Game #1202: #Drive

 #HashtagsArentCoolNoMore 

 Upon learning of #Drive I was kinda hyped, an endless driving game? How cool did that sound?! Well, what they meant... was that it was an endless runner dolled up so that you play as a car, and the game, as a whole, is not a whole lot more than a glorified mobile port.

 There's not much to the game, really, it's an endless runner in which you drive a car, constantly moving forward, avoiding traffic, while taking curves and every now and then, going for Fuel or Power ups. Run out of fuel or crash your car and you lose. When there's a gas station, a power up or a donut incoming the game will warn you on which side they'll appear so that you can prepare, you also must be on the lookout for caps, the in-game currency with which to buy new cars. Power ups are few and pretty repetitive, such as a bulldozer blade to destroy incoming traffic, extra coins, a coin magnet, slow speed or making traffic disappear, all of these last for a short while. Donuts are automatically used to run cops off your tail, if you don't have one when they appear they'll just try to tackle you from behind a few times.

 The game is very... monotonous to say the least. There are 8 stages you can slowly unlock, but they get very repetitive as they don't have much in the way of interesting things to see, probably because the roads are procedurally generated. They have a very limited amount of unique buildings or scenery, so they get boring very quickly. Having Day/Night transitions, or weathers, or maybe your run eventually transition into another stage could've been could. But alas, it isn't here, so there isn't much in the way of appealing locales, or even a very interesting game to look at.

 What I'll grant the game is that it has a TON of cars to unlock, and I do mean a TON. Sadly, the game isn't fun enough to warrant the time spent amassing caps to buy every one of them. Every car has a 'cool factor', an optional item you can buy that adds something to the car, depending on the car it can change its very shape or just add some colored lines somewhere. Each vehicle also has 4 color options, which isn't too bad.

 On the other hand... the menus are horrible. They have motion controls enabled, so you can get some weird angles, depending on how you are holding the switch, which isn't a good idea when it comes to menus. And by the same token, they are poorly designed. Toggling options, such as the 'Cool Factor', or the 'Zen Mode', which makes the game easier removing Fuel and most of the traffic, are hard to understand, as there's a tab that moves up and down, over the words "ON" and "OFF". So it doesn't make much sense, is it ON when you can see the word ON or when the tab is over the word ON? Honestly, the menus are SO bad it's not even funny.

 I'd say #Drive is alright for a couple of minutes now and then, but it's not a game I feel like binging over, as it gets old rather fast. I honestly think that a couple of tweaks, such as random weather and day and night cycles could add a LOT to the game, as well as more music and more variety in the environments. Maybe a mode that every now and then changes the environment to that of another map?

 5.5