Test Drive 4

Test Drive 4
Well, the rewards the game got in 1997 might have meant something, but today, they don't really mean anything that much.
Genre(s): Racing Platform(s): Microsoft Windows PlayStation Release Date: November 3, 1997 Developer(s): Pitbull Syndicate Publisher(s): Accolade Series: Test Drive Predecessor: Test Drive III: The Passion Successor: Test Drive 5

Test Drive 4 is a racing game developed by Pitbull Syndicate and published by Accolade in 1997 for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation.

It is the fourth main installment in the series, and the fifth installment overall after Test Drive Off-Road.

Good Qualities

1. It was one of the first games in the franchise that aren't a simulators anymore and became more racing games, thanks for that the gameplay is less repetitive.
2. The Graphics look decent for the 1997 standards though it didn't age too well.
3. The soundtrack is good and some of the tunes are even absolutely great, most notably from track 3 and 9.
4. As mentioned above, there is a good variety of race locales: Keswick, San Francisco, Bern, Munich, Kyoto, and Washington D.C.
5. The concept of pitting modern and muscle cars against each other is pretty original for a racing title.
6. The car interiors look pretty good for the time.

Bad Qualities

1. The handling of the cars isn't great. Their stats are pretty much all identical to each other, and any time you crash into other vehicles will cause you to slide all over the place and will take a while for your car to go back to normal.
2. The CPUs are extremely unbalanced. They will drive faster than you (no matter what car you select) and will rarely crash, if at all, which at turn makes the game's difficulty unbalanced as well.
   • Even if you did go ahead of them, they will race faster to try and catch you up. Basically, Rubberbanding AI.
3. The Police AI will also only chase the main player, they won't chase or catch up to the CPU whatsoever, which also adds to the game's poor difficulty.
4. Dispite the good variety of race locales, the tracks are incredibly lacking due to the game's "Point-to-Point" system in racing.
   • Not to mention, despite the packaging saying the game has 5 tracks, the game in reality has 10, with the five extra tracks simply being mirrored.
5. There are several useless camera positions, with one of them being above the roof of the car, meaning you can see absolutely nothing when you race.
   • What is even worse is that this is the default camera position on the PC version, meaning the player will have to swap to the correct one before the race starts.

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