Drive!Drive!Drive!

Drive!Drive!Drive! is a 'racing game unlike any other', the store page proudly proclaims. They're right; no other racing game will 'Drive' you insane quite like this one. The basic idea is easy enough to understand: Try racing multiple Hot Wheels-like tracks at once, obviously driving one car at a time and switching to another lane when that car falls behind or when you need to collect crystals in the Collection events. The problems start to add up once you realize that Drive!Drive!Drive! is constantly working against you, and I don't just mean because of the 'Intelligent Stupidity' engine. (Again, the store page's words, not mine.) When you're racing on one lane, your cars on the other lanes will slow down deliberately to create some sort of difficulty. The idea is that you switch when you see a car fall behind and race to catch back up. Where this idea falls apart is more often than not, you'll switch to find your car stuck on another lane it's not supposed to be on, or stuck in a corner not going anywhere other than the inside of the corner it's smashing into, or just plain getting sabotaged by the other AI cars. There is a Reset Car button, but this honestly feels like a cop-out feature to me, like in playtesting these issues came up and they just said "Oh, well if they can reset whenever it's not a problem as long as we put them in front of the obstacle a little bit, right?" Well, that sometimes doesn't work right and you'll respawn only to immediately fall off course again. In one case, I just fell through the road entirely upon respawning, so that's fun. Guess what else is broken in this game? The physics, the one thing an arcade racing game needs to get mostly right if not 100% right, and this game's physics are all sorts of wrong. Go airborne, land on your wheels, and sometimes you'll just dead stop. Yep, makes sense to me. [spoiler]It doesn't.[/spoiler] Try spinning another racer with your car or truck, like you'll have to do if you want to win the Arcade events, and get ready to fly into a tailspin yourself and most likely fly off course. I can't think of a single other arcade racing game where touching another car, even slightly, can completely ruin an entire race. It's just bad design, period. Speaking of Arcade events, winning on all lanes in an Arcade event isn't even close to achieving BRONZE. You know what counts the most? Smashes. So your best bet is to pick a big truck and smash the other racers instead of trying to win. I don't know, that doesn't sound like a racing game to me. Fortunately, once you figure out how to get Bronze in the Arcade events (and GOOD LUCK getting above that, you're gonna need it, even on Normal difficulty), the other game modes are just as easy to achieve Bronze. That's all you need to do to progress in the main campaign, which is great because of how luck based these events feel at all times. Then you get to the Offensive campaign, realize all of the races there require absolute perfection, and you'll probably do what I did: stop playing entirely and get a refund. Normally, I don't like the idea of bashing on games like this, because Drive!Drive!Drive! has some interesting ideas going for it, but I had to write this after seeing the positive reviews. As someone that was able to complete F-Zero GX's story mode on Very Hard difficulty, Drive!Drive!Drive! doesn't feel challenging in a fair, rational way. It's like the racing game equivalent of playing blackjack with a card dealer that wants you to lose, so he rigs the deck against you and occasionally punches you in the face. [b]Recommendation:[/b] I honestly feel like this is a racing game for people that hate racing games. When half of your game relies on pure luck against bad physics and insurmountable win conditions to experience [u]half of the game's content,[/u] I just can't recommend it to anyone unless I actually hated them with a passion. Instead of this, I recommend playing any of the TrackMania games, probably Nations Forever if I had to pick one. At least that one's free.

"Unfortunately, the AI racers aren’t what you’d call competent." Wanting to make a cool racing game with cool tracks, coding a bad AI and making it a feature to sell for 20€ at its finest. The problem with this feature is: There is always a single car on the track that has a worse AI than the others and ♥♥♥♥♥ up entirely. Your own car. So basically, playing a level works like this: You start on #9, boost yourself to #1 and switch to your car on another track which is still on #9 and like half the track behind the enemies. You boost yourself to #1 and switch back to your first car because it's back on #8 again. Sometimes you even have 3 or 4 tracks, so you basically spend the time watching your cars fall back to the last place, trying to save them somehow and hoping to get a good result. Of course, you could say that it's the point of the game, having to deal with a bad autopilot and struggle to get a good result. The problem is: There's no skill curve. The game is solely based on luck. Sometimes you drive like a pro and only get a bronze medal because the AI ♥♥♥♥♥ up too much. Sometimes you drive like ♥♥♥♥ and you earn a gold medal because you're lucky with the AI. A racing game purely based on luck instead of skill? No, thanks. Maybe D!D!D! could still be enjoyable, but there are many flaws. For instance, you can unlock cars with different stats. They are being displayed with like 30 stripes. You can't really count them and when you switch the car, you get to see an animation where all stats start at zero and count up to match the values of the car. Looks quite cool, but makes it impossible to compare the cars. As your opponents always have the same car as you, unlocking new cars loses its purpose anyway. The GUI is terrible. The menu is always somewhere else. You enter the pause menu, it's in the middle of the screen. You end a race, the buttons are shown in the bottom right-hand corner whereas the menu is in the top left-hand corner. You NEVER look at this corner, except when the race ends. Let me tell you what, that's crap UI design. After half an hour you slowly get used to looking there, but it still feels extremly awkward. Keyboard controls aren't remappable. The "reset" key (R) doesn't even work. Which is especially fun when you want to earn a gold medal and switch to another track only to find out that your car is heading into the wrong direction. At this point you basically lost the race already and have to restart via the pause menu because there's no way to reverse the direction of the car before the race ends. And this happens a lot. According to another review the "reset" key works, so the devs probably just forgot to implement it in the keyboard controls. Which makes this game just another case of "Devs want to sell a PC game but are too lazy to actually implement PC controls because they always have their controller plugged in." Guess what, I don't and I don't see a point in plugging my controller in for a little arcade racing game that works well with a keyboard. If you're still interested in the game, wait for a sale. Buy it for less than 5€ or even grab it in a bundle for a dollar like I did. Definitely don't give the devs 20€ (!!!) for selling a lackadaisical arcade racing game that revolves around their lack of AI coding skills.

[h1] Driving on mutliple tracks at once! I'm not so sure about that... First of all you can drive only one car at a time and switch between parallel tracks. Whilst you take control of one vehicle the rest is controlled by AI and let me tell you, AI sucks - it constantly crashes into track barriers. You have to swap your cars frequently and manually steer them to somehow win. Also don't forget to smash your opponents for some extra turbo juice! There're a few different game modes except your usual race like score attack, time trial or crystal collect. First levels might seem easy enough but as you complete more races, tracks get more complex and challenging. From time to time you unlock new car with different stats. Visually game looks simplified and rather minimalistic. There's no music! Overall I feel like Drive!Drive!Drive! have some interesting concept which could've been much better but it falls kinda short. Recommended for car racing enthusiasts and to satisfy your curiosity for parallel dimension driving. [/h1]

[h1] Очередная многообещающая игра, которую выкинули в релиз по сути на уровне концепта [/h1] Контента тут маловато, притом оформление довольно неоднозначное. Стиль игры футуристичный, но шрифты крайне мелкие и нечитаемые. В игре так вообще всё сливается в кашу, особенно на этапе обучения - что там нажать, где искать и потом табличка сразу же исчезает. Притом в некоторых моментах требуют нажать кнопку, а в других не успеешь - твои проблемы. Порадовал общий стиль треков в подвешенном состоянии. Есть любопытная возможность управлять одной машинкой на нескольких трассах. Управление для такой стремительной гонки не слишком отзывчивое либо мой ноутбук не справляется с такой довольно простой гонкой... Да и перемещение между трассами происходит с некоторой задержкой и интеллект управляет неподконтрольными трассами из рук вон плохо. В общем, как обычно, идея неплохая, но невылизанная в духе инди-проектов для ПК. Подобные, но безвестные игры с вылизанным состоянием умирают с окончанием производства консолей. Взять хотя бы ту же PSP. Там было довольно много головоломных гонок. Но из этих головоломных вспоминается только Gripshift. А эту игру неплохо было бы довести до ума, сделать оптимизацию, подправить шрифты, а также добавить русский язык с карточками и облачным сохранением.

Personally, this is one of my favorite racing/driving games of all time. I love the different atmospheres and unique car styles. Makes perfect gameplay for a commentary video. This game is criminally underrated and deserves a ton of more exposure. There are a ton of community tracks which makes fun gameplay for a video or just plain entertainment. I'd highly recommend this game to anyone if you're looking for a casual, chill drive or a deeply-invested, intense racing game.

Access to the actual gameplay requires completion of the tutorial, despite the fact that mandatory tutorials shouldn't exist for any game outside of one based around online team play. The tutorial is a frustrating, hot mess of a design. Beyond the clunky interface of its pop-ups, the tutorial restarts an entire section whenever a task isn't successfully completed (and you're further punished by a loadup delay). Further, there is a bug where it won't recognize completion of a specific task, and you'll have to restart the entire game and the tutorial to be able to progress past that task. Of course, you won't know for sure if it's the bug [versus your not completing the task within the limited time you have to do so] until you've tried that task a few times, with the annoying full-tutorial-section restart occurring each attempt. The tutorial is also designed for the xbox controller, with all the tutorial tips utilizing the face buttons for that controller. So if you're using a Nintendo Pro, Steam, Dualshock, or other controller, expect to enjoy the moment when you accidentally tap on the 'race restart' button while trying to find whatever button corresponds to the displayed xbox button. Yeah, apparently a race restart button is a thing (and that in addition to a car reset button), and they chose to assign it to a face button. That's right, your face buttons are "Boost, track swap, car reset, and race restart". Oh, and these elements aren't listed in the menu (there's no controller configuration available), and they only tell you the full controller scheme at the very end of the tutorial. Really, what kind of troll design were they going for, with this tutorial? Oh, and on completing the tutorial, you get a 'Continue / Restart' selection that defaults to Restart. Yep, this all definitely seems intentional. The racing is fine, albeit floaty. I'll update with more details once I've played more of the game, but to my mind the tutorial issues alone seem meriting of a negative review. I mean, we don't necessarily expect tutorials to be great, but when a developer forces us into playing it, and it's abysmal (and apparently intentionally so), then they should very well expect it to be evaluated as part of the game itself. Really, though, this tutorial is amazingly awful. Given how everything comes together so deliberately, it's easier to assume intentional sadism than incompetence or lack of effort. On a positive note, the menu seems well optimized for controllers, with adjustments [eg, to volume settings] feeling smooth in their sensitivity setting. On the other hand, the game has no setting options beyond volume controls, resolution settings, a full screen/windowed toggle, and a [Performance or Graphics] toggle. Given the lack of a sensitivity setting in the options, if the game [i]does[/i] have any issues with your controller, that may end up being problematic. I don't believe the game is mouse-compatible, my test only indicated keyboard recognition.

Мне хватило 12 минут, чтобы понять все проблемы этой игры. Вопрос: был ли тест игры перед релизом? По порядку: 1) Основная задумка интересна - одновременная гонка по 2+ трекам. Основная проблема - при смене машины она как будто остается афк и просто отдает все выигранные позиции за 2-3 секунды, а если это поворот, то еще быстрее. Задержка после смены трека - секунды 3. Думайте сами. При перманентном переключении в этом хотя бы был смысл, на деле же - вышел на 1ое место, прошел поворот, переключился и уже в конце пелотона. Просто абсурд, учитывая короткие треки, обилие поворотов и 1 круг. 2) Графика - Приятная лоу-поли картинка, но при этом абсолютно лишенная каких-либо эффектов. Представьте, что рука толкает игрушечную машинку, а потом замазывается на пост-продакшне. Отвратное ощущение. 3) Музыка пресна и не запоминается, но за 12 минут я и не мог наслушать много, но сожалений по этому поводу не испытываю. Итог - Альфа билд интересной идеи, не подвергшийся абсолютно никаким тестам и выброшенный в релиз. Проходите мимо и не тратьте ни время, ни деньги. 1 трек из 10

I completely understand the idea of this game. You have to win multiple races at the same time, but the AI that controls your other cars when you aren't is a worse racer than you, so you have to keep catching up in each race, back and forth, like you're trying to keep multiple plates spinning. The problem is that the 'ally' AI isn't bad. It's nonfunctional. I've NEVER seen any AI in any racing game less competent than the one that's 'helping' you. You can get to first place, switch to another track, and watch the other car's position fall to 5th or 6th in less than two seconds. It's less like spinning several plates at once, and more like spinning one plate while a large smelly man keeps trying to smack it out of your hand. Think of the auto-resolve function in a strategy game. Usually it does produce worse results than a decent player actually playing out the encounter, and you're almost certainly going to lose more units, but you will still probably win when you should be winning. This game feels equivalent to an auto-resolve where whenever you push it, you lose the encounter and 100 percent of your army is killed. With that, and the fact that the analog controls for the controller feel pretty bad, I can't call this game good or even decent. It's a 10-times-3 car pile-up.

bought this game with a 90% of discount and still feels like a waste of money TL;DR don't buy it, don't support lazy game development and the game is abandoned anyway AI is terrible, the first track you play outside of the tutorial is incredibly unfair, why does it matter that the AI is terrible? because you are in charge of two cars at the same time, as soon as you switch to the other to get it in first place, the other will fall hard behind to 9th or 10th place and so on, and the races are only 1 lap so good luck with that, if you are still set on trying it, buy it, try it for the two hours you have available an then refund it

Ну очень слабо, ну прям вообще, я не хейтер данной игры, мне даже нравится такой жанр. Но даже если брать ее ближайшего конкурента "Distance", то она всем проигрывает : Плохая музыка, плоха картинка, мало разнообразия, скучновато.............. Вот не хотелось-бы ставить отрицательный обзор, но именно из-за цены я все-же поставлю.