Written by Patrick Orquia
Title: Inertial Drift
Developer: Level 91 Entertainment
Publisher: PQube
Genre: Racing
Number of Players: up to 2 players
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: September 11, 2020
Price: $19.99
There is only too much a developer can do to racing game. It is a game, about racing. A player controls a car goes from point A to point B and against other players. A few color here and there can be added, and maybe the cars can throw, um, I don’t know, turtle shells, maybe, to other players. A match can last for 3 laps or more, and then it ends. If the player doesn’t get bored, they will play another match and maybe another one after that.
I personally am not much of a racing game fan. Outside of the Mario Kart games, I really don’t play much of the other ones. And on this review, we feature Inertial Drift, a racing game that features one of my favorite aspects on a racing game: drifting. It easy to do but hard to master, and this game is no exception, but it makes drifting very much enjoyable.
While in other games you control games with just the D-pad or the left analog stick, in Inertial Drift, you also use the right analog stick to make the angle of your car while drifting much more precise. So precise that it is hard to perform and much harder to master, and yet it adds a whole lot of freshness to the racing game genre that it will keep your interest up.
The game has many modes for you to try. There is the solo campaign mode, where you follow a group of teenage drivers as they work their way to be the best. The game doesn’t have voice acting and the narrative is presented in walls of text, which could be quite irksome to read. The character design is quite good, though. The characters drive different cars, each with different styles to master. Aside from the campaign, you also have the multiplayer modes (local and online), arcade mode, grand prix mode, and challenge modes, in which you can unlock new cars. With this amount of content it will take you a while to completely try them all.
You can only play a game for so long if it doesn’t look very good. Luckily, the game also packs a punch in its visuals. The game has a bit of a retro look that kind of reminds of the 80s and 90s, with its cel-shaded neon aesthetics. The characters also look good, though they lack animation and voice acting. Too bad, the soundtrack is a bit uninspired, with no standout tracks, but I guess it is still effective in keeping you up to speed while racing.
Despite these good stuff, the game does suffer from high repetitiveness in its gameplay due to its heavy reliance on its main gimmick, which is the drifting. The courses are all designed to force you to really just drift for most of the time that you drive. The time trial modes for each course have ridiculously short time goals, which forces you to try them again and again until you memorize each of the turns and curves so that you get the best result times for each. Since I personally suck at driving, both in real life and in video games, this whole drifting gimmick gets old very fast for me. It is fun to execute drifts and more fun if done well, but it is also quite restricting and prevents me from fully enjoying the game.
Overall, Inertial Drift is a good racing game that makes drifting its main x-factor and it really does elevate it to new heights. The dual stick action involved in the drifting makes it more precise and tighter and feels really good to execute. Mastering it could very tough, but if you make a good effort to do it, it is really rewarding. So if you are a racing game fan, you have to try this game and prepare to drift into awesomeness.
REPLAY VALUE: High
PROS
- Cool cel-shaded visuals that kind of reminds the 80s and 90s
- Tight gameplay and controls
- Drifting is so much fun to execute, especially if done properly
- Very good use of HD Rumble
- Good variety in cars, each with different characteristics to master
- Good amount of content
CONS
- Music is a bit uninspired
- Bland story mode
- Heavy reliance on the drifting gimmick, making the gameplay very repetitive at times
- Time trials have ridiculously short goals which forces you to spend hours in memorizing tracks
- Courses leave very small room for mistakes
- No in-game map
- You can only race with one
- No voice acting, so you have to deal with walls of text
RATING: 3.5/5 slipping and sliding
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