I've been looking for an arcade racer to sink my teeth into while waiting for the release of some of my personal highly anticipated titles (Aero GPX, Victory Heat Rally, Over Jump Rally, SPGP Super Polygon Grand Prix, check all those out BTW) and Inertial Drift was one that I had eyeballed for a bit since I first saw that I missed it as a free game on Epic. After finally taking my chances on it now I'm a bit flummoxed.
The drift system is unique, using the right stick to control your drift in conjunction with your regular steering, stampering the brake and gas to fine-tune each turn on the fly. I only played for about an hour before coming to terms with how much I wasn't enjoying that, and a lot of my distaste comes from its presentation wearing me down along with its central mechanic.
Maybe it's my own personal fatigue with the overarching neon drape that has permeated the indie racing genre as of late, but the first thing that bored me before any of the gameplay did was its visuals. Its nothingburger Story Mode consists of playing the same track 5 times before moving on to the next and the whole thing is over in the blink of an eye. Its central race mode is a bore as it can only consist of 1v1s with no collision, therefore no slipstreaming, and ultimately no proper means of engaging your rivals, which makes its strange preference, no, insistance on Tokyo Xtreme Racer-type rival score attack matches seem more obvious. All of this is not to mention how slippery and unsatisfying its central drift mechanic becomes, especially under stress; all of it made to feel insulting as your HUD is spamclogged with pseudo-motivational dialogue from your rivals that shows up every time you eat shit. Seeing "Wow, you totally OWNED that turn!" from a Picrew looking avatar pop up in my peripheral vision every time I eat a rail makes me all the more agitated as I wonder if it's the game trying to make me not feel bad or if it's just reading my gameplay totally wrong. Either way I got so annoyed by that after the 20th time that I just uninstalled it to make the voices go away. Maybe Inertial Drift is a game that means more than it lets on, and I would say it's even more the fault of my own for it not falling within my personal aesthetic preferences, but I still firmly believe you have better options if you want to play an arcade racer today.
The drift system is unique, using the right stick to control your drift in conjunction with your regular steering, stampering the brake and gas to fine-tune each turn on the fly. I only played for about an hour before coming to terms with how much I wasn't enjoying that, and a lot of my distaste comes from its presentation wearing me down along with its central mechanic.
Maybe it's my own personal fatigue with the overarching neon drape that has permeated the indie racing genre as of late, but the first thing that bored me before any of the gameplay did was its visuals. Its nothingburger Story Mode consists of playing the same track 5 times before moving on to the next and the whole thing is over in the blink of an eye. Its central race mode is a bore as it can only consist of 1v1s with no collision, therefore no slipstreaming, and ultimately no proper means of engaging your rivals, which makes its strange preference, no, insistance on Tokyo Xtreme Racer-type rival score attack matches seem more obvious. All of this is not to mention how slippery and unsatisfying its central drift mechanic becomes, especially under stress; all of it made to feel insulting as your HUD is spamclogged with pseudo-motivational dialogue from your rivals that shows up every time you eat shit. Seeing "Wow, you totally OWNED that turn!" from a Picrew looking avatar pop up in my peripheral vision every time I eat a rail makes me all the more agitated as I wonder if it's the game trying to make me not feel bad or if it's just reading my gameplay totally wrong. Either way I got so annoyed by that after the 20th time that I just uninstalled it to make the voices go away. Maybe Inertial Drift is a game that means more than it lets on, and I would say it's even more the fault of my own for it not falling within my personal aesthetic preferences, but I still firmly believe you have better options if you want to play an arcade racer today.