Nulldrifters Reviews

Awful. This is not even worth 2 dollars. There is no gamepad support or options. There is no split-screen or online multiplayer. All of the single player modes are unlocked, so theres no challenges or anything. So, the only reason to play, is for the gameplay itself. Which is awful too. There is no thrill. Its missing basic sound and particle effects like when you hit a wall. There's no sense of "racing". There isn't even a place indicator or minimap on the hud. The tracks tracks are really short. You'll be grinding on the walls because the game has literally the worst drift mechanic ever, and none of the cars turn fast enough to corner without it. Other than that, its pretty good, the tracks look nice, the graphics look nice, except for some of the car's accents look like vomit, and the music is pretty nice.

This game is fast. It's super fast. Do you remember when you first played the N64 Pod Racer game? Imagine something of that caliber. It's faster than you start out being, but eventually you speed up to match it. After playing it your brain just goes off the walls because you're used to reacting so quickly to keep up. Definitely a fast lane game for people who want to speed life up. I enjoy it, but can't handle it right before bed.

I completely forgot I wanted to give this game a recommendation. It's pretty barebones but it's clearly well made and a labour of love for a really low price. If it had netcode and a small but dedicated community it could become a real cult classic.

[h1]Intro[/h1] [i]Nulldrifters[/i] is a neat little game I came across after seeing the studio's later work [i]Paperball[/i]. I suppose only playing for a half-hour just through the GP isn't enough credential to leave a review, but I will anyway, because I already kind of like the game. (No, I'm not going to compare it to Paperball; that's apples and oranges.) [h1]What I liked[/h1] The gameplay itself is simple to learn and moderately challenging to master. The visuals blend a retro feel (low-poly models and low-res textures) with modern[i]ish[/i] style (a HUD that responds to camera movement and some shadow and environment effects), which I think is pretty cool. The courses are quick, and [i]most[/i] of them are fun to play. The music is OK: not original (and thus tailored to the game), but still pretty fitting for the mood. There are a whole 16 stages (although really quick, none of which take above 90 seconds) and 8 cars (although I think the choice is purely visual), as well as three games modes (Grand Prix (in three difficulties), Quick Race, and Time Trials). [h1]What I didn't like[/h1] The game has no options whatsoever. I think it would greatly benefit from at least a control remap, resolution/window options, and FOV/zoom setting. The controls are mostly fine, but with rear-view on backspace, I have to take my hand off of the steering to look behind me. (Also, AZERTY, Dvorak, etc. users might not like the use of A and S keys for acceleration and brake/drift.) The resolution fits with the visual style, but no window options means the game is stuck in a window that takes up less than a quarter of my (2560×1440) screen. The low FOV and the lack of a minimap make it hard to tell where to go, and some corners (especially in stages like Oil Platform and Drain Facility, with narrow roads and minimal guard rails) are very difficult, if not impossible. [h1]Verdict[/h1] For US$2, the game provides a decent value. It easily has a half hour's worth of content, but that can be up to quadrupled if you try all of the game modes. The game is a bit lacking in options however, and sometimes it can be frustrating. All in all, if you're looking for a simple racing experience, it's definitely worth checking out if you temper your expectations just a little.

50/50 review. The game is awesome, no questions, hands down awesome. It looks awesome and the levels are well done, the music is great and it has a sweet feel over all. I definitely recomend it for the price. However, this game needs a darn MENU! I get that its only $2 but do we really have to play it in a little box on the screen? I want to be emersed in the game play, I want to adjust the resolution and graphics and volume and the CONTROLLER setup. Why on earth doesn't this support controllers? If they added a menue where we could adjust things, and if they added a freeplay mode (instead of a 3 lap time trial) it would be perfect. I would have paied $5 happily if they just made those changes. The thing is the levels are quite hard to master, you move very fast and if you want to win without crashing into every single wall you really need to practice (like everything in life) but its difficult when you can't freely drive the tracs. I want to sit and drive the same track over and over and over again, beating my own times without having to reset the level every three laps. Its seriously an excelent game but I'm finding it hard to play more than a handfull of races with so much missing

I have a hard time hating on this game. It's got some definite flaws, but it's also clearly a labor of love. It's also got an oddness about it that I'm not sure what the origin is. The whole game feels like it was designed as homebrew for the GBA until very late in its development. From the windowed resolution that doesn't quite seem to be 16:9, to the low-res textures and skybox, to the ripped-straight-from-F-ZERO:MaximumVelocity camera angle and mostly-flat tracks, to the super-low-rez menu and UI elements. Sure, a lot of this might be a stylistic choice, but I'm pretty sure everything in this game outside of the render output resolution and track polycount would have been more than possible on the GBA. Even all that aside, it's a very flat game. GBA racers (such as the aforementioned F-Zero: Maximum Velocity) were frequently steeped in depth. They often had interesting physics, lots of customization, a multitude of tracks, and were portable. Nulldrifters has 16 tracks, the most 'workable' physics I've seen in a racer in a long time, and I'm pretty sure the eight ships (of which four ar locked) are all functionally identical. That said, it's not a bad little game. It's got decent music, with one or two standout tracks, and most of the maps are decent. Though there are four that are designed to piss you off with blind corners leading into narrow sections with no walls, so there's that. If this game was GBA homebrew, it would be pretty impressive. But as a PC release, it's pretty underwhelming. It's probably not worth $2 USD, but for the $0.50 I got it for, I had a decently fun time. Pick it up on sale if you're looking for something a little different, just don't expect a lot of depth.

Fun graphics, cool music, and cheap price. Except the controls are terrible (and never explained, you have to figure them out), there are no options to change settings/key bindings/etc, and there is no multiplayer. Not to say it isn't entertaining: the challenge of battling the game's poor controls to try and get a good time is kinda fun. If you think $2 is worth an hour or so in a cheap racing game doing time trials, go for it. Otherwise, forget about Nulldrifters.