This happened again recently when I went to download another GamePass game, and was met with the fact that I was out of storage space. Instead of deleting games this time, though, I said “F it”, if I’m looking for a new game anyway, let’s see what this is about. So I opened it instead and gave it a shot. And let me say, I’m glad I did.

Skrrrrt

Inertial Drift is, essentially, a twin-stick driving game where drifting is the primary focus. Don’t worry, though. It’s not as weird as it sounds.

You use the right trigger to accelerate, the left trigger to brake, and the left stick to turn — all pretty standard. The twist comes in with the right stick, which is used to control the drift/how far the rear of the car swings around.

Bombing down the tracks, you’ll use both sticks together to get around the hairpin-turns and S-curves. When you really get the hang of it, it can be quite satisfying making turns perfectly, with the nose of your car barely kissing the walls and guardrails before quickly accelerating again.

It’s not as simple as it sounds, either. Each car has it’s own handling profile, top speed, acceleration etc. And mastering each one (especially in the story modes, challenges, and time-trials) will take some time and patience.

Using both sticks to turn is fairly intuitive at first, but as you unlock new cars, and test yourself at higher difficulty levels, you’ll find it’s not as easy as the graphics may fool you to believe. If you’re going for the fastest times possible, you’re really going to struggle shaving off those final few fractions-of-a-second.

As I touched on before, you can test your driving and drifting skills across several different game modes. Primarily, there’s Story Mode, Challenge Mode, Arcade Mode, and Grand Prix. There’s also a DLC that I don’t have (so I’m not sure what it entails), a split-screen mode for challenging your friends, and an online mode for testing yourself against randoms from around the world.

Story Mode

Story Mode is split between four characters, each with their own cars; and each of those with their own speed, acceleration, handling, and difficulty level. You select your character, and you’ll go through a gauntlet of three challenges on each of the five tracks in the game, using their car.

The challenges come in a few different types, depending on the track and driver. There’s:

Outside of needing to set track records with Viv, it doesn’t seem like actually winning the races is all that consequential. Whether you get bronze in a solo run, or come in second in a race (or even lose a battle by being out-scored) the story seems to move right along, unlocking the next challenge.

There is some discernibly different dialogue depending on whether or not you win. But other than that, even if you lose the race, the next race becomes available; and you’ll still unlock the car you’re racing against to be used outside of the story. That part is strange.

That said, if you want to challenge yourself, there are gold medals to go after in each event. Getting gold in all of the challenges with the first/easiest car was a cake-walk, so I assumed they all would be (I’m also usually pretty good at arcade-style racing games). But boy was I wrong. Some of the cars need an extremely delicate touch to maintain control, and the goal times require nigh-flawless driving.

I actually haven’t even actually completed them all yet. I’m still struggling with the Endurance race on Sunset Sea Circuit with Viv. I can’t imagine what’s coming.

Just Keep Swimming

It often doesn’t seem like it at first — especially given the fact that you gain all of the unlocks whether or not you do — but every race can actually be won (except for one, but that guy cheats). Keep persevering, it is possible.

That said, this is one of my biggest gripes with the game. The higher-difficulty-worse-handling cars are basically penalized for drifting. Avoiding the drift and not drifting in some of these cars is how you end up with the better times. It’s very frustrating. The point of the game is a detriment to you in higher difficulties? Make it make sense.

And if you want an even greater challenge (somehow), I noticed that there’s a secret medal available on at least some of the challenges — I noticed I got a platinum “S” instead of just gold on a couple challenges I crushed. Be on the look out.

At one point, though, I tried to intentionally get a platinum (I was cruising in one of the endurance challenges, and managed to double-up on the gold medal score), but it stayed gold. So the jury’s still out on whether platinum is available for all of the story-mode tasks, or just a couple.

If platinum is available on every challenge, as difficult as the gold medal challenges are, I don’t think this is something I’m going to try to accomplish personally. Let me know in the comments if you have.

Also,

There’s no customization here. You don’t unlock additional parts that you can apply to make your car faster or handle better, no experience points you can use to increase your stats, nothing. You can’t even customize the car’s color. It’s just you, the car, and your skills to accomplish each task.

And while there’s no voice acting, there is some dialogue in story mode which adds a nice… well… story, and some decent worldbuilding.

By and large, though, the exchanges simply consists of whichever character you’ve selected doubting themselves, while the other three encourage them and cheer them on. Occasionally “helping out” by “allowing” your character “test their skills” vs one of them on the track.

Even the “rivals” and other racers you face in the main events of each course are supportive. At worst they don’t want you there simply because they’re… introverts. It’s all a very wholesome experience.

Challenges & Grand Prix Mode

Challenges Mode is probably the most logical place to spend time once you’ve finished the story. Here, you can find all of the cars that you’ve beaten in Story Mode ready to be unlocked (to be used in Arcade and Grand Prix mode) if you complete one more challenge.

You select an unlocked car which, even in this mode, still belongs to it’s owner from story mode. Here, though, they were impressed with your driving skills, and want to see how you can handle their cars. There’s only one goal here, though, and it varies from car-to-car.

Once you’ve completed the challenge(s) with your favorite car(s), you can use them in Grand Prix mode. Grand Prix is a series of five races/challenges you have to complete, and you earn a score based on how you do. And again, each set of challenges and tracks are unique to each car.

Obviously, the goal is to win every race and cross every scoring threshold; but you can still complete a GP without doing so. And your favorite friendly foes are here, too; still driving their beloved cars. If you’re up against another racer, you might just get a bit of (extremely) friendly trash talk before the race.

In hindsight, everyone in the story mode talked about preparing for the Grand Prix, so it makes sense that everyone shows back up here.

Arcade Mode

Last but not least is Arcade mode. Here, you can challenge yourself against the best times and scores in the world, using one of the many cars you’ve unlocked (they’re still piloted by their owners, you’ll see them standing proudly next to their cars). Here, you can drive any car that you’ve unlocked, on any track you’ve unlocked, in any mode.

There’s even an additional mode here — precision — where you have to get the best time you can while driving as accurately as possible (the cones in the road will keep you honest). It’s great practice for nailing those records in other modes.

I mentioned before that in story mode there are 5 tracks, but the game does a good job of maximizing those, especially in Arcade mode. For example, the sprint-tracks have versions where they’re shortened, connected to another part of the track, and made into lap-tracks; and all of the courses can be driven in their reverse directions.

For each track, mode, and car you’re able to see the world-record times/scores (or the best times amongst your friends). Drop your gamertag, I’ll look out for you on the leaderboards.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention the inconsistent menus. You’re only able to “restart” certain races from the pause menu (rather than quitting and selecting the challenge again), even though you’ll be needing to do so frequently in order to hit some of these times. And when the restart button is there, it’s in the middle, displacing the other options, so it throws off the muscle memory of quickly trying to restart.

It’s a small thing, but when you’re restarting races 20, 30, maybe 50+ times, those small repetitive things become much much larger. I get the “realism” aspect of this being a race against someone, so there’s no restarts. But c’mon, everyone knows we’ll need multiple tries to hit our best times.

All in All…

While it’s a relatively bare-bones experience, Inertial Drift maximized what it has; and I’ve really been enjoying playing it. The cars are fun to drive, and extremely difficult to master; the tracks are fun and aesthetic; and the goals provide a serious challenge to overcome. I sometimes found myself wishing that the focus was more on drifting, given it’s name, but those thoughts were quickly replaced with trying just one. more. time.

Thanks for reading! Let me know in the comments if you played Inertial Drift and if you found those challenges as difficult as I did. Maybe my reflexes simply aren’t what they used to be. Don’t forget to check out my Links page if you want to try out any of the games you’ve read about here for yourself, or see the accessories I use to dominate. And, of course, be sure to check back for more awesome content!

The post Inertial Drift – Wild Twin-Stick Racing appeared first on I Talk Games.