Marc wrote:
I've tried, but I find manual drifting sluggish as hell, while auto just makes the game feel really uninvolving. It's the way the car has to steer completely out 9f the previous drift before starting another, rather than just snapping like Outrun 2 - makes S bends a nightmare.
This was my experience with the game too. I've been playing Slipstream, and while it's pretty fun and nice to have a 4 player racer, Slipstream is a poor man's Outrun 2 / 2 SP. It's not actually that bad as a fairly casual arcade racer when using automatic drifting. It feels snappy enough, and the track design's visibility issues (the camera that doesn't remain horizontally centered, the lack of turn signs, the REALLY aggressive turns) don't impact the game. Automatic drifting is, however, far easier to control, to the extent it feels like cheating.
Manual drifting however is awful to control compared to Outrun 2 / 2 SP. If you take a turn too fast in the 3D Outrun games, you can brake long and hard to adjust speed, and you'll still get a reliable drift using the brake. Not so in Slipstream, where you absolutely have to do a quick tap of the brake in order to get a drift going. Try to brake during the drift to adjust your speed, and the drift will end! And yeah, for rapid S turns where you quickly change direction, it's FAR harder to reliably do it. Outrun allowed you to simply steer one direction to the next when currently drifting, or easily brake and swap directions, whereas Slipstream demands that quick tap.
The slipstreaming also sucks compared to Outrun 2SP. Instead of it only triggering when going straight and not currently drifting, it can trigger when you're in a turn. This sounds good, until you realize that unlike Outrun's gradual, linear speed boost, Slipstream's speed boost is a sudden jerk upwards in speed that will mess with your steering in the middle of a turn! It also doesn't help that the indicator is positioned as far away from where your eyes would want to be, namely in the bottom right of the screen as opposed to the top center like in Outrun 2SP (a far more sensible spot).
I also feel like the rewind feature acts as a crutch to an extent and allows the dev to excuse a lot of the underlying problems. It's an amusing game when you just play with automatic drifting and don't worry about taking the game too seriously. It's meant to be a game that cashes in heavily on nostalgia after all. However, it's got too many design issues to ultimately topple the greats of Outrun, Hang-On, etc.
edit:
Even using automatic drifting, the handling feels really stiff even when playing one of the cars with high handling stats. There are a lot of 2D racers with far snappier movement out there, and it feels like in Slipstream it takes forever to turn from one direction to the other by comparison, which is especially cruel given how fast some of the turns come without warning due to the visual designs.
edit: Made the mistake of coming back to try this, deleted it. Handling really does suck in this. Handling is
not analog like in Outrun 2, but the digital controls are
not remotely as snappy as playing Rad Racer or Outrun in MAME with the paddle and pedals set high using digital controls. In fact handling and braking both feel downright sluggish. It's just not an enjoyable experience.