TD Overdrive: The Brotherhood of Speed

TD Overdrive: The Brotherhood of Speed is an arcade racing game made in three-dimensional graphics . The plot of the game racer Dennis Black, which is controlled by the player, has good driving skills, but now he has neither money nor a car, and the reputation among street racers has worsened. Donald Clark decides to help him, who gives the hero a car for the first races, telling about the competitions along the streets of cities such as San Francisco , Tokyo , London and Monte Carlo . Dennis Black is faced with serious rivals, whom he has to defeat.

Arrivals in the game are held with the participation of the player, as well as, in most cases, computer opponents. Some tracks have daylight hours, while others have nighttime. Cars drive along the city roads, as well as the police, which begins to chase a player or his rivals if traffic rules are violated. If the police car is near the player’s car, while the player will drive slowly or stand still, the police will delay the player for three seconds, after which you can continue to move. In most races, the time is located at the top of the screen, which shows how many seconds are left for the player to drive past the next control point; when driving past a checkpoint, the player is given extra time to get to the next. An additional five seconds of time can also be obtained if you perform ski jumping , which can sometimes be installed on the track. If time runs out or if you travel for a few seconds outside the road on which the competition is directly held, the player will be disqualified. Regardless of the initial result, you can view the repeat of the race.

The game has several modes. In a fast race, the player chooses a car, a track and passes the race. In a single race, the player selects one of the types of races, a car, a track and passes the race of his choice. In his career, the player advances the plot, participating in successive races; Before the competition there is the opportunity to practice on the upcoming track. The multiplayer game is represented by a two-player mode with split-screen technology, and it presents several types of races from a single game. There are such types of races as sprint (race from one point of the city to another), ring race (race with several circles on a conditionally closed track), drag (race in a designated place for a short direct distance, where the player can only use the manual gearbox), navigation race (the player alone passes a route in which arrows are indicated before the intersections indicating which direction to turn) and the pursuit (the player controls the police car, delaying the riders) ^{[pr. 1]} . Pong is also present as a mini-game that can be played during loading screens against a computer or another player. The cars in the game are represented by licensed models from world famous manufacturers such as Toyota , Nissan , Chevrolet , Dodge , Aston Martin and others. For each machine, you can view various technical specifications, such as maximum speed and engine capacity. Cars are not damaged in a collision, and their color can be changed when choosing a car in the menu before arrival.

• Dennis Black (Ford GT40)
• Donald Clarke (Dodge Concept Viper GTS-R)
• Reese Weston (Reese's Chevrolet Camaro, Shelby Series 1, Chevrolet Camaro Z28 (non-Underground mode only)
• Kurt Jackson (Chevrolet Corvette L-88)
• Nells von Stadt (Jaguar XK-R)
• Marie Ling (Lotus Espirit V8)
• Lisa Lux (Lotus Elise, Dodge Viper GTS)
• Morlock Aday (Dodge Charger, Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec)
• Hamada Tojo (Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec, Hamada (Underground mode only)
• Rei Ozawa (Subaru Impreza 22B)
• Skeeter Grimshaw (Skeeter's Chevrolet Chevelle, Skeeter's Pontiac GTO, Chevrolet Chevelle SS * 454 (non-Underground mode only), Pontiac GTO (non-Underground mode only)
• Nina Fettigrew (Ford Mustang SVT Cobra R)
• Big T (Chevrolet Corvette Z06)
• Miguel de la Cruz (Aston Martin DB7 Vantage)
• Hail Knoxville (Jaguar XJ220)
• Francois Lafayette (TVR Cerbera Speed ​​12)
• Vasily Raskolnikov (Dodge Concept Viper GTS-R)

The development of TD Overdrive: The Brotherhood of Speed , as in the case of the previous parts of the Test Drive series, was done by Pitbull Syndicate, and the publishers were Infogrames and Atari . The project retained many features of its predecessors: street racing on city roads with police pursuits. However, this part was the second in a series (after Test Drive Off-Road Wide Open ), released for the sixth generation of gaming systems , and it appeared clearly traced storyline with its characters. As the game locations, only four existing cities were used - San Francisco , Tokyo , London and Monte Carlo , which is much smaller than in the predecessors, but in this part of the city they became more open, developed and similar to their real counterparts. In addition, in each city there are several tracks, and not one, as in the previous games of the series.

The licensed soundtrack of the game contains 17 songs in the rock , hip-hop and techno genres from 10 artists and groups such as DMX ("We Right Here"), JA Rule ("Furious" and "Livin 'It Up"), Junkie XL ( “Dance USA”, “Synasthesia” and “Future in Computer Hell (Part 2)”), Bubba Sparxxx (“Ugly”), Saliva (“Lackluster” and “Click Click Boom”) and others. In addition, versions for Xbox and Windows have support for custom music.

The game was released on May 28, 2002 in North America , where it is called Test Drive , and July 5 in Europe on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox ^[1] consoles. On December 10 of the same year, the game was ported to personal computers running Windows, being published in North America ^[2] .

The game received mixed reviews from critics. On the Metacritic website , the version for the PlayStation 2 received an average rating of 73/100 ^[10] , for the Xbox - 71/100 ^[11] , and for the PC - 61/100 ^[9] . Similar statistics are published on GameRankings : 70.64% for the PlayStation 2 ^[4] , 65.72% for the Xbox ^[5] and 59.25% for the PC ^[3] . The game received 65% from the Absolute Games website ^[37] .

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