Review: Slide Around With INERTIAL DRIFT

One of the best parts of racing games is drifting. Being able to slide through turns and ride real close to the edges gives a certain level of thrill and excitement. Inertial Drift uses the concept of drifting in general and takes it to a new level.

This game has a crazy amount of modes. A solid tutorial, a less than exciting story mode, cool challenges for specific cars, fun arcade modes to try out lots of things, larger Grand Prix races, split-screen, and online. Those are all the modes and a number of modes will include variations and different types of races. As much fun as the modes are, and the quantity of themis impressive, it was the core mechanics of the game and lack of refinement in things that hold the game back. Also, the story mode is about as bare-bones as it gets. It honestly would have been better without any real dialogue or character and just been a series of races and challenges, like a straight forward career or campaign mode.

As much fun as it is to drift in the game, it feels unnecessarily difficult to go through a lot of the levels and face a lot of the challenges. The drifting cars feel either too unrealistic or too real at times, never hitting a really great sweet spot to cruise and drift through levels. The drifting in this game isn’t bad. There is a separate mechanic for drifting, using the second joystick. It can be difficult to get used to, but an interesting idea. However, even the beginning levels require turns and finesse with this new mechanic that seem unreasonable, and this is coming from a person who loves racing games and would drift around Paradise City for hours. Also, and this may be because I was using joycons and somewhat cheaper controllers, the gas is either on or off, not a scale or pressure-based thing which made lifting off the gas while trying to drift and make difficult turns feel jarring and awkward instead of smooth and skillful.

Overall this is a fine game. It is a fun idea with an interesting mechanic. There is plenty to do and lots of great modes, just the driving itself can take a lot of time to get used to and can feel a little spotty.