TOUGE PARTY

JDM: JAPANESE DRIFT MASTER has grand ambitions, but the execution drifts off course

- By Phil Iwaniuk

You'll remember the drift events in classic Need for Speed. During that era when the games were soundtracked by crunk songs, told quasi-Fast and Furious tales and reached Christmas number one in the charts, NFS introduced drifting as a sort of side-show. There was a totally different physics model underpinning it, one that made ordinary driving nigh-impossible but allowed for some outrageous skidding about in search of a high score.

JDM understands the nostalgic appetite for that era of NFS game — you can tell that by its car collection of noughties NFS cover stars. But its ambitions are far higher than the throwaway drift events in EA’s racers, and in fact higher than those games in their entirety.

Is it versatile enough to make ordinary driving and drifting alike feel good? It is not. Using either arcade or sim physics, trying to drive your car conventionally around the narrow suburban streets of JDM’s fictional Japanese burgh always feels a bit awkward and that only comes to the fore when you race in track events. Fortunately, the physics are spot on. And that’s why I completely forgive it for not being