Inertial Drift: Twilight Rivals Review (Bees)
Short version: Four sick new cars and four sick new tracks (+reverse versions) and a neat new story mode. If you like the base game, this is just more of that, but with cool unique additions.
Long version:
The cars:
Three of the four new cars lean heavy into grip while still maintaining solid and interesting grip mechanics.
The C-class Terra R.A.I. can step on the brakes for a heavy boost to grip at a sight hit to speed. It also has pretty strong drifting abilities, although a steep drift hurts its speed more than holding the brakes does. Drifting and brakes can be combined to handle the steepest corners. Very fun and responsive car that's easy to pick up, but still requires good track knowledge to succeed with.
The C-class Eurus Hyperia is like a C class version of the grip only A class car, the Velox Impuls. Although residing in C-class, it's not so min-maxed, and it still has some drifting options for tough corners. Its top speed is low, but it has the tools to stay at or close to top speed almost all the time, making it quite a challenging, but rewarding car to learn.
The A class xx82 is one of the coolest looking cars in the game imo, and it's the 1st off-roader to be added since the Gecko RX on the game's initial launch. It's acceleration is bad, but it gets by thanks to its strong grip when letting off the gas as well as its ability to cut through runoff and utilize the handful of off-road shortcuts the game has. Maintaining top speed is rough, but essential. Sadly it doesn't really seem to have the tools to do it effectively, so it won't be competing for A-class records, but it's still a pretty fun car to try and optimize just for the sake of optimization.
The last car, the B class King Bison, is the only one of the DLC cars to break the mold of grip focus, and it's extremely difficult to handle as a result. Its top speed and acceleration are both top notch by B class standards, but the only tool it has for cornering is a really steep drift that costs a fair chunk of speed. It's one of the hardest cars in the game to handle, but mastering its drift to minimize drift time and cut down on the speed cost will reward you with control over potentially the strongest B class car for record hunting. Personally I don't find it fun to drive, but I get the appeal of it.
The Tracks:
Instead of breaking down each track individually like the cars, I'll just give a general overview. All the new DLC tracks reside in the cool looking Twilight Isles, and generally show functional improvements over the design of the base game courses in my opinion. Many cars on base game tracks would often be forced to grind or bonk against difficult corners in order to corner efficiently if they lacked the tools to handle them normally. Most new tracks reduce the number of corners like this while still keeping plenty of interesting maneuvering challenges. The only track I really have any issues with in Serpentine Descent, which has some really thick offroad that starts much closer to the center of the road than it appears. The rest of the track is so good that it's still my favorite of the new tracks though, and my 2nd favorite track in the game overall.
Additionally, although the scenery can get a bit repetitive, the tracks all play quite differently (except for megalink which is a sick point to point track combining areas from the other 3). Also, the OST here is too good to feel repetitive. Turbo did some awesome work here.