Even prior to playing Music Drive it was clear that it offered an arcade-like experience, with it featuring low poly 32-bit era style visuals and a focus on reckless vehicular combat. It’s the kind of game where you only need to look at a screenshot or two to see what you’re in for. However, I certainly expected something more – especially when the press release details the plot and characters in depth, suggesting we’re in for something story driven, or at least with personality, especially when the intention here is to celebrate favela communities.
Make no mistake, Music Drive is a thoroughly arcade-like experience, lasting under two hours, and with no plot or cut-scenes to speak of apart from an arcade-style attract sequence. Complete the game, and you’re presented with a generic ‘Congratulations’ message along with an image of a gold trophy… in a game where the premise is to save stolen music. There’s so little to the general presentation that the characters aren’t even introduced. The only reason I know they’re named Tina and Turner is because of the product description. It isn’t as if this joke wouldn’t have translated well across the globe. Weirdly, there’s a third central character – a tattooed, shaven headed, delivery driver – who’s also never established despite being playable.
The press release claims that Tina and Turner are out to reclaim hard drives containing unreleased music tracks, when in fact it’s cassette tapes that they’re out to retrieve. How that mix-up occurred I cannot say, but it is rather fitting for an experience where so little is explained.
Ten stages feature, being a mixture of narrow city streets, highways, and wide dusty deserts, with each lasting just a few minutes. Your goal is to locate target cars and destroy them (either by shooting or high-speed ramming) to obtain cassette tapes before reaching a marked destination. Vehicles stick to the road like glue, with only misjudged ramps resulting in spinning off course, and Turner shoots automatically when in range. The sight of seeing them fire a shotgun using a single outstretched arm proved quite comical. Collide too often or fail to avoid too much incoming fire and the mission is over. Oddly, there’s no time-limit, meaning it’s possible to turn around and collect any cash tokens that were somehow missed.
Extending the runtime twofold is the presence of delivery missions. These take place in the same stages as the pursuits, only instead of destroying target cars you’re driving past marked delivery points. If you fail a mission, tapes are lost entirely – so you’ll need to replay pursuit missions to gain more. The upshot of this is that delivery missions feel more high stakes, while the downside is that you’ll need to replay later missions numerous times to gain enough tapes to meet the delivery quotas.
A neat thing about Music Drive is every tape collected contains a music track, provided here by Brazilian rapper NP Vocal – who may actually be the third unnamed character, although I can’t say for certain. Unsurprisingly, these cassette tapes form the game’s soundtrack, and will play constantly throughout, even on loading screens. If you’re into urban rap then the soundtrack will definitely appeal. Once every tape is retrieved there’s a modest selection to sample.
There’s a small selection of cars and weapons to unlock too, all of which can be upgraded a few times over. However, odd design choices arise again, as the vehicle selection goes from sleek and desirable ‘80s style Cadillacs – which are fast yet weak – to an ugly oddly elongated camper van and a large rectangular truck that are both fast and resistant to damage. You’re going to need to invest in these uglier vehicles to progress, as it isn’t long until stages feature multiple enemies at once in narrow tunnels which will drain your health quickly. That’s to say, Tina and Turner’s journey likely won’t end with you cruising into the sunset in a sleek sports car but rather barging across the final finishing line in a dusty old lorry. The fast and furious this isn’t.
Visually it isn’t unappealing – although the fact that the pixelation effect is just a filter does feel like a swizz – but neither did it rouse nostalgia for the likes of Driver and Vigilante 8. The menus are initially finnicky to navigate, while the UI is akin to a mobile game, looking a bit out of place on a console. I was surprised to find that online leaderboards are present as they’re tucked away on the vehicle/weapon select screen.
Upon returning to Music Drive, just to see if there was more to talk about in this review, I also discovered that it has a difficulty setting linked to a ‘cancelled level’ which you can use in-game cash to reduce. Think along the lines of GTA’s wanted level. As this wasn’t explained in the opening, I went through the whole game completely unaware of it.
Music Drive: Chase the Beat isn’t a write off – the basic vehicle handling makes it instantly accessible, the difficulty level is well judged and ties into the need to invest in upgrades, while the Brazilian rap music will appeal to those into the genre. But I couldn’t shake the fact that even if had this released on PS1 or SEGA Saturn when those systems were in their prime, it would likely be considered lacking and throwaway. And perhaps a bit unintentionally comical too.
Salve Games’ Music Drive: Chase the Beat is out now on all formats. Published by QUByte Interactive.