Test Drive Unlimited 2: greed is good

Once you get involved in the social aspects of Test Drive Unlimited 2, you’re presented with a stark choice: do you want to spend your money on yourself or on your club? I’ve chosen to spend most of my money on myself. I’ve got cars to buy and houses to own.

After the jump, money won’t buy me love, but it will buy me a waterfall

You need five million dollars to upgrade a club so that it can have more than eight members and its rare exclusive cars. Getting that amount of money shouldn’t be hard since all those douchey fools in the Solar Crown championship are so willing to throw money away. They gave me a full million just to drive around the entirety of Ibiza in my Subaru Impreza! Fools.

But the more I play, the more I realize that getting money and saving it are very different things. If I’m willing to race a championship or a more lucrative cup series, coming by money is easy. Since the developers decided that racing was basically optional, they’ve also left out all sorts of gimmicks that make racing difficult, such as rubberbanding, AI competency, and safeguards against wildly improper shortcuts. First place prize money is yours for the taking, so long as you’ve got a little bit of time on your hands and the stomach for an occasional elimination match. After winning the first Solar Crown cup on Oahu, I had several million dollars which would have been enough to get the club close to its goal of five million dollars.

But there are things to buy. I’m tired of poking around in my Subaru Impreza. My Aston Martin DB9 Coupe handles far too poorly for my taste. And, my god, why did I ever buy a Land Rover? If I’ve got cash to spend then it means its time to head over to any one of the numerous car dealerships and slum with other gamers for a few minutes while I decide what cars to buy. It isn’t that hard. I need to fill out the stable with all the standard car classes so that I can gain an achievement. I eventually drive away with a few more automotive masterpieces. The Mercedes-Benz ML 63 AMG so that I can chart the vast interior offroads Oahu has provided me. Plus, I thought it was what Richard Hammond was driving during one Top Gear challenge a few years back. I was wrong, but now I have an offroading beast that can even outrun the Impreza on asphalt. Some might snap up a Bugatti Veyron, but not me. I’m not so pedestrian as to just buy the fastest thing on the market. I’d rather have style, or at the very least a lime green RUF Rturbo.

I need space in the garage for these cars. An Ariel Atom, a Jaguar XKR, a Caterham Superlight R500, and an exceedingly expensive Citroen 2CV have to go somewhere. Each house you buy has a set number of garage spaces, so in one of its few nods to realism, you need several houses to amass a Leno-sized collection. The expensive house give you a great view. Take, for instance, my newest house on Oahu, nestled alongside a mountain ridge on the eastern side of the island and overlooking a magnificent bay. But that isn’t the best part of my house. I’ve got a goddamned motherfucking waterfall. Someone built this thing on top of a waterfall and now I own it. Suck it, fellow clubmates. I’ve got a fucking waterfall house with an attached garage that has enough automotive appeal to lure the Stig over for brunch.

If I’ve learned anything after being handed this pile of cash, it’s that money will buy me enough cars, houses, and Swedish sofa sets to offset any sadness I might have over the lack of friends playing this game. All you other people can suck on my carbon emissions. I’m off to look for an awesome road.

Up next, the five best roads on Oahu and Ibiza
Click here for the previous Test Drive Unlimited entry

CSL, known in real life as Andrew Dagley, lives in Manitoba, Canada. In between sleeping he occasionally writes about history, after-action reports, or the adventures of Twilight Sparkle.