Bears Can't Drift!?

[h1]Introduction[/h1] Bears Can't Drift!? is developed by Arran Langmead and published by Strangely Named Studio. It could’ve been a promising kart racer if it wasn’t bogged down by the troublesome control scheme and lack of a proper options menu. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] I really wanted to give this game a fair shot. I have relatively few racing titles in my Steam library, compared to other genres. Even less so, related to cuddly animal-driven karts. It is cute indeed but I cannot judge a game based solely on its looks. As soon as I started the game, I was baffled to find next to no way of actually seeing what graphical changes can be done or even an in-game glossary of the key bindings. All it showed were the symbols off console controllers and as soon as I pressed the ESC key, the game simply closed down and I was back to my desktop. Bears may drift, but we got off on the wrong foot right over there, buddy. I decided to let that one slide since I really did enjoy the near-minimal looking art style, the diversified scenery and even the number of bears/racers you can choose from. But I was taken aback soon enough when I tried playing on Bears Can't Drift!? Hard Mode. You see, once you start up the game, instead of going to the Hub (as the developer calls it) and selecting a bear and game world, you have to choose the difficulty by actually reaching a hub with your red kart (too bad you can’t change its color too). The Easy and Normal stages are a breeze, but lemme tell you of the Hard one. I tried for at least 20 times to jump off a cliff and reach the other side, only to crash less than a meter away from my target. That’s all it took. If only that cliff was taller. Still, I play on Normal on almost all my games so I had to settle for it. I made the right call, since the driver AI was very responsive and quite feisty. Absolutely nothing wrong in it. I throughly enjoy good AI in my racing games. Speaking of the Game Worlds I mentioned earlier, you can choose between Woodland, Asian and Arctic settings. Each filled with racing opportunities, time trials or a sort of picnic collection type of game which I presume would be enjoyable, if you play with 3 of your friends (we all know how well Mario Kart treated friendships, right?). Truly, the racing part of the game feels great if you overlook the inability to set your own controls. It even features power-ups to help you speed up or hinder your rivals during the race. It is only a decent title and that is what bothers me most. It could have been much better with what I perceive as, minor adjustments. I’m going to be a little technical now. My apologies if I will bore you with some details. The game has an atrocious options “panel” with overly simplistic settings which you cannot actually tweak. You might think I’m exaggerating but I had to inspect the screenshots I took for this title, in order to know what resolution it runs. 2194x1234. Ironically, this weirdly out of standardized proportions resolution is seen as 1920x1080 in-game and even then it does not allow me to change it in any manner, lowering or increasing. I’m not going to beat my chest over absolutely having to play the game at 4K (though I did attempt several ways, even by Set Launch Options and /width=3840 /height=2160), but it did have the option for 2K natively (2560x1440). Totally useless though since it never actually changed it in-game. Great job dev team! [h1]Pros[/h1] + Beautiful graphics + Decent racer AI + Steam Achievements [h1]Cons[/h1] - In-game settings and the control scheme are a bad joke - MP limited to LAN/splitscreen - No Steam Trading Cards [h1]Result / Final thoughts[/h1] Bears Can't Drift!? feels like it never left Early Access. Not having rebindable keys and with a barebones settings menu, can be considered almost sins as far as PC video gaming is concerned. It’s also known as a “bad console port” but the funny thing is, the PS4 version for this game has been even more critically panned. If the racer AI wouldn’t have been decent and if the game didn’t use the Unreal Engine 4, I might have rated the game below 60 and thus stop recommending altogether. In truth, even if I read on its store page that it had its final update on June the 1st 2016, nothing is really “final” in gaming. Not when you have to make things right. So, never say “never”. [b]Rating 60/100[/b] [quote]This review was submitted for [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ImperialReviews]Imperial Reviews[/url], through the generous contribution of [url=http://steamcommunity.com/id/redhillcro]RedHill[/url].[/quote]

[h1]What is Bears Can't Drift!?[/h1] Bears Can't Drift is a kart racer that is set in a stylised world and is heavily inspired from Diddy Kong Racing. Players take control of bears and race across a variety of tracks and game modes with up to four players in a split-screen game. Four game modes are available to be played. These include time trial, single race, and checkpoint. As a result of these modes being used in countless other racing games, they are self-explanatory. The fourth game mode, I'm not certain what they've called it, or really what the objective has you eat power-ups to fill up a power-up bar. I have yet to try this in the multiplayer mode. However, in the single-player mode, I filled up my bar and attacked the opposition. It isn't entirely clear what is supposed to happen or what you are supposed to do. An attempt to attack a single enemy mercilessly never eliminated them. Allowing the AI to attack me and empty my own bar never 'killed' me. Racing around the track six consecutive times didn't bring a possible 'race' to a close. Consequently, some clarification on this mode is necessary. A key feature of the game is a hub world. Players must navigate this hub world to get to the next event. This is one of the features that frustrates me most of all. [h1]The Disappointing Hub World[/h1] Unfortunately, I am disappointed in the hub world. It has copied the idea from Diddy Kong Racing and I wish that they hadn't. The gimmick may have worked almost two decades ago in an almost flawlessly designed racing game but it doesn't satisfy the needs of players today. Therefore, I argue that it is outdated. Many gamers desire a streamlined experience that they can get into and out of as quickly as possible. Because of this, we appreciate having menu systems that enable us to do this. As a result, the hub world is mentioned in many negative reviews as well as positive ones. I can appreciate that some people may enjoy the hub world. It would seem like a possible solution would be to incorporate a menu system as well as having the hub world. This would satiate the desires of both sets of players - those who enjoy the hub world and those who don't. A menu system would enable players to get into the actual events faster while those who enjoy the menu system [h1]Single Player? Forget About It![/h1] If you are a single player and do not have friends or family to play with then I strongly advise that you do not purchase this game. I have two very strong reasons for this. Firstly, in the non-race modes, there are no other race cars on the track. As a result, the race tracks feel like big empty space and consequently it feels very lonely. Further, there was no sense of competition whatsoever. If the intention of the developers was to have the single-player on a track by themselves attempting to get the fastest possible time then Steam leaderboards needed to be incorporated. That they are not is almost unforgivable. Secondly, when it comes to the competitive modes the AI is relatively useless. I am accustomed to having to duel it out with the computer AI. Other race games are able to have competitive AI even if it means the dreaded utilization of rubberbanding code. When you breeze by your opponents on the first or second corner of the race and are never headed again it gives your game a bad look. Even worse than this is when you overlap them on the second lap and they are either running into corners, performing donuts or occasionally not even driving in the right direction. Ultimately, if you are looking for a strong single-player racing game there are better alternatives on the market. [h1]Local Multiplayer? Right On![/h1] Although I am disappointed in the single-player mode the opposite holds true if you do have friends. This is where the game was intended to deliver and it does a pretty solid job. Playing with only Ainslie still made the game feel a little empty. However, playing with a group of 4 competitive gamers brought the game to life. This made the game feel a lot like Mario Kart and the like. As a result, it is genuinely a game where the more players you have (it supports up to 4) the better your experience. We were able to laugh and talk trash as we all attempted to outdo one another. The game, as cute as it is, does become very competitive in a group setting. When you have two or three players who are on your level - or better - you strive to keep getting better. The worst of our group claimed at the end of gameplay that they didn't feel left out and that they improved more than they had in other games because they were truly enjoying themselves. In our last race, they were able to come second instead of lagging miles behind. [h1]Is it Steamified?[/h1] There are no Steam Trading Cards as of yet. There is, however, a set of 21 Steam achievements. If I were to improve the game for Steam I would definitely add Steam leaderboard to the game especially if there are no plans to include online multiplayer. [h1]Verdict[/h1] Bears Can't Drift!? is a game that I cannot recommend for single-players looking for a competitive racing game. However, if you have multiple friends or family members who can and will play the game with you then it is recommended. Ultimately, there better games out there but for a local multiplayer game, this does represent reasonable value for money. For similar reviews and your chance to win great giveaways, including PC hardware, please visit [url=http://www.steamified.com]Steamified[/url]

So far I like the idea of the game. BUT!!!.... Pros: -Graphic are Eye Candy. Looks great, runs great. -Controls nice Cons: -repetitive soundtracks that are easily forgettable. (Ice world has a glitched forest world track playing too.) -BS collision physics that make you lose ALL MOMENTUM when you collide into another kart. -Some courses are not properly made for hard mode's speed -Some boundary boxes are too low off the tracks which can cost you your place as well as that game. -quiet sound effects -generic, yet cute characters -No sound options -Pointless hub that tries to be a diddy kong racing mimic. Honestly I'd rather have the option for a quickstart menu like in DKR64. -always starts in window even after setting changes. I will continue to play this game, and hope my perspective can change!

This game has lots of potential, and i purchased it assuming the complaints in the negative reviews had been fixed by this point. notice this review is march 2017. the issues are not fixed. i refunded due to multiple bugs, the worst of which is the game randomly deciding it wont recognize player 2's inputs, regardless of controller or port, working one second, and then not the next. there are other glaring issues as well that i figured the developers would have worked on, and they havent, including no proper menus or tutorial, no mini maps, no proper anything. hell, you will spend your first 30 minutes just trying to figure out how to select game mode, map, how to connect player 2, all the simplest ♥♥♥♥ that could be done in 2 seconds with a regular menu. they make you drive around a gigantic map, driving through "option" portals and "option" pickups that are not labeled, or even modeled after what youd expect the option to look like, and senselessly spread around, its insanity. the devs are not interested in listening to the community, the game has potential, but everything else causes it to be a NO BUY from me. try if you like, but you will quickly request a refund. it really is as bad as the other negs say.

Bears Can't Drift is the best Kart game on steam by far ) P Unreal Engine 4 custom made cartoon dat blows your mind. the Crash bandicoot feel yes, the amazing sound and tracks, worlds, all is here, take a break and go in the past, i mean, the FUTUR of kart racing !!! 10/10 oh yes

yikes. the menu interface is not intuitive at all. No sound options. No engine sound- basically tella tubby music is all you get. I was hoping for something similar to kart racer (korean ver) or even mario kart. The visuals are pretty awesome. For the amount of detail that went into the kart tires, I expected some semi-realistic/semi-arcade physics. It's not very fun imo.

As much as I liked this game when it was being worked on it appears to be abandoned.

so i bought this to chill with a few friends while we were drinking. from what i could tell it seemed like a maria kart-type game... which it is. However, i found it immensely bad. there's no in game menu, you have to drive through portals to choose everything from difficulty to world and maps. there is no tutorial, which isn't too bad as it's a simple game, but you need to spend the first few minuttes figuring out how to chose the game mode you want and stuff like that. Also, when racing the races you dont have a mini map. this might seem like a simple thing that could be added, but i feel like it made it really difficult to see what direction you need to turn sometimes. the maps look open world, but are farely linear, so you don't NEED a minimap but it would be nice. However, if you do get confused enough to drive in the actual opposite direction of the rest of the players then the game won't tell you. It will just have you drive through the map in the wrong direction untill you figure it out for your self. Granted, i only spent 45 minuttes in the game before requesting a refund but i really didn't want to waste another minutte in there

I was hoping this would be like Diddy Kong Racing. It's not.

This is one of the worst racing games ever. Madagascar Carts for Wii was better than this ♥♥♥♥. Besides the nice looks, this game has got VERY little going for it. Unless you have a 3 year old that you want to play a cute game, dont buy this game. For adults theres way better racing games than this. Literally a game for 3-7 year olds