Absolute Drift Zen Edition

Absolute Drift was reviewed on a PS4

Absolute Drift is the perfect game to play when you just want to cozy up in bed and play for a minute or two. Slowly the minutes become hours and the hours become days and then you realize that you’ve spent way too much time trying to get to the top of the leaderboards.

What is Absolute Drift?

Absolute Drift is a top down minimalistic game about drifting, which is the art of sliding your car’s tail through corners in a way that looks cool. Which often results in annoying any nearby people by the excessive screeching and the white smoke that your car’s wheels will produce.

If you enjoy drifting in real life, then you probably already missed a few mortgage payments, lost your house and your spouse left you. All in a matter of weeks because of the high maintenance bills that your car will rack up.

The folks over at Funselektor Labs, Absolute Drift’s developers, wouldn’t want that to happen. That’s why they made such a fun and addicting game. It’s no secret that Absolute Drift draws a lot of inspiration from Japan, the birthplace of drifting. Even the game’s thumbnail is the Japanese flag.

Simple Yet Effective

It’s no surprise then that the in-game color palette consists of the two shades of the Japanese flag, Red and White, blending them in a simplistic, yet elegant manner. Using the white as a constant background for your car’s dark black tire tracks, and the red for all the obstacles that you need to bump into or drift around. The constant tire tracks you’ll leave behind you provide a pleasing contrast to the white and red colors.

The game features 34 tracks and five open areas that are littered with obstacles for you to drift around and jump off. In order to progress to the next area, the game forces you to complete a few quick objectives. Which keeps the game going at a steady pace since you don’t need to bother with completing the tracks if you just want to roam around the open areas.

The most challenging and the most enjoyable of the tracks are the midnight tracks. They lower your visibility by switching to nighttime, forcing you to rely on your car’s headlights for guidance.

6 cars are available, with each handling a bit differently. You can also change their colors and add a pattern.

Absolute Drift features three difficulty settings, steering assist and the ability to switch between Automatic and Manual transmission. Pulling off aesthetically pleasing drifts on medium is easy enough. However, some of the more advanced tracks can get a little bit tricky.

The game never feels like it’s frustrating you more than it has to. It teaches you to be patient, and to ease off the throttle every once in a while.

Easy To Learn, Hard To Master

The secret to mastering the drifting is to heed the word of advice that the game’s loading screens present you with. Drifting is not about speed, you’re supposed to slow down and take your time in sliding across those sharp corners. It’s easy to lose control and spin out but it never feels unfair.

The game is simple to learn, hard to master. You’ll quickly learn how to make miniscule adjustments to the left stick, in order to prevent the car from spinning out, while simultaneously switching between the gas and the brake pedal. Yet the game keeps ramping up the difficulty with each track, so you never feel as if you’re breezing right through them.

Whether you’re looking for a challenging or a relaxing experience, Absolute Drift masterfully offers you both.

HIGH SCORE!

The game’s objective is to get the highest score possible and complete each track’s list of objectives. You get higher scores by drifting, doing donuts, smashing red blocks and drifting near clipping points.

Stringing all of them into a combo without bumping into the walls nets you a higher score. Which in turn grants you a higher place on the leaderboards.

The leaderboards are the best part of the game. It allows you to race the ghosts of the players that rank higher than you, which is guaranteed to have you obsessively mimicking every turn and every move they make.

The game features a heavenly soundtrack of more than 3 hours of electronic music that goes so well with the drifting and the car’s engine sounds. The soundtrack, combined with the minimalistic visuals, result in a truly Zen experience.

Overall,

We highly recommend you check Absolute Drift out, even if you’re not a big fan of racing or drifting games. It’s a highly enjoyable experience that’s guaranteed to provide you with plenty of hours of playtime.

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You Should Buy Absolute Drift If You

• Love drifting
• Enjoy competing on a leaderboard
• Are a fan of racing games
• Enjoy a challenge

Absolute Drift’s Score

8/10