Test Drive Off-Road: Wide Open

TDORWO wins the award for longest, most confusing acronym this year. Does it win anything else?

As a direct port of the PS2 game, this is the Test Drive Off-Road already taken?but it?s also one of the more enjoyable racers in recent memory.

Driving licensed cars from Jeep, Chevy, and Dodge around mountainous courses filled with make-them-yourself paths and subtle shortcuts is just plain fun; the extremely combative A.I. drivers make the circuit, checkpoint, and scramble races even more challenging. The rowdy rock/mostly metal soundtrack matches that aggression nicely. Nice graphical touches include rock slides, moving trains, and destructible signs, but the texture draw-in and object pop-up on the horizon are just signs of laziness in porting?all the mistakes from the PS2 version are sadly here, too.

Four controller configs offer what you need to win, and technicians can angle the car for a perfect landing with the right analog stick?a neat trick that adds some depth to the action. Test Drive Off-Road: Wide Open is tight and enjoyable, even if it doesn?t take advantage of the X factor.

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