Originally Posted by Gamereactor,translation by SuperhyperTDU from TDU-Central Forum
TDU2 - Life is luxury.
Beautiful cars, fast women and general luxury of life - all of
these are fuzzing around supercar owners at least during
naptimes.
Mostly games have focused only in narrow part of Ferrari or
Aston Martin owners' world. First TDU by eden games bought in
also the outside car world with it's penthouse apartments and
yachtes the size of houses. Now the studio is aiming to give
the player more complete vision of what owning a modern
supercar means. In TDU2 you drive the cars, but you also buy
roof apartments with their garages, create clubs with your
pals and enjoy cruising around the coast.
The upcoming sequel is around 2,5 times bigger than the
original game's Oahu. It is still island, but the location is
changed to satellite modeled Ibiza, known for its parties.
Geographically varying island offers sandy coasts, forests,
open areas, mountains and ruined villages.
From the first part is also melting the singleplayer and
multiplayer together. Coming are for example co-op missions
where the other player drives and the other is the co-driver
in the same car. Many of the features make the game look a bit
like a mmorpg games because the players can work together to
develop their car clubs, race against other clubs or just fool
around together on the Ibiza roads. Cash is used to not just
buy cars but also apartments with their garages and clotches
for your character. By sponsoring your own club you get to
access cooler clubhouses and club-exclusive cars that you buy
through the club and only one club member can drive it at a
time.
Like other sandbox games, you can drive to every intresting
place that you see. New to the series is day and night change
which lights up street lights and city lights when the night
falls. Other players can be challenged to race straight from
that location to a chosen finish line. Driving is possible
outside roads, because now included are offroad 4x4s for the
inner explorer in you. Because you don't need to like the
roads, the offroad terrain is carefully detailed. Vehicles
take damage from scratches in the paint to panels falling off.
But you still can't wrap your Lamborghini around a tree.
The multiplayer lobby has been cleverly replaced by the
possibility of bouncing around other cars with your character
while the participants arrive.*
When you race you don't only gain cash, you also get
experience points.
If you aren't intrested in racing, you can forward in the game
by socializing. The system wasn't explained more than that but
the meaning of it is to offer different ways to experience the
game. A clever addition is that if you chain impressive
manouvers you get cash, so just cruising gets rewarded, but
only if you don't hit traffic, a police car or a tree stump.
In addition to the droolable car models the game brings also
decoration and great landscapes. The outfit might not be
unbeliavably amazing but the amount of detail is unbeliavable.
Inside the cars you'll find details that many people will not
see but they are part of the car's decoration in real life
like working gauges, stitching of the benches and handmade
manufacturer logos. In the car shops you can admire the cars
from outside and inside or take a little test drive before the
final buying decicion. Driving realism can be seeked also by
other ways than four wheel traction simulating or brake
wearing.
Eden games have tried to find the driving games' Graals bowl
betweed playability and realism. All cars are wanted to be
easy to learn but truly controlling them in extreme situations
would be challenging. The demo shown by the game studio's
representative shows that the cars were acting a bit sharply
but that is going to be fine tuned for the release date near
the end of the year. Attention has been paid to realistic car
behavior in other ways than handling to create an immersion.
For example the ragtop rises when the rain comes, the windows
can be opened and the high beams turn on when the night comes
to strenghten "the feeling of being there".
The shown version seemed to be technically good and the final
version should be released on the second half of 2010 for the
Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC. TDU2, including Luxury,
multiplayer gamemodes and small details, could be truly a
nugget when it's released.