4 Years on, people still play this open-world racer! A great bargain if you like exotic cars, and lots of roads to drive
The premise is your create an avatar and move to Hawaii. Once you get there, you buy an inexpensive car and home and begin racing and completing challenges to win money to buy more cars and homes. The best part is the complete freedom you have in doing this.
Oahu is based on the real world island. Many of the main roads, geography and landmarks are represented in the game world. However, if you study Google Maps or have ever been to Oahu, you'll realize what you're getting is actually some sort of Twilight Zone version of paradise. But in the end, that's not what really matters. It's the cars and racing.
Once your plane lands and you pick up your rental car, you have pretty much free reign on the island. There are no artificial barriers keeping you from the better roads until you level up. You can hop in a car and drive wherever you want. You don't even need to race or accept challenges. Some players do nothing more than drive around and sight-see.
But when you do want to earn some cash, there's plenty to do. You can race against other drivers (real or AI), perform checkpoint rallies, races against the clock, or simply deliver vehicles for commission. Within these event classes, there are various sub-classes. For example, races against the clock might be a simple point A to point B single-car race along a specified route, or it might be delivering a passenger to a location via whatever route you choose. There are also speed trap challenges where you have to hit certain target speeds in specific cars at specified locations.
The single-player game has an uneven difficulty curve. Some races are a cakewalk, while others are insanely difficult. And it's not linear, where you'd think the hardest races are only in the fastest classes of cars. However, you certainly get your money's worth out of the game. The single-player race content alone will take 20-40 hours.
Multi-player is not as robust as the single player. There are fewer race types, and with the age of the game, fewer people to find and play with.
For the amount of content you get in the game, it's certainly a bargain at today's prices. Keep in mind that TDU2 is just around the corner now, so you may find other players sparse once the sequel is out. The graphics are showing their age now, and actually adds to the difficulty of seeing where you're going. But considering you can spend more than an hour driving around the coast of the island at top speed just to complete one "lap", and never have a loading screen, that's pretty good.
TDU is a bargain for driving enthusiasts. It may not have the latest and greatest tech today, but there's nothing else on the market like it... at least until TDU2 comes out.