Tokyo Xtreme Racer: Drift 2

Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2

Developer(s) Genki
Publisher(s) Genki (JPN)
Crave Entertainment (NA)
Konami (PAL)
Series Kaido Battle
Platform(s) PlayStation 2
Release date(s)
  • JP July 28, 2005
  • AUS October 27, 2006
  • EU December 1, 2006
  • NA April 17, 2007
Genre(s) Racing
Mode(s) Single-player, Multiplayer
Distribution 1 DVD-ROM (1 layer)

Tokyo Xtreme Racer DRIFT 2 (known as Kaido: Touge no Densetsu in Japan and Kaido Racer 2 in Europe and Australia) is a racing simulator by Genki that was released in 2005. It is the third episode in the Kaido Battle series and it borrows heavily to the influential Shutokou Battle series created by the same company.

Overview

The game is about touge racing, which rely on drift skills made popular in the western culture during the 2000s by Initial D, and is divided in daytime and nighttime. The player buy a used or new stock car, tune it with aero and engine parts, get sponsorship and challenge other racers in nocturnal illegal gambling touge racing or perform downhill / uphill time attack in daytime. Available cars become more and more powerful from the basic K-car, minitruck, 1600cc compact to the 3000cc sports car. Vehicle list features licensed Japanese and European import cars.

Gameplay

Career

The career mode (or Conquest mode in the game as it's called) features a single driver (with name provided by the player) on his quest to become the best racer in all the Osaka area. The player starts with around 2.500.000 yens (or around 23.000 dollars) to buy a car (more than the previous game, which had only 1.500.000 yens to start). The Conquest mode has been significantly changed, with several new real-life locations of races being present in the game as of course, several new being presented in the game. Hakone and Haruna return from the original game, while several new locations, like Shiga Kusatsu, Hiroshima, Nikko and Mount Rokkō (divided into two roads, Ura and Omote) are new roads to race, and some of them being omitted from the game.

With the original tracks in the game, a new option in the game has been made: Short Courses. There are only three short courses in the game, and as the name says, they are much shorter than the long course tracks. They cannot be simply unlocked by passing the Conquest mode, but rather by winning the special invitation by beating the significant opponent in the game and winning a number of prizes to be allowed to participate. Several sponsors and many high-stakes drivers are on short courses, and several drivers from the original Tokyo Extreme Racer are featured in short courses. Also, short courses are only open during the day and during the good weather.

Tuning of the car has been significantly changed as well. The sequel features vinyls which can be put on the car, although the sticker scheme has been changed and now only one sticker of the team can be applied to the car. Several new body changes were made, with the ability to add mudflaps, rally bonnets and spoilers, as well as carbon trunks and hoods. As with the original game, performance can be tuned up, although now there is a different mod of engine tuning in which you pick parts from different manufactures to help tune the car to the maximum amount of power. The same goes with Turbo tuning, and now NA engines can be converted to Turbo and also shifted back to NA engines (although cars with stock Turbo cannot be converted to NA engines).

As with the original, the goal is to defeat all Slashers (bosses of roads) to win the game. Although, some new tweaks have been made. For instance, a road only has one Slasher now, and number of Tricky drivers (more powerful drivers serving as prelude to a Slasher) have been added. Some drivers from the previous games have been now made Slashers, while some of them changed locations (for instance, a former regular Haruna driver now has a new car and is a Slasher, while the previous Haruna Slasher is now an Akagi slasher). Slashers drive special vehicles with unique body kits, paint and stickers. In Conquest mode, player also has the ability to unlock some special cars as well to buy them, which have custom body kits, paint job, vinyls and rims. Every driver in the game has its own biography (which is mostly comical), a car and car's specs. A difference from the previous game is that in the previous game, only bets were with special car parts or a new car, but in this game all races feature bets, with some of them featuring parts or vehicles.

Category races have been changed as well, with three types of them: Standard Races, Gymkhana and Advanced Races. Standard races are CA challenges which allows the player to progress through levels, which in turn allows the player to race in Advanced Races. Advanced Races have special medal prizes, which can unlock some new equipment, new cars and also short courses. Gymkhana is different from the both, instead featuring a parking lot with cones, with both TA and CA challenges for Gymkhana racing.

With the same plot as the original game had, some differences have been made. For instance, a new plot was designed featuring Thirteen Devils and Kingdom Twelve. Thirteen Devils is a racing team from Tokyo that has arrived on highways of Japan to conquer all the major courses. They are a group of 13 drivers with high-performance cars, with all of them having a distinctive yellow paint job and custom vinyls. Opposed to them are Kingdom Twelve, a group of 12 professional racers who race to "protect" the highway drivers from city racers, and they have arrived to combat Thirteen Devils, and they have custom vinyls and high-end performance cars. The player, during the game, will have an opportunity to race drivers from both groups, and they are regularly mentioned during the game via messaging.

The game features 4 Stages through the game. As Slashers are beaten and new locations are unlocked, new cars, sponsors and car parts are unlocked. Each Stage (except Stage 1 and Stage 4, which has only two locations) features three locations, and usually only one has to be beaten in order to advance to the next Stage, although more hardcore gamers will tend to conquer all locations at the Stage to achieve 100% in the game and unlock new cars, car parts, etc.

Vehicles

Number of vehicles in the game has been raised significantly, and the game features 30 to 40 cars more than the previous game. They range from K-cars and small pick-up trucks to hatchbacks and 4-door sedans to more powerful vehicles. The game features Japanese and European cars in the game, although European cars are less used and mostly inferior to the Japanese ones, although some of them (for instance, Volkswagen Golf IV) are in performance very superior to Japanese cars.

Game modes

The game features many new modes of racing, many of which appear in the Conquest mode:

Standard Challenges

+TF challenge: Togue race between the two rivals, only the player is at the front and he has to finish the race first to win. Also doesn't feature a meter.

Category Races

Category races were also featured in the original game, and also return here with some changes:

Reception

Reception
Aggregate scores
AggregatorScore
GameRankings52.12%[1]
Metacritic46/100[2]
Review scores
PublicationScore
GameSpot5.2/10[3]
GamesRadar[4]
IGN4/10[5]
X-Play[2]

The game was met with very mixed to negative reception upon release, as GameRankings gave it a score of 52.12%,[1] while Metacritic gave it 46 out of 100.[2]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 "Tokyo Xtreme Racer DRIFT 2 for PlayStation 2". GameRankings. Retrieved December 5, 2014.
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Tokyo Xtreme Racer DRIFT 2 for PlayStation 2 Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved December 5, 2014.
  3. Thomas, Aaron (May 9, 2007). "Tokyo Xtreme Racer DRIFT 2 Review". GameSpot. Retrieved December 5, 2014.
  4. deMelo, Christopher (June 22, 2007). "Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2 review". GamesRadar. Retrieved December 5, 2014.
  5. Haynes, Jeff (May 9, 2007). "Tokyo Xtreme Racer DRIFT 2 Review". IGN. Archived from the original on November 13, 2013. Retrieved December 5, 2014.

External links