Though all players coexist in the same world--that is, the playerbase is not split up among multiple realms--your screen will not be filled with hundreds of cars bumping and crashing left and right. Since the point of a racing game is generally to go fast and drive relatively uninterrupted, that probably wouldn't end up too fun, even if it is slightly amusing just for its novelty value. The online model is much closer to that of Guild Wars rather than most massively multiplayer games. At any given time, the game will block out all but seven other players that you can see in relatively close proximity. A set of personalized filters determines which seven players the game will select. These filters include such traits as player rank, car type, whether or not the player is in your club (clan), and so on. For example, you might choose to be rather picky in terms of with whom who you'll share your roads, filtering out everything but players in red Ferrari Enzos. Or, if you've just started the game, you might simply say to filter out everyone but players in your own skill class. As you drive around the island, the list of eight players you can see is constantly being updated, so when one is no longer in your viewing proximity the game will seamlessly replace it with another that fits your criteria.

When you create a character, you'll go through a fairly standard avatar creation process, choosing various visual characteristics or simply selecting a preconfigured avatar. You'll also receive a starting sum of money, which is used to buy your home and your first car. Since you actually have to drive to the real estate office to purchase your home, you'll first select a rental car and head on over. Your home is where you can modify your avatar's clothing and, more importantly, the site of your garage. You'll probably be getting a lot of cars, so you'll be needing that garage. One of the Achievements in the Xbox 360 version of the game is awarded for the first time you attain one hundred cars. Now, I don't know if that refers to owning all of those cars simultaneously or not, but either way, that's a lot of wheels. After the purchase, you'll ditch the rental and head to a dealer to buy a car for keeps. All of the vehicles in the game are licensed from real-world manufacturers, ranging from domestic brands like Ford to exotics such as Ferrari, Maserati, Aston Martin, Lamborghini, Mercedes, Jaguar, and so on. The game also includes a range of motorcycles.

Once you're done with all the initial creating and buying, it's time to actually start racing. Test Drive Unlimited's actual gameplay is largely made up of hundreds of challenges--most of which are, of course, races. Each challenge originates from an actual location on the island, so in order to discover a challenge you'll actually have to drive to it. After having found a challenge, you will always be able to return to it instantly by selecting it on your map, if you wish to try again for better results. Early on, you will be lead to various challenges which serve as the game's learning curve. The game features a vehicle driving direction feature similar to that found in some modern cars, with a female voice telling you things such as "Turn left" and "You are going the wrong way, please turn around." There seems to be a huge amount of user-determined options, so I assume this can be deactivated if so desired.

As soon as you first hit the road, the entire island is available, so it's definitely possible to just ignore the tutorial stuff and get right to doing challenges and spending the money you receive from these challenges. In addition to races, challenges can take the form of time trials, Speed-like scenarios requiring the player to maintain a certain speed for the length of the track, delivery missions, and more. As with challenges, buildings are discovered first by actually encountering them while driving, after which they can be returned to at any time from the map. Buildings house such facilities as car dealerships, tuner shops, clothing stores, and other businesses. One main reason for requiring the player to first drive to a challenge or building to be able to access it is simply to encourage exploration. Since the game's island is in fact a recreation of a real-world island, it has all of the diversity that real-world geography has: highways, mountain paths, coast roads, major and minor city streets, and so on. Part of the intended enjoyment of Test Drive Unlimited, aside from its goal-oriented aspects, lies in simply being able to drive seamlessly through the game's huge environment. While doing this, you will encounter other players based on the previously mentioned filtering system. By flashing your headlights at someone driving near you, they will be challenged to a one-on-one race. If they accept, you will plot the course you want the race to take on the island's overhead map, and you'll get to it. During my time with the game I happened to drive by a tester from one of Atari's testing facilities, who challenged me to a race. I won, but I'm pretty sure that's only because he went easy on me.

Turn the page to learn more about challenges.

Those one on one challenges are only a small part of how you can race against other players, however. The game has an Optimatch system, by which you can find user-created challenges meeting whatever criteria you choose. These allow for up to eight players. When in any kind of competitive racing situation, you will be in an instance, meaning you'll never interact with any cars that are not taking part in the same race you are, regardless of your filter settings. This is to keep the race as fair and straightforward as possible. Of course, as well as joining other players' challenges, you can make your own. There are dozens and dozens of available parameters to set when doing this. As with the incidental challenges, you'll still plot the course on the overhead map, but can also choose to set checkpoints if you want them, the time bonus gained by checkpoints, what type of vehicle you want in the race (this can be specified by class of vehicle, make, or model), and a huge number of other options which allow for a pretty broad range of game types. Since one of the reasons to participate in challenges is to earn money, you'll set the entry fee--the money that players pay to you in order to enter--and reward amount--the money you pay out of pocket to the winner. You can definitely enter your own challenges as well, so if you're saving up to buy a new house or a particularly high end vehicle, you'll want to create challenges you have a pretty good shot at winning. Obviously you won't get the reward, per se, but you will walk off with everyone's entry fees. Hopefully, the designers at Eden have methods to ensure this system does not lead to abuse.

With your money, you can buy new cars, homes, and clothes, and also upgrade your vehicles with aftermarket parts. Visiting tuner shops allows you to purchase various performance packages, most of which will not affect your car's appearing but will improve its actual stats. The team is speaking with well-known tuners to hopefully license their products, which should appeal to gearheads. For example, you may be able to upgrade your Mustang to a Saleen model, or buy a Brabus tuning package for your Mercedes. These licensed upgrades would likely come with some kind of visual enhancements. Since this is a massively multiplayer game, players will be able to trade and auction off cars and parts they no longer want. Atari promises that the game will see monthly additions of vehicles, parts, clothes, and other accessories. Eden is also considering using the Xbox 360 Marketplace to sell exclusive cars. Any downloadable and purchasable content will be available to both Xbox 360 and PC, but unfortunately players of the two versions will not be able to interact or race with one another.

Visually, the game is very nice. I only got my hands on the Xbox 360 version of the game, which was very slick. Cars have that requisite next-gen shininess to them (which, in the case of cars, is actually a good thing), and the environments are well-modeled and lush with a nice high draw distance. Unfortunately, the build I played did have some framerate problems at times, generally in challenges, which will hopefully be sorted out by the time the game ships in a few months. As noted earlier though, the most impressive thing about the game's visuals is simply the broad range sheer amount of them. In addition to the roads, you can drive off-road if you like, with the ability to snap back to the closest road with the touch of a button. I don't know if there are any off-road areas that are not driveable, but I did not encounter any during my preview of the game. There are several available driving perspectives: a third person perspective with a choice of two camera distances, a first person "over the hood" perspective, and a cockpit view featuring authentically modeled vehicle interiors.

Test Drive Unlimited is not an arcade racer; there aren't any Burnout- or Ridge Racer-like hijinks to be found. On the other hand, it's definitely not a hardcore racing sim either. I am by no means any kind of racing game connoisseur, but I would place the handling more along the lines of something like Need for Speed. It demands you actually brake and exercise a degree of judgment when driving, but it comes off as quite accessible. Your car's performance is in no way affected by damage; any damage is cosmetic only. Eden producer Ahmed Boukhelifa explained that the team tested out the idea of performance-affecting damage earlier in development, but decided against it. Since high end vehicles may be the product of a great deal of time spent, they wanted to avoid players running into a situation where they have finally acquired the Lamborghini of their dreams but then have to spend all their time going to the repair shop just to drive the car as it was intended. Then there's the rather sobering thought of possible "griefers" who might take advantage of their ability to negatively affect others' gameplay experience.

There will be many different leader boards tracked by the game's servers and on Xbox Live, which Boukhelifa explained should allow each player to get a sense for his place among other players of similar ability. "We want it to be like the real world," he said, in which one may not necessarily be able to compete with world champions but might enjoy racing at the enthusiast level. Players can also create and join clubs, which are essentially clans. Clubs support up to 16 players, and are actually located at physical locations within the game. There will be club leader boards as well as individual ones, and clubs can challenge competing organizations to various events. At any time, you are able to see the location of your clubmates or friends on the overhead map.

All in all, Test Drive Unlimited seems to be on the right track (ha ha!). The game is playable offline, but the ability to challenge random other players online is a cool take on the racing genre. It remains to seen whether the game's massively multiplayer elements are attractive enough to keep the game successful and well-populated, but the lack of a monthly fee along with the ability to treat it like more of a "regular" online game with features such as optimatch should broaden its appeal. When asked how the idea for the game was born, Boukhelifa simply responded, "We just wanted to create the game of our dreams." For racing fans, it sounds like a pretty good formula: thousands of players driving hundreds of licensed customizable cars on a Hawaiian island containing upwards of a thousand miles of roads. As long as it all comes together, that could work.

Eden Games' Test Drive Unlimited ships this June for Xbox 360, with a PC release following in the fall.