Ever feel like doing a little off-roading, but don't have access to a high sport utility vehicle? Test Drive Off-Road (TDOR) may be the answer for you.

In TDOR you are given the choice of four racing vehicles: a Chevy truck, a Hummer, Land Rover Defender, and a Jeep.Each car has performance characteristics, that determine how it will behave on the various tracks.

The tracks usually have multiple characteristics, for example dirt, gravel, and logs in the roads, defines one track. Another track is entirely on snow, while still another is sandy. And style presents different problems for different vehicles (As far as I can tell you can't switch vehicles between races).

As far as gameplay goes you use can use a joystick, mouse, or keyboard to control the trucks. The controls seem kind of simple there are 5 total controls (left, right, accelerate, decelerate, and brakes), all of the vehicles are automatic, so there is no need for shifting controls. I think that controls need to be more forgiving, because as you are racing down the road, you have to be careful where you go or else you might yourself running into a fence. What happens is that you will find a patch of ground that is different than the piece that you are currently on and you lose control.

The first order of business before you start enjoying the games is determining what settings work best on your computer. This is important because the factory settings may not be the best settings for your machine (for example our test machine is 166mhz Pentium with a millennium card, and 96 Mb of memory, and the factory settings were not correct for my machine). Because if the settings are not set correctly, your gaming experience will be less than ideal.

Once you have all of the settings configured to your liking you are ready to get started. A typical race is against 3 other racers, in which you race for points. There are three styles of races, practice, mixed league, and class league. Once you have picked a league your given a random course, and you race three laps. That is pretty much it, sure you can smash up your competitors, and you can drive the race track to find a faster way, and you can even flip your truck over. But that is it, there are no weapons, you can't buy upgrades for your truck, and this is were I think the downfall is.

The game is fun to play, but it needs more options. I want to be able to customize my truck, bigger engine, better tires, etc. Other than that the game is a blast to play.

Screen Shots:

Minimum System Requirements:

• CPU: IBM and 100% compatibles,Pentium 90 and above. 16MB RAM
• CD-ROM: 2x CD-ROM
• Video Modes: SVGA video (Vesa 1.2).
• Input Devices: Microsoft Compatible Mouse, most joysticks.
• Sound Cards: All major sound cards

Downloads:

• Download Test Drive Off-Road Demo
• Accolade's Test Drive Off-Road

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