Man how I love driving games, from arcade to sim heavy racing, they all have something unique to offer. This is also definitely the case for Inertial Drift, an arcade racer with a unique gameplay twist and great cell-shaded Japan-inspired art style. Inertial Drift will be released for PS4, Xbox One, Switch & PC in both digital and physical formats.
Tokyo Drift
As the name of the game suggests, the game is all about drifting. The game has a unique drifting mechanic. It uses twin-stick controls. The left stick controls the steering while the right stick controls the drifting. This makes the drifting more precise and takes it to a whole new level and it’s a nice and unique way to handle the racing genre. Steering and braking through corners alone won’t cut it. You need to drift thought the corners and manage your speed into corners and combining drifting and braking. This is hard at first but when you get the hang of things it’s very satisfying. Shave of fractions of seconds by improving your skill and master the art of drift racing.
Art & Driving Styles
The game is set in a 90’s retro-future, japan inspired setting with cell-shaded anime like styling. This gives off a retro new wave look to the game. Race on tracks, flooded by the lights of a pink Japanese sunset, through forests, mountains, rural temples, neon cities and many more for a total of 20 tracks.
The game consists of 16 unique drivers with their own cars and techniques/drive style. For instance, Terra has a sports car that is nimble and responsive but has a lower top speed than the others. Get behind the wheel of sport hatchbacks, coupe’s, supercars & more.
There are a couple of different race modes these go from your standard Time Attack and Race to things like Style, were you need to earn style points for drifting as close to the walls as possible and endurance were you need to drive as fast as you can and hit checkpoint to get more time to earn more as many points as possible before time runs out.
Game Modes
The game consists of a couple of game modes Story mode, Challenges, Arcade and Grand Prix. As well as 2-player split-screen and online, to race against friends or other players.
In story mode, you follow Viv, Ada, Edward & Ibba who are preparing for the upcoming Summer Grand Prix. They go on a road trip to practice on the tracks that are part of the Grand Prix. No voice acting or cutscenes here. It’s all about the gameplay. Choose your character with their specific driving style. Each character has its own dialogue. You practice each track before racing on it. This is done in a couple of different ways, by ghost battles, time attack, duel etc. Here you learn the track but you also get tips for how to handle the track. There is no tweaking the car as present in sim racers, just drive and go.
Arcade mode lets you create a custom event and post your times/scores to the global leaderboards. While challenges consist of different challenge modes, each driven in different cars and over different courses. With the completion of these challenges, additional cars can be unlocked. Grand Prix consists of 5 grueling challenges, with 3 retries at your disposal.
Conclusion
Inertial Drift offers a unique way to experience an arcade racer like you never have before. This is a game you can spend a lot of time in just mastering the controls. This together with the beautiful art style and landscapes makes for a memorable experience. There is a free demo available (Inertial Drift: Sunset Prologue) on Steam, for those who are still on the fence about it. But how could you be?
9/10
Tested on Nintendo Switch
