wheels with the left and right thumbstick, respectively, although you can ask the game to handle the rear wheels for you if you wish.
The driving is the highlight of Monster Jam Showdown, with a boost system that rewards you for destruction and drifts during races and a fun control scheme that grants you some air control and fine control over the Monster Truck's steering. It all combines to make a good physics-driven racer that rewards skilled driving.
If you are a Monster Truck fan, you'll see famous trucks featured, such as Max-D, Grave Digger, and Higher Education.
The events take place across three environments, namely Colorado, Alaska, and California's Death Valley, with these representing woodland, snow/ice, and desert, respectively. There's a decent variety of tracks, although, during the "Showdown" career mode, you will notice repeats after a few races. These events are spread over a few types: general circuit racing, figure-8 racing with an increased risk of collisions, and stunt events where you must pull off stunts such as back/front flips, drifts, destruction, and more to build up a good combo. There are also a few other event types you can encounter.
The AI is reasonably competent in the hardest difficulty setting. If you are an experienced racing game driver and want a challenge, you should select Hard from the get-go. I played on Medium and generally won most races by 10-20 seconds. Hard should provide a decent challenge for most players, though.
The game mainly has two modes: the Showdown mode, essentially a Career mode, and multiplayer mode. The Showdown mode has over 100 events and should keep you busy for 10 hours or more if you want to 100% it. You'll play pretty much everything the game offers as you go through Showdown mode.
In multiplayer, you have the choice of playing Online or in Split-Screen. I didn't test the split-screen as I was playing on my Steam Deck, but I did get the chance to hop into a couple of online events, and the network code seems solid, with four racers in both events. I didn't notice any lag or unnatural movement of other vehicles. You can also create a party of up to 8 players to do a private event using your settings, allowing you to choose the mode and track yourself.
Visually, I was pleasantly surprised with Monster Jam Showdown. The environments look nice, the vehicles have reflections and good shading on them with the right settings, and the particle effects for dust and water also play their part in bringing together an overall nice picture. You can also cosmetically damage your Monster Truck, with parts bending and flying off of your vehicle, which is a nice touch, even if there is no mechanical penalty.
Sounds are a mixed bag. I enjoyed the music in the game, which has an almost hip-hop flavor, and the vehicle engines are also decent, although not the best I've heard. One thing that did annoy me and resulted in me disabling it was the commentator's voice. Generally, you can't hear the commentator, but in stadium environments during stunt events, they comment during the event, which I found to be pretty annoying. Fortunately, the game allows you to disable commentary without affecting the rest of the game's sound.
Is Monster Jam Showdown a top racing game, then? I'm not sure I would go that far. It's limited in its scope, focusing solely on Monster Trucks, and it does quite well. There is a good selection of tracks and a few game modes, and while it's entertaining to play, I'm not sure the $50 price tag (at the time of this review) is necessarily warranted.
The online mode might add some longevity once you finish the Showdown mode, but player numbers on Steam for the first few hours after launch are quite low, and the multiplayer matches I played only filled up to half the lobby. The game does have cross-platform support, which should help it in the long run, but I would purchase this for its single-player first and foremost.
Monster Jam Showdown is mostly a good experience on the Steam Deck. You get 1280x800 resolution support, and the controller support works well for the most part. However, I did encounter a glitch in the menus that prevented me from selecting some options, necessitating the use of the touchscreen. Also, on the first boot, you must link your Epic Games account, which requires the touchscreen to just hit 1 button if your Steam and Epic accounts are already linked.
There is currently an issue with in-game videos where they appear black. Fortunately, the game doesn't feature many in-game videos. The only time I encountered them was during the intro and the tutorial. If the game appears to be hung on a black screen upon booting, just hit A, as it's likely playing the intro video that isn't being rendered properly.
Regarding SteamOS settings, we'll be applying a frame rate limit of 30 FPS; no TDP Limit for this one.
We're mostly using "Low" settings here, which means we get the basic features of each visual effect, such as some reflections, ambient occlusion, and lens flare/bloom. Texture Detail stays on "High" and Shadows on "Medium." I recommend you keep the Frame Rate Limit option in-game to 120, as the in-game frame limiter is poor, and your framerate can go above and below 30 if you use it.
With these settings, you should get a 99.9% stable 30 FPS throughout the game, I tried these settings on every environment and on multiple tracks, and never really saw any frame drops, so it's a very "smooth" experience, as smooth as 30 FPS can be at least.
The power draw changes depending on the track you're on. Wooded tracks are the highest battery killers, so expect around 16-21W of power draw. Steam Deck LCD owners can expect around 2 hours of battery life, with Steam Deck OLED owners getting around 2.5 hours.
Temperatures hovered between 70-80C, with the fan noise going up and down during play.
If you don't fancy playing a racing game at 30 FPS, I can offer you a preset that allows 40 FPS. You can set a 40 FPS / 40 Hz limit in SteamOS; no TDP Limit again here.
All the settings have to be at their lowest option, except Texture Detail, which we can keep on "High." Again, make sure the in-game frame limiter isn't set to 30 FPS, as it does a poor job of stabilizing the framerate.
Like the 30 FPS preset, I found these settings to deliver an almost entirely stable 40 FPS experience. You lose out on visual niceties, such as reflections and effects, but you gain some FPS, which might be more important to you.
The power draw is a bit higher on this preset, partially because the CPU must work harder to hold 40 FPS. You can expect to see a power draw between 16 and 24W, depending on your track. Therefore, you might struggle to hit even 2 hours of battery life from a Steam Deck LCD, although the OLED should manage 2 hours.
Temperatures were also higher, hanging around 75-85C. The fan was almost always running fast.
Monster Jam Showdown's accessibility mostly falls under the realm of driving aids. This includes braking and steering assist and the ability to slow down offline races if the game is a bit too fast-paced for you.
If Monster Jam Showdown's goal was to become the best Monster Truck game available right now, to my knowledge, that goal has been accomplished. While its focus on the Monster Truck genre may make it a niche product, it should satisfy anyone looking for a game that fills that niche. With satisfying driving physics, different event types, and a good-looking game, Monster Jam Showdown is a competent racer.
The Showdown Tour mode offers a good chunk of gameplay there. Hopefully, the online mode, coupled with cross-platform multiplayer, will stay active for a decent amount of time to allow players that extra piece of replayability.
Regarding Steam Deck compatibility and performance, there are a couple of issues, mainly the need to use a touchscreen at rare points and issues with in-game videos. However, in terms of performance and stability, the game does run quite well on the Steam Deck, and I can give Monster Jam Showdown a thumbs up as a perfectly playable Steam Deck title.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
If you enjoyed this review, be sure to check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety of game reviews and news that are sure to help your gaming experience. Whether you're looking for news, tips and tutorials, game settings and reviews, or just want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, we've got your back.
MiLE HiGH TAXi was provided to us by Cassius John-Adams to review. Thank you!
Did you ever wish Crazy Taxi was set in a futuristic universe where you could travel forward, backward, upwards, and downwards? Well...Here you go! MiLE HiGH TAXi is a love letter to the arcade-style games of the 2000s. You will choose your driver and fly through a futuristic city, picking up people and driving them to their destinations. Choose between Standard or Sequential modes to pick up customers and drive them, or go into Free Roam and just drive around the city, taking in the sights. Now climb into your taxi, turn on that meter, and let's make some money!
As a big fan of Crazy Taxi, I was super excited to play this game! And while I overall enjoyed the gameplay, there were a few bugs and issues I encountered that hindered this completely. In the good, I definitely felt that Crazy Taxi vibe playing through the game. Picking up people and maneuvering fast brought those sweet sweet memories back in a world that looks vibrant and filled. The game is also straightforward, which reminds me of the simple arcade machines where you just sit down and start playing.
Unfortunately, the UI and bugs come into play a little bit more than I would have liked. While the gameplay is enjoyable, going through the menus felt clunky and harder to navigate. I could tell what I was selecting, but pressing B to go back at the main menu would close out the entire thing instead of just going back a page. I also got stuck at a menu that made me need to restart as I couldn't get rid of the black box. The music is alright and does pump some adrenaline to keep me going, but the talking of the driver, passenger, and other people around can get really obnoxious as they all talk over each other and ruin the musical vibe. I ended up just turning the sound completely off and listening to my own music.
Overall, I felt the game was rushed. The character models aside, it feels like a stripped version of the game it could be. I understand it is trying to emulate the arcade styles of old, but adding in some modern QoL features (like being able to go back to the main menu when in-game) and refined UI would have significantly improved my experience with MiLE HiGH TAXi.
With a game that looks like this, I had gunned for this game to run at 60 FPS. For a game that relies on speed, fluidity is heavily important here. Unfortunately, the game is not able to effectively hit it during most of the gameplay. Flying through the city without any caps, I tended to drain around up to 20W and settle around 45-50 FPS, with some spots going down to 40 FPS.
I also tested turning off the settings there, which didn't do much. Post Processing has a lot going on here, and while turning it off helped slightly overall, it changed how the entire game looks, so I wouldn't recommend doing it. I did also try forcing resolution down to see if this would improve how the game runs, but it ultimately didn't help much. I also tried forcing Proton, so I didn't use the Linux native version of the game, but performance stayed the same.
With this in mind, I was able to get a stable 40 FPS with a TDP limit of 9 and GPU Clock Frequency of 800. This kept the game with a drain of around 11W - 13W for an average battery life around 3 - 3.5 hours.
I did encounter some spots where there was some noticeable asset pop-in or just my taxi would clip through bridges, but this didn't happen often. But there were a couple of other issues that bothered me a little.
While I mentioned the UI being a bit hard to navigate through, I did have notice that the loading screens or menus never filled the entire screen. While in some instances, this would make sense, but it felt like it was supposed to fill the screen as it would start off not covering it all and then fill the screen. It is something small, but it stood out a little bit to me.
Another thing to note is the controls. The left stick defines which direction you are going in where the right stick moves you in that direction on a 3D plane without changing the way you're facing. Coupled with the right trigger to accelerate, this can be hard to control at times. It got much easier once I got used to it, but it did take me time to adjust.
MiLE HiGH TAXi is a mixed bag for me. On one hand, I love the Crazy Taxi influences and really does bring back that hectic, awesome feeling I got from playing the originals. On the other hand, the lack of optimization for performance, UI issues, and bugs can tear down an experience that could be amazing with a little more refinement. And while it is playable on the Steam Deck, it feels like a missed opportunity to really make it a go-to game for my library.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
If you enjoyed this review, be sure to check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety game reviews and news that are sure to help your gaming experience. Whether you're looking for news, tips and tutorials, game settings and reviews, or just want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, we've got your back
