They had something here. A legitimately extremely neat arcade racing experience with a unique yet intuitive handling system that honestly works really nicely, and some good vibes. There's a solid take on ridge racer and the Initial D arcade games here, pretty much. And hey there isn't much content (a mere 5 tracks in the base game), but that never stopped virtua racer, daytona USA and Wipeout becoming classics.

And if Inertial Drift just recognised that, it'd be fine. Quite good even. Just a super short campaign like R4 or just a bunch of straight up races would hit the spot just fine. But instead, in what must be a desperate attempt to squeeze the content juice out of this game, it introduces an unbeliveably horrible progression system, with a dire story mode that forces you to race each track at least FIVE TIMES to progress, and the events aren't even good, the first stage literally consisting of a tutorial then three time attacks then a race against one other driver. WHY. There's also a seemingly endless list of dull challenges required to get your hands on all the cars, and generally turning a game that should be a quick, hour or two's riot into a checklist.

There's just no need. Put together the right configuration of say, 5 well balanced arcade races here (like Daytona USA, power drift, outrun, etc...) and i would gladly spend way longer in it than the abysmal story mode and challenges combined. Sometimes, less is more. And pulling wool over my eyes to pretend you actually have more is even worse.