Most racing titles these days offer extremely realistic graphics and cars to push them to the next level. What Inertial Drift does is harken back to a time when they were more arcadey and cartoony with great levity surrounding them. It’s something that offers its own distinct style to distinguish it from other types in the genre. This twin-stick drift-a-thon is a fantastic racer that puts the peddle to the metal and adds something refreshing to the genre.

Story

The in-game story revolves around a group of friends whose aspirations of street racing push them forward as they try to further improve themselves and become the best on the streets. You’re allowed to pick from a few different racers who come with their own car which impacts your playthrough depending on your racing style. Throughout the game, you’ll learn new maneuvers and get comfortable behind the wheel as you carve out your path and find out what kind of driver you are.

The story is done pretty well for the style of the overall game. All of the characters seem to be in their early- to mid-20s and just want to feel like they’re doing something more. At times the dialogue did seem cheesy and would drag on a bit. It was a serviceable story with memorable characters, as well as a great message of finding who you are and feeling pride in being unique. I do actually wish the story was a bit longer, though, as it seems to wrap up in about three hours, give or take.

Gameplay

The game’s strongest gameplay mechanic is the drifting. I absolutely loved playing this solely because of the fondness I found in drifting all over the place. Between the drifting and the sheer amount of speed that you pick up on the tracks, it’s an adrenaline rush from start to finish. Mastering the tracks becomes an art form as you learn the curves to make the drifting feel so satisfying. Not a lot of games these days offer something so arcade-like as we would’ve gotten years ago.

Each car handles completely different from one to the other. I drove as Ada during my playthrough of the story because her car was a bit more balanced than the others were. There is a learning curve for each one as I learned by playing the game more and more. Hers was easy enough to maneuver and drift while others made me release the gas in order to take corners better. While hers felt easier to me, the others drifted cleaner. It all comes down to your driving style and if you want to push yourself more.

The story mode is pretty streamlined in what is available to you from the start. You start at a location and upon completing each objective the next will unlock. Once those objectives are finished, you’ll uncover a new location then rinse and repeat. The story mode involves all of the available types of races and swaps them out in each location depending on what the story calls for. It was varied enough and added a new one when things were starting to feel stale.

There are seven different race types that it has to offer to keep things fresh. These can also be played in the other six modes but I’ll get into those shortly. The available game types are Practice, Ghost Battle, Time Attack, Race, Duel, Endurance, and Style. Each one does enough to set itself apart from the others.

Practice is your run of the mill practice run of the race so that you get a feel for each track. This is available in every race lineup so that you always know the routes and obstacles that it throws at you. I only played it on my first and possibly second lineup but never touched it again.

In Ghost Battle, your goal is to outrace your opponent’s best run on the course. They’re seen as a ghost car, hence the name “Ghost Battle”. This one was really good at seeing how your opponents raced and how they chose to maneuver turns. It’s used very strategically in that aspect.

Time Attack is the classic where you try your hardest to get the best time possible out of your run-through. This became one of my favorites as I’d gotten more comfortable with the courses’ layouts. You can’t go wrong with it.

Race, of course, is the normal racing game type where you go head to head with your competitor and see who’s the best racer. I did find one aspect that impacts the racing and it’s the fact that there’s no enemy collision in this game. There’s a point in the game where they discuss the fact that these cars have special technology that prohibits them from hitting each other. So you just drive through each other when you go to collide. It’s not a bad idea but I personally like ramming my enemies off the road.

Duel’s main objective is distance. The further you or your opponent get from each other the higher your distance bar will grow. Whoever’s bar is filled first is the winner. I enjoyed this when I would leave my enemy in the dust. This one would also become a nailbiter at times too. One bad drift and your challenger could soar past you.

Endurance focuses on your ability to stay in the race. From the start, the timer ticks down and the only way to add more time is by hitting checkpoints. I enjoyed my time with this one but it does start to get old. I found myself losing on purpose once I got as far as I needed.

Lastly, there’s Style. This one strangely only came up once during story mode. The way to win is to outperform your opponent in drifting. The longer your drift the longer your streak. As you score higher you’ll also beat the tracks’ records too. This one was fun because of its main point being drifting. Anything putting drifting in the lime-light has me hooked.

Besides the story mode, there are a few different modes that you can take your time to play around with. There’s challenge, arcade, Grand-Prix, split-screen multiplayer, and an online multiplayer. Unfortunately, there was no one for me to connect with online so I wasn’t able to test out how good it really was. Split-screen and arcade allow you to choose from any of the cars you’ve unlocked in the game as well as any courses, and any type of race you’d like to play. Grand-Prix is another great mode to play. It allows you to play preset lists of races set up on specific maps.

The coolest and most unique mode in the game is the challenge mode. The main gimmick is the fact that it forces you to use cars you’re not used to. You’ll be tasked with finishing a race type that the specific driver chooses for you. Once you beat the event you’ll unlock that driver and car set. There are a lot of unlockable sets and they’re all playable in other modes.

You’re also allowed to customize your vehicles but only in their color scheme. I actually really love that this is how they decided to bring in customization. The developers really dedicated the feel of this game to the arcade racers of the past.

Visuals

This is one aesthetically pleasing game, to say the least. The game pulls its art-style from anime and Synthwave imagery. Deep purples, pinks, oranges, and blues coat the entire world in a dreamlike finish. This is such a pleasing game to look at just in its color palette alone. It also draws a lot of love from the ‘90s by making this futuristic world still look like something we would’ve seen back in the day. Even the cars and characters seemed familiar to me as if I’d seem them back in the day in a Chuck E. Cheese cabinet.

Audio

Music does a fantastic job of bringing that ‘90s flavor too. Jazzy club music gets you in the groove when you’re flying through the streets and keeps the party going into the in-game menus. It’s not the type of music you hear nowadays so it was something refreshing to the ears. Car sounds are done very well too but it’s obvious the music is what the developers wanted to take center-stage.

Replayability

While the story offers zero replayability, the rest of the game certainly does. Most notably are the challenge mode and grand-prix. Challenge mode has a great depth of intricacies for players to learn and hone their skills with and grand-prix temps players to push themselves. I can’t say for sure multiplayer will because I didn’t have someone to play with online. I can bet it should have some worthy opponents for players to take on once the game releases.

What It Could Have Done Better

The first thing that came to my mind after finishing the story was the length of it. There are plenty of different things that could’ve and should’ve been done to draw it out a bit more. Many tracks and locations aren’t even implemented in the story at all as well as the additional racers. These people and places should’ve been utilized so that we get more time in the story and a bigger payoff at the end.

The racers I would challenge in the story didn’t seem to be too difficult. While there were a few races I may have won by the skin of my teeth, I never found a real challenge in the racers on their own merit. If I was losing it was because of my own mistakes that had cost me the race. I think that I’d only lost a couple of them throughout my entire playthrough.

I wish there were actually collisions in the game. I’m an aggressive driver and this really would’ve been a welcomed feature to me. Although it’s understandable that drifting is key and that collision could ruin the seamless driving it still feels like something is missing because of this decision.

Verdict

Level 91 Entertainment has delivered something that has been sorely needed in today’s game market. An unrealistic and incredibly exciting time that doesn’t focus on the details of real-world driving. It’s the dedication to its fictional world and gameplay that makes it an absolutely joyful experience. It brings back the feelings of playing things like this in the arcade when I was a kid but evolves it into something all its own. While I do have a couple of nitpicks for it, I did truly enjoy my time with Inertial Drift.