Drift21 fills a very specific hole in the gaming market. Drift21 is a driving simulator with an emphasis on drifting specifically, and fully customizable vehicles currently in early access. That’s it! That’s the whole game. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it certainly cuts down the number of people this game can actually appeal too. This is very much an experience for racing fans, and even at that the emphasis on drifting may push the average racing fan away. Drift21’s main content is for fans of in-depth drift mechanics, and car enthusiasts as gameplay is split between drifting levels, and a main garage area in which you can customize your car and purchase new parts. Trying to appeal to a niche audience helps give Drift21 a sense of identity and purpose, but is that enough to make a compelling game?

            Overall, the drifting aspect is enjoyable for what it is. At first, I was worried playing on controller was going to ruin the experience, but the control scheme feels nice which is really all you can ask for at the end of the day in drifting game. Although other modes are available, such as a newly added multiplayer mode, time trial is definitely the mode that suits Drift21 the best. There is a decent selection of courses to chose from, however some require upgrades to be made to the car in the garage. The drifting feels good and the course selection is adequate, but that’s about all there is to say about it. As someone who is not a huge fan of racing games, let alone one focusing just on drifting, I was becoming uninterested with the repetitive gameplay. An average video game fan could probably get at maximum five hours of enjoyment out of Drift21, but by that point I would find it surprising anyone who aren’t there for the gameplay could keep going. Racing for a high score on each stage is enjoyable, but even that becomes repetitive quickly.

            The other big aspect of the game is the garage. Sadly, this part is not my cup of tea. Every single part in the car is not only fully customizable, but mandatory upon purchasing a new vehicle. I am not a car person, so I was pretty lost. Although tutorials were available to make installing the car parts easier, text boxes can only help so much. The garage is probably very enjoyable for car fans, but that’s the issue once again. The extremely in-depth car system is only able to appeal to so many people. Once I hit a point where I had no idea what I needed to put in my car, and the game was telling me I required certain parts to continue I started to question why I was even playing in the first place as someone who doesn’t care much for the car medium. Also, the sensitivity in the garage is ridiculous! Some of the hitboxes to add parts into the car are extremely small. I had to switch to mouse and keyboard just to put in some of the car’s smaller parts. Perhaps car fans will have a good time with this section of the game, but it’s certainly not for me.

            There is very little to say about Drift21. Sure the graphics are nice, and the sound design is good, but neither of those are important unless you’re a fan of the gameplay. If you are not a fan of drifting, and car maintenance then there is no reason to purchase this game. Although I am definitely more likely to recommend this game to a of drifting or car maintenance, I sadly am not even sure about that. It’s hard to tell what the drifting aficionado what think of Drift21’s mechanics. The games $25 price tag may be too high based on the amount of content actually provided, of course all of that is subject to change as this game is still in early access. Overall, if you like drifting and cars, this may be your game, but be ready because that’s all this game is. As far as everyone else goes, I see very little reason to pick up this game especially at its price tag considering the vast number of other games at a similar price of higher quality.

The King of Fighters series has seen numerous entries over the years receiving an annual iteration from 1994 to 2010, but not all have been a smashing success – leading to only a single release since then. One that has stood the test of time is The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match, which is back with a vengeance with an all-new online mode. A remake of The King of Fighters 2002, Unlimited Match was originally released on PS2 and X-box in 2009 and was then re-tuned and re-released by developer SNK in 2015 on Windows and then in 2021 on PS4. 

With the largest roster in the series, revised game balance and additional moves, there’s little more a newcomer could ask for here – but what about a KOF fan? Does this offer value or is it an attempt for the once-great franchise to regain relevance with an almost identical re-release?

KOF’s strengths over the more popular 2d fighting series are obvious as soon as you put up your fists. A long list of attacks combined with hypnotically animated and detailed character sprites give each character personality, but the real joy of this title stems from mastering the game’s ‘Max Mode’ system which allows for the blending of combos into one long highly destructive move. With the already impressive list of moves available, this feature adds a depth and replay value that few fighting games can boast as there are so many different ways to use it. Pulling them off within the game’s strict input window represents another aspect KOF games are known for – their difficulty. It needs quite the dedication to become proficient, and although it’s not required to have fun with the title, it might seem unappealing to those accustomed to other more accessible fighters such as Super Smash Bros and Street Fighter.

While it’s hard to find any faults with the fighting system per se, one thing I did find disappointing with the visuals is a lack of frames present in the fighting animation, which contrasts greatly with the buttery smooth standing animation. It’s forced to cover too much movement frame to frame, making the fast action feel quite jerky, and leaving potential on the table right from the drop of the hat.   

All the standard modes return with 3-on-3 team play, which is a change from previous KOF iterations at release which had a ‘striker’ system similar to the aid characters in the Marvel vs Capcom games; single play, challenge mode, which acts as a tutorial; endless mode and a practice mode. You’re also able to adjust the graphics settings by adding or removing scanlines or making the character sprites smoother.

Aside from the main modes which are almost identical, there are actually fewer extra features compared to the PS2 version, with the gallery and Neogeo modes now missing. Why character profiles or some semblance of a story couldn’t have been added for newcomers is a bit puzzling, especially considering that SNK’s re-releases of KOF 98 and SNK’s Garou: Mark of the Wolves both included numerous additions, but what do I know? What does carry over, however, is the PS2 version’s lackluster overall presentation. Whether it’s the obnoxious main menu, the slightly blurred character selection and quote screens, the irritating narration, or the omission of any real guidance on how to use the Max Mode system correctly, there’s little added value outside of its battle system.  

The game’s real selling point though is its online functionality which lets you play opponents from around the world with rollback netcode, cutting edge technology that ensures a stable connection with your opponent regardless of their internet speed. It also has the ability to view replays of your last 10 online battles, which may or may not be something you’ll (*cough* I’ll) ever want to look at.

With its upgrades and online functionality, The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match represents the best KOF has to offer on a 2D axis. While it must be said that there are more accomplished 2D fighters available, for those looking for deeper combat and a more involved experience there are few better alternatives.     

Speedy thing goes in, speedy thing goes splat.

I can’t ride a bike. I never learned and, at this stage of my life, learning to ride one wouldn’t add much to my life experience. This has become a point of great contention among my friend group, one of whom felt strongly enough that their father offered to sponsor me to learn. But now, a few hours into Lonely Mountains: Downhill, I feel a sense of vindication for that disinterest in learning to ride one, because I am now more convinced than ever that bikes are terrifying death machines with only one goal, to take the blood that’s inside your body and transition it to the outside with great ferocity and speed.

Lonely Mountains: Downhill is a mountain biking game where your objective is to take a mad man with a bike and a death wish from the top of a mountain to the bottom, without fulfilling that wish for the sweet release of oblivion. There are four mountains and four trails on each mountain, each adding more rocks, steep slopes and jumps to make that job progressively harder as you progress through the game. The controls are beautifully simplistic, giving you only steering, acceleration, brakes and sprint, which tips the scale on the game to being incredibly skill-based and satisfying to play. When you get the exact sequence of controls right to navigate a tricky bit of a trail, it almost feels like solving a puzzle and weirdly reminds me of the feeling of completing a test chamber in Portal, only without a psychotic AI telling you that you “fly through the air like an eagle…piloting a blimp”, one of my favourite lines in gaming.

That satisfying gameplay is also due to the feeling of the movement in the game. The acceleration as you go down a hill or use the sprint button and you start to lose control feels real. The resistivity of the longer grass holding you back when you stray from the path feels real. The twitchy feeling of braking at great speed and suppressing or leaning into a skid feels real. So much attention to detail has been put into how the game feels and it really shows. The developers nailed a lot of the components of Lonely Mountains: Downhill, but the feeling of motion is the headline that I’d use to recommend the game.

You’re given each trail that you tackle in the game in a free roam format to start with, where you have no time limit or challenges to meet, like the first year at university. You’ll die a lot during this first run because mountain biking is dangerous and mountain bikers are lunatics. But that’s the point of being given a free roam version of the map to start with, so you can familiarise yourself with its intricacies and death traps. There are 5-10 checkpoints per trail so you’ll just pop back to that point every time you die so you can attempt the tricky bit again.

Once you’ve familiarised yourself with the trail it’s time to do it for real. You’re given a selection of challenges such as completing it in a certain time or with fewer than so many crashes. Each of those challenges unlocks something, such as new bikes or skins (insert joke about the cyclist needing new skin because the crashes made all of his come off) or, most importantly, new trails and mountains, meaning you’ll need to complete at least one challenge to progress through the game. These challenges are pretty perfect and balance being difficult without being impossible.

I really like two things the game does to make the challenges a little more forgiving. Firstly, you don’t need to complete all of them in a single run, so you can go for a slow, cautious run to complete the few crashes challenge and then go for a fast, caution-to-the-wind run to beat the trail within the time limit. Secondly, the checkpoint system is tied to the timing when you’re doing a timed run, so if (when) you crash, the time taken between the last checkpoint and that crash is taken from your total, i.e. it only includes the time you took to get between one checkpoint and the next without crashing. This makes the challenges feel doable and means you’re not kept from playing the latter half of the game when the new mountains and trails are locked behind completing them.

Lonely Mountains: Downhill also manages to pack this satisfying gameplay and compelling challenge system into a nicely presented art style. The vibrant colours and polygonal models fit the game perfectly and, despite that style being characteristic of older PS1 and Xbox games, it actually makes the game look fresh and distinct, as well as quite beautiful, with the lovingly rendered gushing streams and autumnal leaves. The word ‘oversaturation’ clearly wasn’t in the vocabulary of whoever chose the colour pallet, leading to the gorgeous presentation of the game we ended up with.

In my mind, Lonely Mountains: Downhill is the perfect Switch game and, a pretty great game regardless of platform. It feels amazing, looks fantastic and is exactly the right level of challenging. The way that you can pick it up for five minutes, have a run through a trail and have a fun time makes it ideally suited to what I think the switch does best, that pick-up-and-play genre of games you can play on a train or while waiting for a bus. Even then, you can sit down with it for a few hours to make some progress through a mountain, tackle a difficult challenge or destroy your high score. Whatever type of gamer you are, Lonely Mountains: Downhill has something for you to sink your teeth into and it’s a strong recommendation from me.