JDM: Rise Of The Scorpion is a free prologue to JDM: Japanese Drift Master, a racing game about – who would have thought – drifting in Japan. It has an open world set in rural towns where you can burn rubber, and a few story missions to play. You can download now on Steam.
Does “prologue” simply mean it’s a demo? Well, it’s certainly designed to show off the world and the ride of the full game, but its story also works as an actual prologue, telling a separate story about a different protagonist than the Japanese Drift Master. In Rise Of The Scorpion, you play as “rebel high schooler Hatori” who comes across as an idiot and a jerk, and I turned off of him after just a few compact pages of the manga. Big “main game villain” vibes.
Beyond that, there’s plenty to like about Rise Of The Scorpion. Its setting around the fictional Lake Haikama is handsome, dotted with miniature towns and back roads. It’s a far cry from the urban permadark of the Tokyo-set Night Runners Prologue, another recent racing game demo.
The pastoral beauty matters because even though I’ve seen every Fast and Furious movie and I’ve given in to Tokyo Drift, twicemuch to my shame, I never mastered the art of drifting video game cars. I’m so bad at it that I couldn’t even complete the first mission of Rise Of The Scorpion in four attempts. Instead, I had fun playing as JPM: Japanese Parking Master, stopping outside kissas and sushi restaurants at various points where I could admire trees and vending machines and overhead power cables.
If I had gotten further, I might have seen more of the game’s mechanics, including customizable cars, a day and night cycle, and weather.
Apparently there are many driving aidsdisabled at startup, that might have helped me. I’ll try again and hopefully I’ll be good enough to be able to progress when the game is released, via Steamsometime this year.
