Release Date: June 9, 2017
A combination of a hack’n’slash action game and a racing game. During the game, the players are controlling one of five playable female protagonists. They are fighting aliens that are invading the planet. In addition to using futuristic weapons, the protagonists can transform into very fast sports cars.
Drive Girls is an action game that combines traits of a hack ‘n’ slash and a car racing game. It was developed by Tamsoft, a Japanese company founded during the early nineties’. The developer specializes in creating low-budget console games. Among the titles the studio developed, there are niche series like Dream Club, Onechanbara, and Senran Kagura. The developers also worked on spin-offs of Hyperdimension Neptunia series.
The game takes place in a world in which some people are able to transform themselves into sports cars. The main protagonist of the game is a girl named Lancer. She must face space invaders that attack her home island and city. At first, she is not eager to fight, but later she changes her mind and fights by using her ability to transform. During the battles with the aggressive aliens called Bugs, she is accompanied by other girls with similar abilities.
In Drive Girls the action is presented from a third-person perspective. The game is a simple hack ‘n’ slash title with racing game features. Each of five playable female characters has unique strong and weak attacks and special skills. The players can freely transform into a car, for example in order to gain speed and hit a group of enemies.
The story campaign is divided into a series of missions. Usually, the objective of these missions is to eliminate all enemies. The battles are fought on three-dimensional levels that are varied-sized arenas connected to each other with long corridors or roads. In addition to regular enemies, the players can also face stronger bosses. It is worth adding that the developers enabled the players to change equipment and looks of each character. These changes impact their combat abilities.
In addition to a singleplayer campaign, Drive Girls features a local and an online multiplayer mode. Up to four players can together complete missions or face each other in a Deathmatch.
Drive Girls is powered by an engine and technology used in other PS Vita games like Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed. The game features three-dimensional character models of decent quality, but the locations are simple and they are lacking details. The enemies aren’t interestingly designed and their movement animations are poor.
Platforms:
PlayStation Vita
Developer: Tamsoft
Publisher: Rising Star Games
Age restrictions: 16+
Game Ratings for Drive Girls Video Game.
God is a Geek: 4 / 10 by Mikhail Madnani
Drive Girls is a disappointing game in almost every aspect with only a few redeeming factors.
Cubed3: 5 / 10 by Gabriel Jones
Anybody expecting Drive Girls to be another dumb fun slasher will be sorely disappointed. The learning curve is pretty high, requiring a substantial level of patience, and perhaps even a guide or two. Given enough time and effort, it can be pretty entertaining, and the especially skilled will appreciate the advanced techniques. Until then, all this game has to offer are a poor camera, cheap enemies, and aggravation. It asks a lot and doesn't give much in return. What content is there is stretched far too thin. There are a lot of missions, but very few unique enemies, and nothing in the way of creative level design. Even fans of cheesecake will find depressingly little to satisfy their interests.
Niche Gamer: 5 / 10 by Alexis Nascimento-Lajoie
If it feels like Drive Girls still interests you despite what I had to say, I'd recommend maybe picking it up if it were on sale as it can make for a decent time killer if you're on the transit to work or school. Outside of that, there's not a whole lot to recommend, as it offers too little to make for an engaging title.
