And that’s just it - the magic of Test Drive Unlimited, despite its feats as a piece of software, isn’t instantly apparent. It’s in the overall experience it’s attempting to give you, and one you can only settle into after you’ve spent a few hours taking in that particular, laid-back, grown-up playboy lifestyle it offers. You drive in any direction just for the sheer joyous freedom of it, not because you’re hunting for secret tokens or a hidden crocodile farm that unlocks helicopters.
Work your way through the game’s opening stretch - an auto-GPS system will guide you between challenges you’ve not completed, if you want - and start to bulk out your garage, and one of two things will happen. Either you’ll drop the pad and start to crave something with more focus, or it suddenly all clicks into place, and you find yourself getting all excited about buying a new house (there are plenty) while smiling dumbly as you sit in a car showroom, checking out the interior of each vehicle and making its windows go up and down, excited at the prospect of expanding your collection of motors and eager to take a new purchase out for an extended spin (or simply a time-limited test drive or rental, if you’ve not built up the cash).
