Okay so I spent some time driving around, and replayed some missions. The actual drifting dynamics feel how I remember, which is to say intuitive and responsive, though a little too forgiving imo. More on the “arcade” side of “simcade”. So overall good. Though I think they re-tuned the grip? Lower hp and generally unmodified cars feel way easier to initiate and hold in a drift. In low hp cars the handbrake used to rob too much of your speed and make your engine bog when you got back on power, so clutch kicking was the move. Now you really don’t need to clutch kick at all except in the super low power cars, and even then it’s usually optional. Also they gave the tofu delivery car way more steering angle, which is a positive imo.

Grip driving is definitely not this games forte. Even when a car is set up for grip, it feels like it wants to be a drift car. I can’t quite get the steering setup to make it not feel like a drift car. Every steering input when gripped feels more like trying to initiate a drift than actually turn.

So making the beginner cars easier to drift does reduce some of the progression that I really enjoyed. Still, I think it’s fun, and I’m going to do some of the new missions that have been added.

I remember there being a major change to the handling like a month after release that was a big improvement, but I haven’t played in several months, so not sure if it’s changed further. But I can play some tomorrow and report back

I miss racing games that had real progression and plot lines. Are there any more recent big games that deliver on this? I had high hopes for the new Assetto Corsa, but sounds like they abandoned a progression system.

JDM: Japanese Drift Master does in a lot of ways, but you can burn through the story pretty fast, though I did still thoroughly enjoy it. The grip driving is kinda jank, and is pretty much unplayable with my wheel. But is a lot of fun to just drift around Japan with a controller in some heavily modified jdm legends

…which aren’t (usually) paid for with taxpayer dollars

But I’m guessing doing air shows counts towards training hours, so they’re going to be flying those planes regardless. Still feels like a massive waste when two of them crash and burn in a show though

Very strange this doesn’t have a 3.5mm jack. That’s one of the main reasons I daily carry a handheld (psp) these days. It’s as valuable to me as a mp3 player as it is a gaming device.

Yeah they all either look like a scam or cost more than they did new…

If they don’t rerelease it, I’ll probably pick up a used 5800x(t). Still a big upgrade from my 1700

3-5 was pretty normal for a long time, in general and for myself. But I’m sitting at 7 years now, and idk if I’ll build a new one until there’s some kind of crash in prices. Might upgrade the cpu to a 5700x3d though if AMD does actually make more of those