I know nothing about the series, world, or characters that encompass GENSOU SkyDrift and by extension the weird anime experiment of a universe that it sits in. It simply looked like a cute anime game that had someone attached to it that worked on the Mario Kart series and that it took more than a little inspiration from my favorite entry in the series, Mario Kart Double Dash. And while it does nick a few tricks from that entry, GENSOU SkyDrift feels more like a fan game than something a normal studio would release.
The game immediately gets off on the wrong foot when I fired up the main Campaign mode that the game features. The idea sounded really fun and something that so many kart racing games outright ignore, or simply play with on a very minimal level. Crash Team Racing and Diddy Kong Racing are the two that come to mind, but even those don’t really have a fleshed out story and use it more as a way to simply move from race to race. What I’m saying is that you won’t find a kart racer winning any writing awards.
This untapped area could really have benefited GENSOU SkyDrift and given it an advantage in an age where the kart racer genre is teeming with great titles across all platforms. You’ve got the large cast to work with (22 in all) and the anime world really lends to the massive amounts of opportunities to explore. So, it’s a real shame that the first thing presented to you in the Campaign mode is walls upon walls of text. Not since the early ’90s era of DOS adventure games have I seen such an info-dump right from the start. I was bored before I even got to my first race which was a real shame. The whole thing also reads like someone’s nightmare fan-fiction come to life, and I felt lost right from the very first sentence.
I couldn’t hit the skip button fast enough and even then it took forever to get to the first race which had even more text for me to sift through. Thankfully, this time it was presented like a visual novel which was a lot easier to digest because of the cute anime people on the screen. Just imagine the intro to Metal Gear Solid 4 except that it’s all just text wall after text wall without any voice acting. Not only would this expose Kojima’s terrible Hollywood-loving writing (sick burn) but it would be mighty boring for a video game.
But what about the game itself, I hear to scream at your computer monitor or on the printed page of a very fine magazine. Well, it’s fun at first, quite fun actually, but things start to fall apart pretty quickly. And that’s saying a lot as the core of the game isn’t a very long experience. The game initially boots you into a mini-tutorial which helps you quickly figure out everything you’ll need to know in order to play the game. It’s a very Mario Circuit inspired track, right down to the banner that screams copyright infringement, but does enough to teach you the basics.
GENSOU SkyDrift focuses on tandem play as you use two anime witches that use each other like a hoverboard. It’s a very Japanese game if you couldn’t already tell. The fun comes in pairing your team (outside of the Campaign mode as that mode locks you into trying an assortment in some sort of story) and trying to find the perfect balance. It’s a large roster so there is a lot to experiment with and does add longevity to the overall experience if you like trying out new anime girls. Each witch has a special passive that can help you in certain situations and switching between the pair on the fly will become key to winning races.
An easy example might be a pair with one witch being really fast but poor taking tighter turns with the other is a bit slower but can pull off a k-turn on a dime. The trick is knowing when to switch it up to help you take advantage of the courses, something I’ll definitely come back to later. Essentially, it comes down to finding a team that works best for the way you play and then becoming proficient with them. And in that regard GENSOU SkyDrift does a really good job. It’s large and colorful cast is neat and there is a team for just about everyone even though I didn’t connect with any of them as they felt bland as I didn’t have a history with this extended media thing its based on.
The races themselves are where things get a bit tricky. Courses aren’t always the standard Mario Kart fare of linear circles or turns, but on the same note they aren’t San Francisco Rush stages with tons of secret paths and ways to finish a lap. Many times their layouts are fairly poor in structure and feature lots of 90 degree angles in quick succession that can slow a race to a crawl and give certain riders an advantage over others. This isn’t terrible, but the stages don’t visually lend themselves well to always funneling you down the correct path. Buildings and walls are poorly textured and things come at you so fast you’ll be smacking the wall until you learn the layout of a stage with so much clashing.
This often feels like a chore as the graphics don’t help the inconsistent track layouts, the city/town or forest areas becoming more like that Windows 95 maze game. You see, GENSOU SkyDrift looks like something from the early days of the Xbox 360 or even middling PS2 era. Levels lack the life of a Mario Kart or the excitement of a Crash Team Racing. Visuals aren’t everything (I’ll be the loudest one to tell you) but in this case they hold the game back with everything looking “meh” and lacking life. Add in the massive amount of light bloom and insane shine and brightness at times, and you have a game that is often hard to even see. Where inside areas look muddy and leave you often feeling lost, outside areas can become so bright it looks like you are playing on the surface of the sun.
As for the racing itself, well, it’s pretty great most of the time. Yeah, I know, that might sound weird after everything but the actual flying feels super nice. Characters float nicely and can drift and move around the track with ease more often than not. Things are super responsive and races, at least when they open up, can be a whole load of fun with the drifting mechanics feeling on the money, especially with the right team. What makes GENSOU SkyDrift unique is in what it does with the traditional kart racing weapons system and how it takes those large terrible Superman 64 rings and does something with them. I know that scares most of you, but it actually works here in a fun way.
Scattered throughout each course is a ton of big yellow rings that you can fly though. The more rings you fly through the more you build up your special bar which can then be traded in for a card that spins on a little wheel down in the corner of the screen. Use your special when it half full and you’ll pull a random card that gives you a basic power-up. Maybe a quick boost or speed or maybe some projectile to take down another racer. You know, the standard stuff for these types of games. Use your special when your meter is full and you’ll pull an ultimate item that cranks things up to eleven. This adds to the fun and strategy of the game alongside a bit of chance. But where it fails in the power-ups themselves. Often I had no idea what each did and sometimes it felt they did nothing at all. The cards just don’t visualize what they do very well at all.
It’s just a shame that the fun parts of the game are often overshadowed by what the game is lacking. The weak graphics hurt the solid controls as stages look ugly and can be confusing. Inconsistent stage designs hurt the smooth flying and drifting mechanics and the large roster is really cool, but they all sort of end up blending into each other visually, especially since the story does little to flash out the cast or give you a reason to connect with them. But it’s that story mode that really kills GENSOU SkyDrift in the end. Without many modes to enjoy alone, and with an already almost dead online, the story could have been what set this title apart and drawn in new players to the larger series.
In the end we are left with a game that could have been and simply punched slightly out of its weight-class. People want a game like this and kart racing fans have been demanding the fun Mario Kart Double Dash mechanics to come back for ages. So, it’s such a shame that GENSOU SkyDrift will fall into the “could have been” category of games with great ideas and promise instead of being a great kart racer that isn’t forgotten a few months after its been sat on store shelves. It the perfect example of a game for fans and that can only take you so far in the marketplace.
Pros:
Solid Controls
Large Cast
Fun Mechanics
Cons:
Text-Heavy Story
No Voice Work
PS2 Dated Visuals
Lack Of Modes
Clashing Visuals
Finals Score:
*A review code was provided by the publisher*
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