1. If you’ve ever been to see drifting, it’s mostly done on a judged section of a racetrack and consists of two or three corners. In Drift Legends you get tracks that have up to eight corners, which are more fun and designed specifically for the game. Real racetracks are comparatively boring.
2. Even second-tier racetracks you probably haven’t heard of want upwards of US$15,000 per YEAR just for licensing the name and track layout. As there are 25 tracks in Drift Legends, that would mean a yearly budget of… (reaches for the calculator)… a lot more than would be made from the game.
3. The guys wanted a wider set of environments than just a racetrack. The Japanese tracks, for example, are mountain roads and have overhanging trees, and that’s where drifting really has its underground scene.

a) Craig is a much better game player than me; or

b) The steering wheel is easier to get higher scores with.

The thing is that Craig is a better game player than me because he’s got 4 levels of Prestige in Call of Duty Modern Warfare (and an understanding wife). But I’m going to go for b, and there’s a big reason for this: using the steering wheel means you can corner faster, which makes it easier to do choku doris and link drifts. The buttons have a constant turning rate that’s relatively slow; if it was faster then the car would be too twitchy to drive and that would just be the opposite of fun.

It’s still possible to get a gold with all the cars on all the tracks using the buttons, though, but if you want the big scores then learn to use the steering wheel. You’ll only have a problem with the buttons on the Felix for one of the tracks (Grimsborough). The rest of them are fine.

Novice mode

The steering wheel is the easiest to use in novice mode. If you use the buttons you will struggle to get the bronze scores on the later tracks.

Tilt mode

Tilt mode for steering gives you more of a steering wheel feel. If you can master this, you’re doing well.

All upgrades are/will be free, so there’s no need to wait to get your copy.

Version 1.1

In development

• Better drift training area
• Variable throttle
• Preloaded with a bronze or silver run of each track in replay mode for training purposes
• Ghost of your best run
• Device detects which way up you’re holding it, so the headphone cable issue is resolved on iPod touch

Version 1.06

In testing

Fixes

• Music randomiser now has better randomisation
• Gen 1 and 2 should be able to play
• Retina upgrade
• More control options
• Scoring displays your global rank

Version 1.05

Fixes

Live in store.

• Jerky replays (though replays may still have variable frame rate on older devices). Older replays will not work, so you’ll need to beat your previous score to make a new replay.

Enhancements

• New logo
• Shows your best score across all cars
• Minor tweaks to gameplay and scoring for consistency
• Minor changes to layout in some screens

Version 1

• Replay is jerky sometimes
• Music randomness isn’t that random
• Drift training needs to be improved
• Headphone cable gets in the way on iPod touch

If you have drifted three or more corners (without linking), your Drift Factor will stay at 3 unless you go off-track, so sometimes it’s better to use the brake to avoid yourself going off-track, even though that wipes out any Length Drift Factor you’ve earned by having a huge drift. At least you’ll only lose up to 7, and not the whole lot.

To reiterate what we’ve already said about the technique:

1. Approach at speed
2. A short tap on the button for the direction you want to go, e.g. left
3. Catch the drift using opposite lock, i.e. a short tap right, and keep the gas on
4. Keep occasionally tapping right until you need to switch directions, then you’ll need to hold right down until it swings to the right
5. Catch the right-hand drift with a short tap to the left to initiate opposite lock.

You won’t need to hold down the opposite lock much. It’s more like tapping the opposite lock to keep the drift going. If you hold it down you’ll change the direction of the drift. Of course, if you use the steering wheel you can vary the input, but I don’t use the steering wheel much because I prefer the buttons. On some of the tracks you can get a higher score using the wheel.

Linking drifts

There is a way of linking drifts. This means creating a seamless left-right or right-left drift combination without breaking the skid. There are times you don’t want to do this, and times you do, and here’s why:

If you link a drift you get a continuation of the Length portion of your drift factor, but you don’t increase the Switch portion. This means that the maximum drift factor you can get is 8, not 10.

If you switch a drift you basically end that drift – the Length portion of calculated then starts from 0 again – and your Instant Drift Score is multiplied by the Drift Factor and added to your total. Then as long as you haven’t gone off-track, the next drift you do increments the Switch by 1, and the next one by 1 again to a maximum of 3.

So, if you link the whole track your maximum multiplier is 8; if you do a couple of choku doris (swinging from side-to-side) before you initiate your main drift, you’re going to get a maximum multiplier of 10.

Confused? Well, all you need to worry about is that you make sure your Switch (the red bar) is full before you start a huge drift that will give you the extra 7 (yellow bar).

How to link the drifts

It’s not an easy technique. Basically you have to have quite a lot of angle on the car, then flick it the other way. The most reliable way to get it is like this:

1. Initiate a right-hand drift and counter steer if necessary
2. A quick tap on the right button to bring the car around with more angle
3. Quickly hold down the left button until the car flicks to the left
4. Catch the drift with countersteer on the right.

You can practice this in the drift training section. Obviously it works with left to right as well.

However, in some tracks the bonus zones will not give you the best score. For example, Tuki Pa’s first two corners have bonus zones that make it almost impossible to link turns 2, 3 and 4, which is the key to getting a huge score (i.e. above 37,000 rather than 15-18,000). So, experiment with different lines and remember that you are rewarded for keeping a long drift going.

Next to the instant drift score is the multiplier. So in the image above it’s showing that your score so far (assuming you don’t go off the track and cancel out the multiplier) will be 381 x 3. The IDS goes up to 10 and we’ve had drifts as long as around 5000 points (on Wobbarim), so 5000 x 10 = 50,000 and that’s a huge amount to add to the score.

When you see some of the big scores that people are getting, bear in mind that they’re probably linking a lot of drifts together and there’s a special trick to that which is explained in another page.

With Cottingham Manor you can also loop the track and we’ve had scores near 70,000. But the gold is set so that you don’t have to because it’s virtually impossible to do with all the cars.

What you can do to get high scores and achieve the gold easily, though, is to do the occasional donut in a wider part of the track. Technically this is cheating according to the guys. The problem for you is that if there’s ever a competition where the highest score wins something it’ll need to be proved by videoing a replay and uploading it somewhere, or downloading your replay data. If you’ve cheated, this will show on the replay, so you won’t be eligible to win. Simple as that. Plus, you won’t have the satisfaction of having completed the game without cheating.

The easiest tracks to do donuts on are the two stadium tracks in the USA. Both the Port Vincent tracks have wide areas, though if you hit the containers you’ll lose your drift factor. Despair can be looped around the final roundabout when you’ve completely upgraded some of the cars (we didn’t manage it with the Takeshi). A couple of the Australian ones have parts of the track that are wide enough for easy donuts, and a couple of the UK ones are good, too.

There’s anti-donut code in the game, though, so if you rotate more than around 400 degrees in a tight area, your Drift Factor and score will be canceled for that segment of the drift and you will get a warning on-screen.

It would be interesting to see some maximum scores, though. If you manage to get a huge score upload it to Youtube so we can have a look. We know that on one track (Wobbarim) you can get six figures without cheating.

BSM fuses funk, Pacific soul and reggae with hip-hop to create a sound that has an energy that makes  your body move.

Get Batucada Sound Machine’s album Rhythm & Rhyme here:

Get the latest single, He Said She Said here:

Anna started in the industry at 8 years old with an extensive stage, singing and acting background including the movie Kids World starring Christopher Lloyd.

On this single that she co-wrote with Andrew Mockler, Simon Holloway, and Jonathan Campbell, Anna has found the right combination to deliver her songs, emerging from her country scene and stage roots.

Songs included in Drift Legends:

• Say You Love Me

Get Anna’s single Say You Love Me here:

Rock duo The Neo-Kalashnikovs are true to the cause – proper rock with an intellectual twist and solid melodies. Based half n half in California and New Zealand they have been walking the walk, not talking the talk and bring in influences from Nirvana, The Stooges and The Smashing Pumpkins.

You can download the single here