Overview:
- Estimated achievement difficulty: 6/10
- Offline: 38 [890]
- Online: 8 [110]
- Approximate amount of time to 950: 20-30 hours
- Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
- Number of missable achievements: None
- Do cheat codes disable achievements: No Cheats
- Does difficulty affect achievements: No
- Glitched achievements: None
- Unobtainable achievements: "Sharing Custom Challenges", "Custom Challenge Victories", "Club Member", "Club Race Victories", "Trade"
- Extra equipment needed: No
Note: Due to the closing of the servers of this game, if you don't have the above achievements already, there is a maximum of 950 available in this game. You can still play the ranked races for the Multiplayer Victories achievements.
Introduction:
Test Drive is a fun and rather relaxing arcade racer set in a reincarnation of the beautiful environment of the Hawaiian island of O’ahu. The environment is no little city to race in either, it features over 1000 miles of roads to race around on. Besides discovering your inner car aficionado and becoming the biggest private residence owner of the island of O’ahu there is a whole lot of driving you can do. You can drag in the city streets, live out an Autobahn fantasy on their stick straight interstates or rally your way through the many mountainous s-turns located throughout the island. Maybe you just want to drop your top (talking about your cars top, of course!), and just sit on the beach and admire the beautiful scenery the island has to offer. Whatever strikes your driving fancy, it can probably be done in the world of Test Drive: Unlimited. The game features 46 achievements and no real story mode of the typical standards. You’re basically just plowing your way through this little Hawaiian island making yourself as wealthy as possible and establishing the biggest car and home collection on the planet. You can replay any race as many times as you wish as many times as you please and almost all missions can be replayed too. The one exception to that is that you can’t replay the car courier missions after you’ve already beat them but being as you can test drive any car in the game that you want and those missions can be tedious they really aren’t missed.
Single Player Walkthrough:
As I mentioned above the game has no true story line and therefore can be completed at your desired order with each new milestone unlocking new missions and races. There are a total of 60 races and 120 missions. You can check your progress on how many are left for each in one of your homes. Just visit the menus and go to Info>Achievements. Some missions and races have regulations for their event but plenty of them do not. If you’re facing a challenging event and it has no regulations you can choose to wait it out till you get a superior car to race it in and make it easier for you. For ones that do have regulations my advice is to always compete in a car with a Stage 3 kit and if it has class regulations to make sure that you are using the best car that class has to offer.
Group G
- Shelby Corba Daytona Edition
- Lamborghini Muira P4000SV (If, Shelby is too expensive)
Group F
- Alfa Romeo... (Level 2 Perf. Upgrade)
Group E
- Nissan R34 Skyline
Group D
- Aston Martin D89 Coupe
Group C
- TVR Sagaris
Group B
- Corvette Z06 Coupe
- Ferrari F430
Group A
- Saleen
- Ferrari Enzo
Group MB
- Kawasaki Z1000
Group MA
- MV Augusta Tamburini
- Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10
* If you can't afford some of these cars, take a look at the "Money Making Tip" at the bottom of the guide.
-Thanks to Maka for all Group info!
There really are no inane races or missions that will truly test the grit of your arcade racing talent. A few races have shown to be a bit of a hassle though so here is another helpful hint by Maka for three of those annoying races.
Millionaire's Club:
This time Trial takes approx. an hour. It isnt exactly hard, but it is long, and can get a little boring. I suggest an Enzo, Saleen or Mv Agusta.
Tantalus:
This is a 9.0 Mile, race down a mountain to the top of another. It's goal time is 7'30"00. This time isnt anything out of this wrold, but is a little challenging. Remember Fast Is Slow, Slow Is Fast. Take Your Time, and DONT crash, as the penalty will hurt your time a lot. You do start with a 200 bar, so crashing ten times, will disqualify you.
Maserati Day:
This is also another difficult time trail. You need a Maserati MC12 to beat it without serious problems. The performance kit, helps but is not necessary. Take your time, and don’t hit cars, as it has a lot of speed part, and crashing will lower your time by quite a lot.
The biggest pains for single player achievements came from Eagle-eyed Driver and Explorer for me. Eagle-eyed driver requires you to drive 5,000 miles and Explorer requires driving on every road in the game. As with both I would recommend to waiting till you’ve gotten every other achievement in the game before you attempt to go after these two exclusively. Eagle-eyed challenge will merely be a game of grinding out driving around. I would recommend getting in your favorite exotic and just driving around the interstates at the highest speed possible until you hit 5,000 if you hadn’t already gotten it through the challenges. You can check your stats at Info>Achievements to determine how many more miles you need. For Explorer you can see which roads you have and have not driven on through the pause map because roads that are unexplored will be gray while roads that are explored will be blue. This one can get challenging because it can be very hard to see tiny little gray roads especially on a small TV once you’ve "blue'd" out almost the entire map. When you feel you’ve discovered the majority of the map and are having a hard time figuring out what you are missing, make sure to check the city streets and the on and off ramps of the interstates. Those little corners for the on and off ramps are quite difficult to see so they are easy to miss. If you’re still missing roads just give the entire map a long tedious look over multiple times because I would keep finding little roads I looked over the previous time I viewed the map. You can also check the actual number of roads you have discovered and need to discover in your houses under the menus at Info>Achievements>Road Tabs
For all the achievements regarding buying cars and houses here is the fastest money making process in the game.
*Money Making Tip: This is a pretty straight forward way of making a large amount of money in a small amount of time. First you must become a "Champion" Rank in the Game, by getting 450 GamerScore in the game. Once you gain the rank, you will unlock "Speed" Challenge Called "180mph in Heavy Traffic" It is located near the middle of the map. It is worth $70,000. Take a fast Car (Rent one, if you don't have one, once your done with the rental, you'll have enough for a nice car of your own.) Simply start the race, pass the start line, and turn around. Head in that (oppsoite from start) direction on the side lane of the road, and get to 180mph. Hit , than Rinse and Repeat. You should be able to get $140,000 in under a minute, including loading times.
Props to Maka for the money making tip
Multiplayer:
For the multiplayer victory and club victory achievements I would recommend using the forums as this game is quite old and therefore the multiplayer is pretty dead which makes boosting matches rather simple. The instant challenge victory achievement is marked as an online achievement on this game even though it can be accomplished on and offline. You can merely find CPU drivers driving around offline and flash your lights at them to wager and race or you can boost it online with a trading partner using the same tactics. The biggest pain comes from the custom challenges victories are harder to boost and almost anyone can come in and beat the leader board score for it anytime the event is available. Thankfully since the game is nearly dead you do not have to really worry about too many people challenging your scores. If you can’t get this one through skill means you can always set up a long and complicated event because there is next to no chance that people will want to compete in an hour long event.
Conclusion:
Test Drive is rather simple arcade racer that is also quite a fun experience. It offers a few challenging achievements but nothing that should be dastardly enough to not be possible for even a novice racer. This game brought me years of fun and I feel rather you’re playing for achievements or just for the game you’re going to have fun either way.
[XBA would like to thank PointPlaceWI for this road map]