Metal Drift

Metal Drift is a hovertank based, kindof-but-not-really capture the flag style game developed by Black Jacket Studios. And you've never heard of them before because, like most game developers on Steam these days, they're an "Indie" group. And by group i think there's about 3 of them. But it's a really fun game, so i'm going to shamelessly "review" it. I'm not being paid nor am i friends with them. I just like the game.



The long and short of it, is you have teams of up to 6 players/bots on a reasonable sized field floating around in hovertanks trying to capture a ball by racing to the location of said ball (generally in the exact middle of the map) and taking it to the oppositions goal point, usually but not limited to a "base" of sorts. Often with a forcefield wall that only that team can pass through - often meaning that getting around the last corner before the goal does not mean you're safe from a rapid interception. If you can get around the corner properly - learning to control the tanks without bumping into a wall takes a bit of practice as they tend to slide, or... "drift" as it were, but once you adjust to it, the maneuvers you can perform are quite varied.

To assist you in your goal of ball capture domination, you have a variety of weapons and abilities that are unlocked as you play through a level up system. The only problem with this is that you do not choose what is unlocked - and while the weapons are fairly balanced insofar as the "basic" weapon can be just as deadly as the "last" weapon unlocked, the abilties are a completely different story. You can compare a slow firing powerful weapon to a fast firing weak weapon, but you can't compare the ability to self repair with the ability to teleport near the ball from anywhere on the map.

The 5 game maps themselves are all fairly samey looking. Being an indie title and having a fairly set scenario it doesn't really detract from the experience unless you're obsessed with the environment you are playing in. Some variety would of course be excellent, but not necessarily a requirement. The graphics in general are quite nice for an indie game, though there's no way to easily tell anyone apart on either team - one tank is red the other is blue. Though from the front and rear it can be hard to tell.



But the important factors are all there - it's cheap, it's fairly well balanced and it's fun.