RipTen Review: SkyDrift (XBLA)

Do you like Mario Kart and flying games? If you answered yes, then you’ll feel right at home and fall in love with SkyDrift. Which is a shame because Digital Reality‘s aerial-combat racer was given little media attention and will slip under the radar of most gamers.

SkyDrift is your typical combat-racing game; you race, pick up weapons and power-ups then use them at your disposal to insure victory. What makes SkyDrift excel as a combat-racer is how fluid the game is. The controls are some of the best I’ve seen in a flight game and cutting corners at high speeds is actually fun instead of frustrating. As I person who doesn’t typically enjoy any type of flight games, my experience with SkyDrift was fantastic.

SkyDrift offers three different game modes during the course of its 3-4 hour campaign. Power Race is a straight up deathmatch-race until the end; Speed Race removes all weaponry and replaces areas of the track with rings which provide a massive boost; Survival is essentially an elimination mode where the pilot in last place is dropped from the race. Each with three levels of difficulty, which is where my main complaint with SkyDrift comes into play.

As I stated before, the games controls are fantastic and seamless as ever. The AI however, is not. If you’re a PS3 game and familiar with a game called ModNation Racers, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. The earlier tracks in the game are more forgiving, but during the later races, the AI just becomes ruthless and tiring. Nonstop attacks hit you one after another causing your plane to quickly explode forcing you to respawn.

Thankfully, the weaponry in SkyDrift is quite useful if used at its full potential. SkyDrift doesn’t introduce anything we haven’t seen before; you’ll recognize your standard mini-guns, rockets, mines, shockwaves etc. Which is a little disappointing considering how fun this game is. Digital Reality could have took it a step further and added more innovative weapons and power ups.

You can have multiple levels to each pick-up, which will turn the race around in an instant. Having level 2 rockets will fire four homing missiles simultaneously and even the stronger planes will have a tough time surviving such a devastating blow. You can also remove weapons to refill your boost meter in desperate situations, which is really nice after you die then instantly respawn and crash into a wall. Yeah that happens, it’s annoying.

What really makes SkyDrift such a great arcade title however is its sense of speed. You’ll be souring through the track with near death around every corner. Add in multiple pilots blasting off tons of weapons and power-ups, and you’re left with an exciting experience not many other vehicle-combat racers offer.

SkyDrift also offers an online component which works rather well. Up to eight players can battle it out in the sky across the games three game modes. I spent a good hour or so proving my flying skills to others across the globe, and not once did I experience any issues or lag. Which is great for a title like this, because present lag would destroy the experience in every way.

Overall, SkyDrift took me by surprise. I expected yet another boring game where you pilot goofy looking planes and fly in circles. Boy was I wrong. SkyDrift offered me an experience that no other flight game has come close to. Fun! Every other game I’ve played in the genre has bored me to death, or caused me intolerable frustration due to the controls.

SkyDrift delivers fantastic controls, amazing sense of speed, fun combat, and beautiful environments. I wouldn’t say SkyDrift takes the genre to new heights, but it does execute it damn near perfectly. If you’re a fan of vehicle combat, and you like to fly at intense speeds, you can’t go wrong with SkyDrift. It’s a great addition to the many great arcade titles released this year.

Here’s the rundown:

+ Fantastic Controls

+ Great sense of speed

+ Combat is really fun

- Irritating AI

- Generic sound effects

SkyDrift was developed and published by Digital Reality Ltd. It was released for Xbox LIVE Arcade and Playstation Network on September 7th, 2011 for $14.99 (1600MSP). The copy used for review was provided to us by the publisher. Campaign was played until completion, taking around 3-4 hours to finish. Online was played for about an hour.