As a young kid I loved playing racing games, I would spent a ton of hours playing classics like F-Zero, Super Mario Kart, and then later on the Need For Speed series, Test Drive, and of course Test Drive Off-Road. Now I am more familiar with the PC version, but since I will have a video at the end of this review, like my other reviews I have written on here, I am going to talk about the PlayStation version, because thanks to emulation, I get to play the game. The good thing? Both the PC and PS1 versions of this game are pretty much the same game.
Test Drive Off-Road was developed by Motive Time and published by Accolade. It was released in 1997. Test Drive Off-Road is exactly how it sounds, a off-road racing game. Test Drive has been around for a long time, but they decided to jump into the off-road racing genre. In Test Drive Off-Road you can drive 4 off road vehicles, a hummer, jeep, land rover, and a Chevy Z71 pickup. Although no Ford trucks in this game is a bit ridiculous. You can unlock some vehicles through winning races and they are a monster truck, dune buggy and a stock car. There is a mix league and class league modes, mix league has 6 cup tournaments that will have a mixture of vehicles against you, and then class league will be the same vehicle, for instance if you choose the Hummer, it will be all Hummers, where mix league will have maybe a jeep, a land rover, and of course the Chevy Z71.

There are 11 different tracks set in a nice variety of environments that include snow and desert. You must go through check points on these tracks, pretty much your typical racing game. If you want to play with a friend you can do that as well, there is couch multiplayer, although I think the PC version at some point had online multiplayer. I want to say there was a time I tried it out, but back when I had dial up internet it was probably going to be very awful. I don't know how anyone played games against each other back then. Other then maybe hooking the PC's together. You do race against 3 other opponents, I wish there was 5 to 7 opponents or 6 to 8, because that would of been nice, but if there were limitations on how much they could be put on a disc, that is understandable.

The graphics for it's time are very out dated. The track layouts are nice, the game is colorful, and fits each environment, but the game has terrible draw distance. Although I am not going to complain a ton when this is what we as gamers had for graphics back in the 90's. Hell there are some games that look worse then this. I won't say the game is complete garbage just because of the graphics unless they are REALLY bad. There were limitations back then and that is totally understandable. The music isn't really my thing, I mean I love heavy metal, but never could get into industrial rock, and Gravity Kills did most of the soundtrack for this game. There is some rap style music as well, and I am not a fan of rap. There is a guitar rock style instrumental that is pretty good, but that is about it. Seriously though Gravity Kills?! Seriously?! The sound effects aren't bad but the announcer voice is just annoying as hell. The controls are really hit and miss for me, they cold be better then what they are, and it's mostly the steering that I have an issue with. Now sure some trucks steer better then the others, but at times they just can't steer worth a damn.

Test Drive Off-Road is a decent game, there are far better off road racing games though, I mean for it's time there were a few on PC that kicked a lot of ass. Personally if you want a cheap thrill, pick up this game, if you want something more realistic, there are better games out there.

If you want to watch my full review of the game, and see some footage for yourself, you can find it below: