Gensou SkyDrift

It has been almost two decades since Nintendo tried to evolve the Mario Kart franchise by pairing up their popular characters in Double Dash. Although critics liked it and the sales suggest it was a hit with fans, the idea of weighing down the karts with two people ultimately didn't stick. Now that I've played the new Touhou Project racing game Gensou SkyDrift, I'm convinced that the problem wasn't creating two-person teams, but rather keeping the actual kart. This is a racer that ditches the vehicle entirely, opting instead to let the player whip around the aggravating courses by literally riding on top of a bunch of anime girls. But don't get too excited, because it's not as much fun as it sounds.

Having already conquered the shooting, fighting and adventure genres, it only makes sense for the Touhou girls to try their hand at racing. And while Reisen, Marisa, Koishi and the rest of the cartoony cast barely looks old enough to get a driver's license, the idea of flying through colorful worlds while tossing magic at other racers is something that greatly appeals to me. If you want to give me a weird combat racing game where you ride an anime woman like a surfboard, then you better believe I'll be front and center at the starting line revving up the engine. No, wait, that didn't come out right.

Obviously, it's how you're racing that will be the first thing most people notice. I'm used to driving cars, airplanes, boats and even helicopters, not magical cartoon characters. The very notion of standing on another person (even a witch) as they hover over the ground is unusual, but it actually serves a purpose in Gensou SkyDrift. Because you're controlling a team, you'll be able to switch characters at any time, essentially swapping who is driving and who acts as the vehicle. This is surprisingly useful, as one character may be better equipped for straight stretches and attacks, while the other might excel at taking sharp corners and navigating especially tough courses. Switching between them is surprisingly easy and opens up an extra layer of strategy you don't find in most racing games.

Unfortunately, this is where the strategy begins and ends. When it comes to the racing, Gensou SkyDrift is real standard fare. You go fast, drift around corners and try to come in first. Both characters will be able to cycle through a bunch of random cards that will act as weapons and defensive items, so expect to throw fireballs, unleash turbo speed and slow down the competition with a really bright light. There are some nice touches here and there, such as an anchor floating around our hero, but most of the magic spells will be annoyingly familiar to anybody who has played a Mario Kart clone.

While it doesn't exactly break new ground for the racing genre, I do like how much content we get in Gensou SkyDrift. There are twenty different Touhou girls to choose from and sixteen different fantasy courses, including a flying ship, magical forest, cherry blossom-filled town, ice-covered mountain and even the outside world. Beyond simply looking different, these stages also offer a nice variety of obstacles and course types. The Mari-Circuit, for example, looks like a more realistic take on Mario Kart, while the Embers of Blazing Hell stage is more of a maze.

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For as much as I like the variety of stages, the problem I kept running into is that many of them aren't much fun to race. This is especially true of the final few courses, which are a lot more frustrating than fun. The game teaches you early on to hit all of the speed gates and not worry too much about the invisible walls on each side of the course, but then, out of nowhere, they completely drop the invisible walls and start trolling you with the speed gates. You're suddenly hitting walls for no reason and watching as the computer-controlled opponents expertly navigate the poorly-designed levels with pinpoint precision. The spooky Scarlet Devil manor is especially aggravating, as it's so easy to get stuck parts of the level or get flipped around with no way to reset the driver. You can't even restart the race without going all the way out to the main menu.

A lot of these problems could have been prevented with something as simple as a jump button, yet there's nothing like that here. In a baffling move, half of the buttons are used to look backwards, something I never once had to do. What's annoying is that the game never bothers to explain anything beyond the basic button configuration. We have to guess with the magic cards do or even when you can access them. Want to know what the multi-colored meters mean at the bottom of the screen? Well, you're going to need to figure that out for yourself. Hell, it took me a few races before I even realized I could switch characters on the fly, which is the one truly unique thing about this game.

Eventually, you'll learn what the magic cards mean and what those multi-colored bars are for. You'll memorize those especially tough stages, giving you a slight edge when battling the computer opponents. Gensou SkyDrift will eventually click and you'll probably end up having a lot of fun. Unfortunately, by that point, you will likely have run out of stuff to do in the game. The single-player content is limited to a short campaign and a free play mode. Definitely not enough content to warrant the $24 asking price.

The game does improve quite a bit when we move away from the annoying computer-controlled opponents and go up against other real players in the shallow yet entertaining online multiplayer mode. Every part of this game is better when playing against other real people, which makes the lack of local multiplayer support so disappointing. Gamers who plan on sticking with the competitive online mode may end up getting their money's worth, but everybody else may want to skip Gensou SkyDrift.