There are many of us chaps (and a few ladies too) who spend far too much of our time staring longingly at various types of car which pass us in the street each day, or pouring over minute details of other vehicles emblazoned across the many car manufacturers’ websites dotted around the virtual motorway of the internet. Mostly this serves one purpose and one purpose only: to remind us how many different cars we can’t afford. The prospect of driving a Ferrari out of our driveways each morning remains a distant and unlikely dream no matter how much we convince ourselves that we could drive them better than the insanely rich businessmen who are jammy enough to own one.

At least our virtual needs are being catered for these days. Project Gotham 3 gave us the opportunity to take a range of super cars out and about to various city locations and fling the things around with no fear of a six-figure repair bill. Test Drive Unlimited brings pretty much the same bunch of cars and thrills our way, but approaches the genre from a new and refreshing angle which provides more than enough material to satisfy even the most demanding car fanatic.

Proceedings kick off with you choosing from a selection of preset characters and taking them via a hire car to the nearest car dealership. From the moment you fire up your first vehicle you’ll come to realise that the driving model is surprisingly authentic and gratifying; sling the car around a corner and it’ll weight up and act according to how physics would generally dictate they should. Whilst it certainly doesn’t come close to mirroring PC driving simulations such as GTR and rFactor, comparisons can quite easily be made with the Project Gotham series. The cars all have pleasingly varied driving models too, so even the more proficient Enzo racer will need practice before being able to tackle the same routes and circuits in, for example, a Lotus Elise.

The game is based on the Hawaiian island of Oahu and features approximately 1,000 miles of roads for you to tear around in your various shiny vehicles. Dotted around the island are a number of varying challenges with which to keep yourself busy, and it’s carrying these out which will earn you cash, new cars from manufacturers such as Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes, Maserati, Jaguar, bikes from the likes of Ducati and Yamaha, upgrades and houses and tokens with which you may buy clothes to customise your character. The challenges consist of a number of different activities such as racing against a number of similar capacity vehicles, navigating routes in a certain time limit, giving a ride to a hitchhiker ala Crazy Taxi and ferrying people’s cars from their houses to garages. Of these, the car transport missions are by far the most involving and nerve-wracking, with the slightest of contact with the ever-dense traffic or any part of the scattered scenery costing you vast amounts of cash and in worst-case scenarios even causing you to fail your challenge completely.

This is made all the more intense by the game actually being true to scale with the real island, meaning that driving 20 miles in the game equates to how long it would have taken you if you’d driven similarly in real life. Later challenges see you having to complete entire loops of the island, and despite having up to 800 brake horsepower at your disposal you won’t be seeing the chequered flag until a good three-quarters of an hour of driving. On paper this sounds quite draining and perhaps a few of the longer challenges do run on a few minutes longer than they should, but most of the tasks keep themselves below the 20-mile mark and it’s much to developer Eden Game’s credit that almost all of them feel just about right in terms of longevity.

If you’re not feeling like pursuing medals and the almighty dollar then you are more than free to travel around the island to your heart’s content. This has the added incentive of finding car and bike garages which you hadn’t previously been able to use, which in turn will allow you to select from a wider range of cars. Similarly, each area of the island is scattered with estate agents who offer you a number of houses located at various parts of the island with varying amounts of garage space to store your cars.

Cleverly, TDU integrates itself online seamlessly. On your travels around and about you will pass and meet several players who are also logged in to Xbox Live and are spending their time doing pretty much what you’re doing. Should you feel in the mood you can flash your headlights at them and challenge them to a race through a route determined by yourself. Money can also be put on the line during these to add extra spice, so in theory you can carry on notching up the cash and making money long after you’ve grown tired of the challenges the single player mode offers you. Likewise, being online means that the island map will show you locations of organised online races which you an partake in.

The fun doesn’t stop here. Another novel idea sees you setting other Xbox Live players challenges in which they can win money. You are able to set an entrance fee for each challenge and if someone decides to have a crack at your task a fee will be paid in to your bank account. Clever players will therefore be able to set challenges which are difficult enough for players not to win the big prize, but interesting enough to mean that enough people will pay entry fees to cover your cost should you have to pay out the reward.

This is all underpinned by a gorgeous setting. Oahu is not a place I can admit to having studied in much detail prior to the release of this game, but cursory glances at brochures and pictures prove that Eden Games have produced a superbly lifelike representation for players to experience. Long stretches of glorious coastline give way to zigzagging, perilous cliff climbs, bustling mini-metropolises and hauntingly vast fields of crops. The cars themselves all fit the bill and are good likenesses to their real counterparts, although the public traffic you’ll weave through consists of a small selection of identical and generic unlicensed vehicles.

I must admit to being slightly suspicious of Test Drive Unlimited when I first became aware of it. The most recent versions of the franchise had been rather less than inspiring and the idea of the game being centred around the road network of a single island seemed a little limited in variety. Having spent countless days, weeks and perhaps even months (I lost count somewhere along the line) with the game and having covered practically every square inch of tarmac available in a whole host of different vehicles, everything now slots into place and makes sense. It may not be your usual take on the racing genre, but Eden Games’ decision to go out on a bit of a limb has paid dividends and given us a fantastic racing game with a twist.