Preview: KartRider: Drift

How is KartRider shaping up for consoles?

I took part in the second Beta for the upcoming KartRider Drift for Xbox One and as a big Mario Kart fan, I was more than curious to see if the Italian Plumber may have some real competition. The beta consisted of two different types of race modes where you could either play solo or in teams of two or three. The first mode was more traditional like Mario Kart with weapon boxes while the other was purely speed-based without weapons.

In terms of control, KartRider Drift handles much like your typical Mario Kart game and it handles well, though drifting itself takes a lot more precision and patience. The tracks were nicely detailed and varied, running smoothly and looking crisp. Being a beta, I did come across a few bugs like game crashes that threw me back to the Xbox homepage before having to relaunch the game, this luckily only happened a few times. I didn’t experience any lag either which was impressive for a beta.

I can see great things for KartRider Drift when it launches later this year, hopefully it’ll have ironed out the game crashes by then. Expect a full review when it does launch.