Though far from realistic, each vehicle handles, reacts and even sounds palpably different to the last. Take a Jag E-type out on the road and you’ll know it’s a classic car just by the steely roar of the engine. There’s a reasonably irritating fly in the antifreeze, in that the licensed cars are - at the stern behest of their manufacturers - entirely indestructible. You can absolutely trash the poor NPC saps on the road (their vehicles are familiar-looking fabrications), but every player is driving something from another universe. This isn’t TDU ’s fault, and to have plumped for damageable replicas instead of the real thing would have halved its appeal, but it adds a slight note of surrealism, which takes the edge off all the attention to detail.
Partly, that’s because the robustness of the cars, the openness of the world and the total lack of concern for human life gives TDU something of a GTA vibe. Hitting a lamppost at 160mph and coming to an immediate halt with neither the car nor the post receiving so much as a scratch on their paintwork feels pretty weird. It’s particularly aggravating when this happens mid-race. Laboriously reversing away from the unyielding pole you’ve hit takes ages, usually losing you the contest, and simply doesn’t feel in keeping with your car’s ability to survive a ten foot drop unscathed.
