by Rick Charbs, Onrpg writer
Drift City is a fuel-heavy racing MMO released by ijji. It features clean cell-shaded graphics and an overall enjoyable experience to anyone who enjoys racing games. Drift City, known as Skid Rush in Korea, takes place in the somewhat near future, during a worldwide oil shortage. An alternative has been discovered, called Mittron, on an Island located in the Pacific Ocean. Many events that follow ensure calamity on the main setting of the game, the said island, carrying the name of its new power source, Mittron Island. As such, the Organization for Mittron Development (OMD) has hired many professional drivers in order to keep the peace. You must take the role of one of these professional drivers, and this game will offer you a pretty in-depth story line of quests and missions to fulfill your duty. This game has an impressive storyline for a racing game, let me tell you!
General Gameplay
The gameplay this game offers is pretty straight forward, but there is much more to it than meets the eye. There are even many different cities you can drive in, with your friends, in order to pick up quests, missions, and go into the special shop and garage area of the game. The controls are very simple? you only need to keep track of 6 odd keys, being shift, control, and the arrow keys, as well as a few others. The arrow keys are for simple movement, the up arrow being for acceleration, the bottom arrow for stopping, and the right/left keys for steering.
Shift is used to drag, and control is used to boost when the gauge is full. After mastering these controls, which takes a big two minutes, you are ready to race others and/or participate in missions! I, personally, liked taking up missions the most, as it kept the story rolling and kept me very entertained, for somebody who doesn’t generally play racing games. Missions can be in a variety of categories, such as deliveries, and much, much more. Races can be done in teams or solo on various tracks.
Winning races and completing missions will add to your experience and will also earn you some cold hard cash. With this in-game currency, called Mito, you may purchase funky parts for your vehicle, or a new vehicle altogether. You may buy them in a variety of shapes and types as long as you meet the experience/Mito requirements.
Questing
As previously mentioned, the questing aspect of this game lies in the missions. They all hold great storyline value, and offer generous rewards. I’ve found all of them very enjoyable so far, as you get to drive… real fast! Most missions require you to speed to a certain area on the map, and only offer you a certain limit of cash allowed. If you pass this limit, you will fail the mission and you will be given the option to start anew. You will also receive a guiding arrow to bring you to your destination.
Graphics and Sound
Early on, I was getting very impressed with the quality of this game. The graphics are very smooth, even on low settings, and were equipped with flawless animations. The cell-shaded quality of the game really adds to the gameplay value it holds. This renders the game unique, and gives you the feel of playing a console game? what most racing MMOS attempt to aim for.
Everything ran nicely on my computer, and that’s saying the least, as my computer is very…old. The sound was surprisingly decent enough for me to have the desire to leave it on, which is something that doesn’t happen too often for me these days. It was fun listening to my accelerating car! Anyway, they could most certainly improve on the background music, but I feel they have it great as it is, honestly. There isn’t much else to be judged about these aspects, but you have to keep in mind that this is a free to play MMO. If you keep your expectations at a mediocre level, you’ll be pleasantly surprised, I’m sure!
Personal Recommendation
Drift City was a wonderful racing MMO. With low expectations, this game took me by surprise? and I mean it! I hadn’t experienced the least bit of lag during my entire play time, and I lag whilst playing games such as Fiesta Online and LaTale. Being a fully 3D game with decent graphics, I was not expecting the smooth ride I was so wonderfully having. Everything was at a high fps, and it kept me very interested in the game. This is of great importance in a game where lag can determine the winner. Anyway, there were also many other aspects that kept me playing! For one, this racing game had a decent storyline with some very nice art. I liked reading through the missions and the cut scenes. Of course, if you are only interested in kicking some butt on the race track, I’m sure you will enjoy that as well. I actually won my very first race, in first place. This proves how easy the controls are, and how the learning curve is extremely short. I’m not accustomed to the racing genre, so this game truly impressed me.
The extra features of the game were also quite fun, such as the battle mode, the sticker feature (where you can fully customize your car), the Undercity (an instance mode that is directly linked with the story of the game, you and a party of drivers work together to take down enemy NPC vehicles), and many others. In a nutshell, this game has a lot to offer. It carefully mixes the aspects of an RPG and a Racing MMO, without leaving out important assets to the game. I sincerely suggest you give this game a try if you like racing. Even if your computer isn’t too powerful, as is mine, you could be shocked at how well the game plays on your system! Happy racing!
Pros
-Virtually lag-less on an average computer
-Great graphics and sound
-Fun features such as party quests
-Tiny learning curve
-Easy controls
-Interesting storyline
Cons
-A little customizable
-Players with cash have a slight advantage (but it isn’t too defined)
-May seem repetitive
