Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Review (PlayStation 5)

by Jim Smale · Published September 23, 2024 · Updated August 21, 2025

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Review, TDUSC is a lifestyle and social experience that redefines what an open-world racing game can be. Explore a fully recreated Hong Kong Island. Take to the road behind the wheel of exceptional cars and live the ultimate life of luxury.

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Review Pros:

Decent graphics.
66.99GB Download size.
Platinum trophy.
HDR support.
Graphics mode – performance or graphics quality.
Nacon community integration.
Streamer mode will mute licensed music and hide custom liveries.
You can remap and tinker with the sensitivity of all the controls.
The character creator has you pick an avatar and then use the extensive cosmetics and options.
Racing gameplay.
Opening tour and race.
Cutscenes are in the game as are the character interactions.
Six driving views.
Tutorial pop-ups as you play.
Place your own markers on the map to create a line on the map to show directions.
The driving feels really good, it’s the haptic feedback and subtle vibrations that make driving feel good.
Earn reputation and level up to unlock new cars and events.
Full photo mode integration with a simple button press to bring it up.
Fast loading times after the initial boot up loading.
You can skip cutscenes amd interactions.
Discover points of interest and shops to get fast travel, you can also (if applicable) choose to be inside or outside.
After the first event, you get to pick your starting car from three choices.
You can always test drive any car available to you.
When buying a car you get to pick the color, interior color, and wheels and color if applicable.
Radial menu for – headlights, wipers, indicators, hazards, roof, window up and down, and spoiler.
Many Breakable objects like signs, small walls, trees, decorations, etc.
Day and night cycle with weather effects.
Play how you want.
It’s a living world from the Ai drivers to the other real world players driving around.
Has the best Test Drive activity! Fill in roads by driving down them and filling them all in. Absolutely brilliant and a huge fun time sink.
A handful of radio stations covering retro, pop, etc.
Earn a reputation when driving for things like burnout, speeding, drifting, and driving the wrong way. The reputation bar comes up as you fill it.
Wreck meter is back which is when you near a wreck you get. A beeping icon that beeps faster and louder the closer you get to the wreck.
Full 3D world of Hong Kong Island on a 1 to 1 scale with a futuristic spin with neon lights, and high-tech travel and buildings.
Newly added Ibiza map complete with its own events, roads to discover, and unique rewards. Just visit a helipad and off you go.
You can view 360 degrees regardless of car view.
There are times when you are out of the car.
Collectible cash and reputation deposits. They show on the map.
Clans are in the game as in the story, you choose one and represent them, and they have their own unique rewards and clan level. You earned XP for them just by doing events, racing offline and discovering roads.
You get pop-ups for road discovery, new locations, new events, and anything you do that earns an exp or reputation.
They have streamlined the events cutting out a lot of faff that was in the earlier games.
The map is 3D.
Every car keeps track of how many miles you have driven.
Car wrecks need X amount of them found within an area to earn it.
The game has maintained a lot of what makes Test Drive, Test Drive.
The reputation bar gives you an option to cash out at every level so it adds a layer of danger and risk as the cash and reputation keep going up but one hit and it’s over.
Workshops let you customize your car from the cosmetics to the performance parts to upgrade your stats.
Different weather types can happen.
ALYSS is your AI assistant that will generate your routes and events amd you can set it to find the nearest event, or rewards etc.
On your radial menu, you also have radio control, emotes, and real player interaction options.
In the race setup screen, you can change the car, adjust the car setup, and set driving assists which affect how much money you make.
Online leaderboards for every event.
Daily events with rewards.
When in the garage you can fully interact with your car, open doors, honk the horn, examine the interior, etc.
You can drive in and around construction sites and car parks etc.
It has stations that let you repair and clean your car and change cars if needed.
Speed traps are located around the island and hitting them will save your best speed and a rating of 1 to 3 stars.
Tasks will populate and you can do them in any order, and track them to help.
Cars and car parts all have rarity levels.
You can unlock many different levels of upgrades.
Very in-depth livery creator, you can add layers, invert, and spin decals, etc.
You still see other players in the world when you do not have a Playstation Plus subscription.
At level 20 you can get access to car setups where you can pick pre-installed sets for things like speed, handling, circuit, sport mode etc.

Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Review Cons:

The Nacon integration is not optional.
No foot traffic so the world just feels staged.
Requires PlayStation Plus subscription. More an FYI amd it will bang up a prompt asking you if you want to subscribe everytime.
The game didn’t have decent beard options.
It’s hard to judge the wreck meter.
At times the game puts you into situations that you have to do there and then.
Ai can get a bit crazy.
Reset to track is slow and is not good when racing.
Races and events are tricky as the signs look like barriers but they are not so you can easily fly off the track.
The soundtrack is not good so bring your own music or podcast.
A lot of the race events are very boilerplate basic with no real flair.
It’s annoying that you start back at your house every time you launch the game and then have to go into the garage and then into a car to leave.
Tracking a task doesn’t always set your GPS.
You see the same cars over and over.
Getting lobby disconnected errors when playing solo with no PlayStation Plus sub.
It is insane that no subscription and play solo and I still cannot pause a race.
Has events bug out and does not load properly.
What cars can you buy that are locked behind your reputation level?
The game doesn’t have the more obscure Test Drive events like delivering a car without damaging it or random Crazy Taxi-style events which is a shame as it is a type of world-building.
I found the music on every station to be very lacking and instead opted for the Podcast approach which worked.
Cars would disappear and appear in front of me a lot.
Had it where if the servers were acting up then you would get a cannot save retry pop-up happening a lot or getting kicked from my offline events as I disconnected from the lobby which is weird.
I am as of writing on 96 percent road discovery and I am having major issues finding the missing roads more because so many don’t show on the big map even when zoomed right in or it’s hard to distinguish between discovered and undiscovered roads.
Slowdown happens a lot more when in a built-up area no matter the graphics/performance setting.
You don’t have a lot of game settings to tinker with race difficulties.
You cannot buy houses in this game.
It is amazing how many cars are not available until you hit at least level 20.
Despite playing offline I lost connection to the server and lost all progress of my race at the time. It happened frequently.
Interactions with other characters have such a small prompt and hit box for it to register. Too many times I’m circling and dad dancing in front of them trying to trigger the prompt.
None of the tasks are clearly explained, no map markers like show this on map or anything and unless you play it a lot you have no idea what to do or where to go it’s infuriating.