Drift Legends might take you a little while to get the hang of, and quite a while to really master. It’s really rewarding once you can get a long drift happening, particularly in the Japanese tracks at the end of the game.
If you’re stuck on a track, have a look at the video walkthroughs on this site to watch the lines that we take.
Technique – How to Drift:
Drifting isn’t like steering around a corner in a racing game. To initiate a drift in the expert mode you don’t need to steer much in the direction you want to go. The trick with Drift Legends is to catch the drift with opposite lock. The car will steer to a certain extent on the throttle, and some corners are well balanced for this, with long drifts possible with minimal input on the controls.
To take a corner sideways:
- Approach at speed
- A short tap on the button for the direction you want to go, e.g. left
- Catch the drift using opposite lock, i.e. a short tap right, and keep the gas on
- Keep occasionally tapping right until you need to switch directions, then you’ll need to hold right down until it swings to the right
- Catch the right-hand drift with a short tap to the left to initiate opposite lock.
If you’re using the wheel, you can use slight opposite lock to keep the drift going. For more about the drifting technique, including linking drifts, click here.
If you’re playing in Novice mode, the steering wheel is the easiest controller and you can get nice long drifts just playing with how much you turn into the corner.
Drift Factor:
This is a multiplier for your score that gives you a maximum of 10 times the standard drifting score. Once you start a drift, you start earning drifting points and the Drift Factor is made of two components:
- Switch (maximum 3)
- Length (maximum 7)
If you switch directions without linking the drift then your Drift Factor will increase by one (until that portion reaches 3). Also, your Drift Factor will increase based on how long your drift is, by up to 7. So, if you keep a long linked drift going, you can quickly multiply your points.
However, if you go off the track you lose all your accumulated Drift Factor for that drift. Bummer, huh! Anyway, at least they’ve built in a bit of leeway with going off the track. You can hang pretty much the whole car off the track and as long as the front wheels stay on there, you won’t be penalized. You’ll know if you’ve gone off track because the instant drift score next to your car flashes red and the Drift Factor meter will drop to zero.
One thing is that if you swap directions and the drift links (which it will at certain angles), you don’t get any extra increase in the initial 3 Drift Factor points.
Click here to find out the best strategy to bump your Drift Factor higher
Bonus zone
The bonus zone is the yellow hashed area and give you more points. Read more and see a screenshot here
Time bonus
You get a small time bonus for the number of seconds remaining on the clock when you’ve finished, but it’s actually better to showboat a bit towards the end and maximize the drift time using choku doris (swinging from side-to-side) to get the most points.
Going off-track
If you go too far off-track, your car will be slowed down, and you’ll lose all your Drift Factor. The margin varies from track-to-track. Sometimes you can go a long way off the track without being penalized, and sometimes if you just drop a wheel off the side it’ll wipe you out.
Drift time
It’s there for vanity only to let you know that you drifted, say 72% of the track. We’ve never seen a drift time of 100% on a track, but on some tracks you can achieve 99% (like Wobbarim)
The Drift Legends trailer
Realism
I asked the development team about realism and they said that they wanted a game that’s fun to play, so realism isn’t a huge priority – in their words, it’s about ‘painting big black lines down the road’.
