Drift 84 Review – Drifting And A Blast From The Past

Today Joe takes a look at the addictive top down racer ‘Drift 84’ – produced by Reventador Games, more specifically it has been developed by Thomas Webb, his father Martin Webb was the genius behind the 80’s Commodore 64 classic “Outrun”. Anyone who owned the C64 – Outrun was a must own game. Drift 84 has already been released on smartphone/tablets and it’s due to be released on Steam on Tuesday 14th July. Read on for our full review.

INTRODUCTION:

Drift 84 is a top down 80’s racer that’s actually pretty entertaining. You have 6 race cars at your disposal (or will have by the time you’ve unlocked them all). You’ll get over 50 different racetracks throughout Europe to burn rubber on and each vehicle has a number of upgrades that can be installed that’ll improve different characteristics such as handling, speed and general performance – more importantly any upgrade will determine how quickly you progress up the leaderboards, so spend those coins wisely. As well as the mechanical upgrades, you also have the ability to spray each car.

The game also promises Multiplayer so you can compete head to head with up to 6 friends, or challenge the leaderboard to try and accomplish the number one spot.

GAMEPLAY

The gameplay on this one is simple, it’s literally just the arrow keys to control your car. Acceleration is automatic. But that doesn’t stop it being any less entertaining. I’ve only had the game a few hours and already I’m hooked. You get closer and closer to beating the necessary lap times in order to progress to the next track. You receive coins even if you don’t succeed, so upgrades are almost always obtainable. The cars don’t have any names or branding, but they vary in price and performance. The mobile app has in-app purchases, there were no signs of this in the PC version which was good. Also nosing through the menu, it looks like the game is going to be getting controller support, a must for most racing games.

Both with the mobile app and PC version you get the feel that the developers want you to feel like you are drifting like you would in a real car. This is the impression I certainly had. One thing that did strike me as odd is that your progress doesn’t save when you exit the game. Would be nice if this was an option as you may not feel like doing all 50 races over and over again. Hopefully, this will get added in the near future.

Unfortunately the multiplayer wasn’t active in our copy, but I look forward to seeing what this can do. I can see it being extremely competitive and fun.

GRAPHICS AND AUDIO

The graphics are a mix of 2D and 3D. Each track has been hand painted for realism and I personally think Thomas has done an excellent job here. However, a bit of variety with the track scenery would have been nice. Despite the different track layouts, it did feel a little stale here. The game launches in windowed mode by default but you can change this via the menu if you’d rather play full screen. For me the game played beautifully in either mode.

Audio has that pumped up adrenaline 80’s retro feel to it, which compliments the game nicely. You can feel where the game gets it’s roots from and there’s no shame in that. According to the Steam page, the soundtrack is downloadable.

At the beginning of each race you get a welcoming female voice that counts down 3…2…1… before the race begins, so it gives you a few seconds to get prepared.  There’s no music to distract you whilst you are racing. Although you do get a nice roar from your engine, so it makes it feel like a real racer.

CONCLUSION

There was a lot I liked about the game, but equally there were a few things that put me off slightly. Things I liked were: It’s extremely easy to jump in and race, however, I would have liked control over the acceleration and braking and general vehicle control, it’s too easy to come off the track if you aren’t paying attention. Come off once and it’ll mess your lap time up, at the moment you only get 3 laps so you don’t get much of a chance to put things right if you do mess a lap up. Although you can quick restart a race if you feel all hope is lost. Although I can’t judge the controls too harshly because it would ruin the drifting aspect of the game. I am excited to see what the controller support brings to the table though.

Some branding or naming of cars (even if fictional) would be nice, although the cars vary in performance and handling, it would be nice to know what you are racing, rather than it just being another car.

It literally is a few clicks from launching the game to being on the race track which is nice. However one thing that was a little annoying (and this might just be me being fussy) but I disliked having to go to the main menu to enter the garage. It would be nice if there was an additional button from within the track select screen. However saying that once you’re in, it’s easy to upgrade.

All in all it’s a very good game and I look forward to seeing it mature and develop over the coming months. It has a great developer behind it, so I can see it doing very well in the Steam community. There are far too many developers who only half finish a game (and that includes some bigger titles too), but I can see Thomas being an exception to the rule here. The game can be found on Steam by clicking here. It’s going to be priced at £1.99 (it’ll have a 30% discount initially), what a bargain. Whether you play for 30 minutes or non stop for the next 6 months, the value for money truly shines through immediately. Affordability, simplicity and thoroughly enjoyable from the word go.

Go ahead and check it out, you won’t be disappointed. Feel free to get in contact to let us know your thoughts.