Tokyo Xtreme Racer DRIFT
Kaido Battle finally arrives on US shores, and at an irresistible price.
Published: April 30, 2006
Luckily, the races themselves can be fairly lengthy, though here too there is some repetition. See, the game is split between day and night races. During the day, you'll race officially sanctioned courses for cash, ply those winnings towards new parts and cars, and line up sponsors to give you free equipment and paychecks. At night, it's purely about racing rivals -- all of which show up in parking lots at the top and base of the mountain. Beat them all and you'll challenge the reigning king of that course. Beat them and it's onto the next section (though you're always welcome to hop back over to older courses).
Day races races are subdivided into competitions based on the type of car you have, there's races for turbo engines, for 4WD vehicles, for engine classes, and each is broken down into levels. If you can place first in all the eligible events, you'll move up a level and rake in more cash per event. Locking down a sponsor means you'll have to pass their challenge too, but this also means better equipment that you can use in any car (instead of re-buying the same parts), and of course more cash. There is a bit of a problem in that you can just spam the shortest races with the biggest payout to make money fast, and this in turn makes the daytime events feel a little too long in the tooth, but then it's still your choice to do so.
Night races are a little different. Though you're working to defeat everyone on the mountain, there's more variety here than the drift-heavy daytime races. You'll race against another car's time, try to beat them in pure drift points, or do straight head-to-head races. To make things more interesting, you'll also have to throw down cash and/or car parts in some races -- and these are usually against multiple opponents back-to-back. The drift races are particularly important because you'll only rack up points for sliding around pre-set corners. Crossing into a corner's gate starts the drift sequence and so long as you can rack up 1000 points or more on the tail out, you'll get a clean section bonus, which is crucial in nearly all races. This system seems a little weird, but it keeps you from just skidding all over the place on straightaways just to rack up points a la NFSU.
Also added is a basic message board system that displays comments from racers every day. It's the usual "my car is the best, race me!" stuff most of the time (though there are some fun little bits of faux-flaming and a bit of helpful banter), but you can find challenges here and see how racers react to winning or getting beaten. Useful, since this is really the only way to gain any sort of insight into their personality; the actual racers don't tend to ride the mountain too differently from each other. Though it's horribly obscure (the game only gives you basic clues from racers you beat), you can also use the boards to find out when special opponents will appear, and these will often give you parts or cars if you win -- even in the daytime.
Though the time trial and head-to-head races are fun, the meat of the game lies in learning how different cars with different drive trains work with the new physics. A mid-engine, rear-wheel drive car does indeed handle differently from a rear/rear or front/rear setup, and all of these are different from a four-wheel drive car. Weight plays a role, and half the game is just learning how to slide through corners, check speed and learn the feel of how your car drives, and this can be an absolute blast. When you finally do learn the right speed and timing to get a full sideways drift around a hairpin, it's an almost magical experience, and I can see how a sport like this caught on in Japan.
There are still some issues with other racers, though. Whenever there are collisions, it's always your fault, and there can be some serious dings to your SP gauge when another guy uses you to cut a deeper inside line around a hairpin. Though this does force clean racing, and I do almost admire that other racers basically abuse the fact that you're there to win (something I do too), the way the SP demerits are included is wholly unfair.
