This happened quite by accident. I hesitate to post about it because, well, I didn’t actually play the level. At all. I just landed in the middle of the action and watched it happen. And it was weird and disturbing and somehow touching. Poignant. I see myself returning to it. For now, however, I’m just letting this weird little experience sit.
In playing these daily levels, I’m using a selection called Lucky Dip, which basically throws me into a random community level. At the top of the Lucky Dip screen is something called “Dive In”. I didn’t know what that was, and I accidentally clicked it the other day. I was thrown into a multiplayer level in the world above. A place called sauvez willy!!. With no warning I found myself a spectator in a sackbot drama. The hapless sackbot above, with the terrified expression, was just dodging falling bits of household junk. Exploding appliances and other weird stuff. I couldn’t help. I couldn’t do anything but watch.
It was such a weird experience. I felt helpless, but completely drawn in. It’s weird how compelling these little creatures are. The expression on this little dude’s face, as he dodged for his life…it touched me. No, I didn’t play this level. It happened to me.
There’s some grand collecting going on in Test Drive Unlimited 2, which gets open-world caRPGing better than any other game. That’s not much of a compliment, since the only other contender is Fuel (the exquisite Midnight Club LA never did much to encourage open-world exploration and collecting; it was more of a grand playground than an open-world game).
But Test Drive Unlimited 2 is making the kind of funny noises that a car makes before you drop it off at the mechanic’s. The main page has a Twitter feed on the right side of the screen. It paints a dire picture:
@RECK1N @N0fun12 Thanks guys we are looking into the server connection issues that people are reporting. Will update when we have more info.
7 minutes ago
@SmackithTheDown Clubs are down for the moment to solve a cheat issue. I’ll check on the race servers issue.
about 2 hours ago
@mjosephh That is a known issue that we are working to resolve ASAP.
about 3 hours ago
@Glassjaw13 Thanks. We are looking into it now. Please keep at it and update me if the situation changes (also restart the game)
about 4 hours ago
@cros1625 Engineers are looking into the matter. Is this for all offline play or just clubs?
about 4 hours ago
I was going to tell you to join the club I’ve started, Quarter to Three, since I paid fifty grand for the darn thing. So much for that. Furthermore, I’ve been unable to get anything multiplayer going, which already makes Test Drive Unlimited 2 a suitable follow-up to Test Drive Unlimited 1. The good news is that I received the following message from Test Drive Unlimited 2 (ingame, not via Twitter):
Discovered hairdresser!
