I can’t claim to know the science behind the necessary ratios required for maximum drift, but it’s there should you seek challenge and Automatic is too easy for you. Knowing when to drop down a gear into a turn, only to shift up to get that power/speed balance on a drift is a mastery in itself. If you want to step it up and have complete mastery of your ride, that’s where Manual Transmission comes into play. If you’re too close a wall, ease off, then put your foot down and turn into the next one to continue your score. Approach a corner, then as you hit the brake turn against the corner and keep applying the gas to maintain drift. That’s enough to get you started, as drifting is explained fairly easily in the Tutorial. The easiest enough is Automatic Transmission and whatever you want to map the handbrake to. To avoid using the overused “Dark Souls because it’s difficult” analogy, there are different control schemes to utilise here. Stop, Start, SkidĬontrolling your ride in Absolute Drift is again pretty easy to get used to, hard to master. Which makes it such a contradiction when the game becomes bastardly frustrating. It’s peaceful and yes, very Zen, as the name suggests. There’s no Lil Jon shouting at you to get low, just ambients beats as you leave your (skid)marks around Japanese namesakes. The accompanying music is that of a low-fi, chill electronica soundtrack. You can customise your car to different colours if you wish, or keep it a brilliant white against the tracks. Objects of significance, like drift markers and bonus lines, are a contrasting red, whilst skidmarks are a definite black. The presentation of Absolute Drift is a sort of stark, minimal white look to it all. What I can tell you, however, is that they’re very pretty to look at. Having not been to Japan, I couldn’t tell you if the tracks based on Kyoto, Yokohama, Kobe, Nagano or Fukuoka had any real-world semblance to them. Set in courses based in Japan, hooning around tracks named after famous locales is a delight. But there’s nothing Fast or Furious about Absolute Drift, there be no garish colours here. If someone told you this were a game about drifting and you went in blind, you might conjure up images of street racing and flashy neon lights. Think Tony Hawk’s in terms of scoring, but pulling off 900° spins on the ground. In these you’re to pull doughnuts around obstacles, spin in tight set markers and generally keep a trick combo going. Then there are your Gymkhana-style events, which are skill based events with a time limit. The objectives in these are usually score-based, barring the occasional “finish in X time without crashing” objective. Instead of laps, you have one shot on a massive, scenic track. There are race style tracks, which are straightforward enough, consisting of a few laps each. Like hitting certain drift lines, or making sure you “hit” a prerequisite amount of drift markers. Then, as you start to get to grips with the game, you can aim for the harder goals. Set scores are one thing, as is hitting a certain drift combo multiplier. For you lovers of high score, though, there are online leaderboards if you want to prove yourself.Įach track plays like most arcade checklists do, ranging from the easy enough to downright fiendish at times. There’s no single player leaderboards or league tables, just a set task list for each course. Rather, think of it more an art of racing concept: less straights and more a tightly packed course. There are no other racers, for one, and there’s no massively open straights to get enough speed on. Unlike Need for Speed or Burnout, it’s not about throwing cars at high speeds around other racers, oh no. Slide It Like You Mean Itĭrifting, if one is to consider it a sport, is the art of skidding in style. The question being, then, is whether it still has the horsepower it had many years ago, or has the fuel run out for this ride?īuckle up, as I’m about slide into your review window with a look at the high stakes world of throwing a car sideways around corners. It’s been out on other formats for years now, finally making its way to the Nintendo Switch in the form of Zen Edition. It brings a level of fun/frustration akin to that of Trials or Skate: simple enough to pick up and play, but encourages fast reflexes and precision skills later on. Set in and around the world of car drifting, it’s presented in stylish minimalism that pays homage to its Japanese roots and progression into the likes of Ken Block’s Gymkhana. Absolute Drift is the pinnacle of this: looks pleasant and alluring, ends up blapping you in the face with challenge quite early on. There’s a certain irony in a game calling itself a Zen Edition yet being infuriating. The art of throwing a car at speed around tight tracks has never been so much fun.
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