Test Drive 2 review - Sega Megadrive

When it's a sunny day, most people think of having a picnic or going out for a day at the seaside. Not so you, who would much prefer to see how fast you can drive your expensive sports car. The trouble is, your arch-rival (who's also in possession of a smart automobile) has had the same idea. So it's thrash central as you and the other driver race full tilt along public roads attempting to be the first past predesignated checkpoints.

Test Drive 2 is an updated conversion of the reasonably successful home computer game. It's a driving simulator (now there's a surprise), viewed from the driver's seat with you, the player, flogging the car to its limits in an attempt to become Mr Driving Head of the Year.

What the Mean Machines staff thought

Test Drive 2 incorporates some new and neat ideas, which along with the smart presentation should have made it a winner. Sadly, this is as far as The Duel's good points go. For starters, the collision detection is ridiculous - you must have the widest car ever built. Even if you think you've only just scraped your wing mirror you can expect to see the windscreen shatter signalling the loss of a life. The controls are also wildly over-responsive, resulting in much crashing and general needless doom. The in-game sprites are poorly drawn, the backgrounds are bland and the 3D update is some of the worst I've ever seen on the Megadrive. The sound is of a similarly low quality with an ever present grating engine drone and a couple of tunes obviously blagged from Outrun to assault your eardrums. If it's racing thrills you're after, Super Monaco GP or Road Rash are still the ones to go for.

The thought of driving three of the world's hottest cars to their limits on public highways certainly had me working myself into a frenzy of anticipation, but sadly the end result is an anti-climax on a grand scale. It seems fun at first, but there are two big flaws which eventually spoil the game - the dodgy collision detection and the awful graphics. You crash into things when they're miles in front leaving you with the distinct impression that the bonnet on each car is about thirty feet long. The same crash problems occur when you're nipping in and out of traffic - you're judged to have side-swiped a car when it seems like you've given it plenty of berth. On the graphics side the presentation screens are nicely drawn and the car interiors are good, but the oncoming cars are laughably badly drawn, the backgrounds are simple and bland and, the thing that really spoils the game, the 3D update is jerky and completely unrealistic. Test Drive 2 could have been a stunner, but sadly it falls far short of its considerable potential. If it's high-speed thrills and spills you're after, check out Road Rash.