Reel Big Drift

I can respect a game that’s not looking to branch a sprawling narrative and just give people the happy brain juices they so desire.  Especially if you can find us sickos who play racing games that feel it’s necessary, obligatory even, to shed any millisecond we can off of our lap time just to feel the gratification of doing so.  I got to speak to Walaber about Parking Garage Rally Circuit, now I get to see how it holds up!

This Game Jam entry turned standalone title is simple and quick: take rally cars of various weight classes and slap them into parking garages around the country for furious laps and impossible drifting to take home the Gold.  You get to traverse 10 different stages full of twisting turns, lap-specific obstacles, and plenty of shortcuts to put the best time you can on the leaderboards and collect some trophies along the way.

But first, we gotta set up our car!  PGRC comes with three different classes of vehicles: Light, Heavy, and Ultra, that increase in speed and in turn difficulty in handling the tight courses.  Each car comes with a handful of liveries to choose from and a color-changer that can be done via Hex Code, so the color combinations are limited only by your imagination.  Pick your favorite number between 0-99 and let’s get ready to race.

PGRC’s stages take you all around the country, from Seattle to DC to Walaber’s own rendition of Rainbow Road, for 2-3 lap sprints.  The level of ingenuity of on display is hilariously fun, from avoiding rolling boulders, to navigating lightning-struck blackouts, to criss-cross jumping in between two garages, to doing an amateur recording of Gymkhana drifting past baggage carts and snowmobiles.  Each level is distinct and carries a fun individual challenge to work around, especially when shaving a few seconds can line you up for a better cycle to navigate past obstacles.

Controls maintain the simplicity of the arcade and retro vibes: gas, brake, drift-drift.  Drifting for an extended time grants two tiers of boosts that slowly increase your car’s top speed so long as your boost is going, so chaining smaller and bigger boosts on turns is key.  Drifting also suction cups your car to the ground allowing for some tight corners to be taken at some breakneck speeds.  The controls handle fluidly, and in terms of response time and gameplay it takes me back to old school Mario Kart days, which is never a bad comparison!

While the controls stay fluid, the physics are anything but.  Boosts have a tendency to override actions for their duration.  If you try to brake while boosting, the boost will push you back to top speed if you don’t hold it the whole way through.  Hitting a wall while boosting will slow you down while on the wall but tap you back to full speed the moment you’re off of it, and if you’re going fast while drifting and a wheel happens to catch some air, you’re going on a whirlwind ride as the engine doesn’t quite know how to handle cars that fast going sideways in a drift.

The above can be a blessing and a curse.  If you’re cruising around playing stages for the fun of it or indulging in PGRC’s buttery smooth multiplayer, which consists of players racing for the fastest time while ghosting through each other as these small courses were not meant for multiple cars at once, the results can be hilarious.  I’ve busted out laughing seeing my car barrel rolling through the sky or spin cycling because I drifted on a turn too hard and flew off the course in grand fashion.  But if you’re looking to climb the leaderboards and you have to push your car as hard as you can for every millisecond, the coin flips on whether or not the game engine will screw you can be maddening.  It all depends on how hard you’re trying on the game, and I can see the good, the bad, and the funny from the result.

Having 100%’d the game in a few hours, your mileage may vary on replay value after the credits roll, but I had an absolute blast playing Parking Garage Rally Circuit.  The retro-dipped arcade racer lives up to the expectations of providing a snappy, ska-filled journey around the country skidding and sliding through garage floors and grabbing bragging rights from friends by hitting that sweet spot on each lap.  Enjoy the victory lap Walaber, I hope you’re not done with what you got here (can’t wait for that local multiplayer!).

8/10