Inertial Drift is a racing game focussed on drifting around corners in an unrealistic fashion. The handling seems strange compared to standard games because turning the left stick barely moves the car at all, but the right stick controls the drift which allows for more drastic movement, and applying the brake can turn even sharper.
Although that's the general idea, the cars actually handle completely differently. Some require you to use the brake before a drift, others need to release the accelerator, others have a delayed turn, or a delayed return to neutral position which means you would have to release the drift way before the turn ends. There's so many variations, I really wish the menu explained the behaviour clearly so you didn't have to spend a minute learning how the car behaves. There were many instances where I was convinced I understood the behaviour and then would just drive straight forward and plough into the wall. Then unless you remember how each car handles, you will still have to refamiliarise yourself each time.
The cars do have a description but I didn't see how it matched. There was one car that was deemed "Nimble and Responsive" which you would think means it has high acceleration and simple handling, but it was the opposite. The car would not turn at all without slamming on the brakes before you hit the drift stick, then combined with the low acceleration; it was horrendous to drive.
The story mode is really short and just involves performing the same events as the other modes, but with a bit more dialogue, which is mainly like "I want to get better" then the next character says "why don't you race this guy over on this track". There are some tips to explain how to handle their cars, and there's 4 main characters.
The race modes can be time trials, head to head racing, checkpoints, and drift challenges. So aside from the event that you score based on drifts, they are all just variations of time trials, and feels like you are racing ghosts since you just phase through cars rather than colliding; so not sure what the difference is when racing ghosts.
The duel sees you scoring points for staying ahead. The event text mentions scoring 100 points to instantly win, but I think it means 1000. The alternate way of winning is someone crossing the finish line and the winner is the one that has the highest points.
Playing through the story with each character unlocks Challenges which are single races to unlock the cars which are used in the Grand Prix mode. Grand Prix is just 5 events that you have to complete with 3 retries only, otherwise you have to redo all the races again. Sometimes I found a difficulty spike on the 5th race which was frustrating. Each car you unlock has its own set of stages.
The cel-shaded graphics suit the game and will keep it looking dated in future. There's a few locales like city, countryside and mountain, but the night setting does make some tracks look slightly similar in places.
When you first start playing the story mode with the first character, it can give you a false impression of how the game is overall. It initially seems a straightforward game, but then when you try the other cars, you realise that it's a difficult game that takes practice to master.