Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown has been hit with a wave of review bombs on Steam after the first day of early access was plagued by server issues.
After a 13-year wait since the previous entry in the franchise, players have been excited to dive into Solar Crown and explore the island of Hong Kong—and the doors opened up on Sept. 5 for those who purchased the Gold Edition of the game.
Problems emerged immediately, however, as the majority of players encountered login issues throughout the day. Developer KT Racing initially stated the issues should be resolved within 30 minutes but problems persisted throughout the day.
A longer insight into the technical issues was published later in the day, where it was revealed that some of the solutions deployed introduced new challenges for the devs, with a follow-up stating they had seen “significant improvements” but “some issues persist.”
Those updates were not enough to sway some Steam reviewers from dropping negative reviews on the title, with Solar Crown having just 32 percent positive reviews on the platform at the time of writing.
The main reason for the negative reviews from players was due to the server issues that not only prevented logging into the game but persisted when progressing past the main menu, as connections to races often failed—even if they were against CPU opponents.
I was among those who had trouble logging into the game yesterday and it took me countless login attempts until I was eventually able to begin my journey. The issues didn’t end there, however, as I also had some failed attempts to join races.
Eventually, I found some more stability but the online-only aspect of the game will likely continue to be problematic, such is the nature of modern gaming.
On the plus side, the short time I spent playing Solar Crown yesterday was enjoyable and brought back fond memories of my childhood exploring Hawaii and Ibiza in Test Drive Unlimited.
