Test Drive 6

[lastcallgames]

Now that we've all played too much of London in Test Drive 6 I feel it's high time to review the game.

There's no reason for me to like this as much as I do. However, I played the tar out of the PC version as a wee lad, which obviously obscures my perspective (a rose tinted windshield, if you will).

Test Drive 6 is certainly flawed. Like many Infogrames games, it's a lazy at best PS1 port, instead of a port of the vastly superior PC version (which admittedly, would not quite run on a Dreamcast). As such, the graphics take a big hit compared to the PC, though it does have all the modes and songs of the computer port. Still, it's not a fantastic looking game by any stretch of the imagination, and the bizarre choice to use small numbers for the display instead of the larger ones from the PC is head scratching.

The gameplay is a mixed bag. The controls are pretty good, if a tad twitchy. The analog triggers work wonderfully for the throttle/brake, and the stick does the job of steering, though you'll probably want to adjust it to understeer in the career (it was the same on PC as well). However the computer AI is laughable. Literally. Some drivers will get stuck on literally nothing (as happened in one of my cop chases in the video), and others will drive straight into you. The game also has some strange clipping issues, especially with lightposts. In London, one of the first lightposts you come across has hit detection about half the time. Sometimes it stops you, sometimes you go right on through. It's certainly strange, but it allowed me to shave precious seconds off my time.

The amount of content is commendable to be certain. There's a dozen tracks (not all of which are available at the start), with backwards versions of each, and over 40 cars to customize and upgrade. Besides "practice" mode, which is really a single race, there's a career, where you can race single races, tournaments, and do the cop chases alluded to earlier. Combine that with the pretty good late 90s/early 2000s rock soundtrack, and there's definitely fun to be had. The Dreamcast has a split screen mode that I didn't play through in this run.

All in all, Test Drive 6 is an entertaining game with glaring flaws (which seems to be the consensus of others I've heard recently). That's why I gave it a 7/10. Certainly entertaining, but not a technical wonder.