This article was produced in collaboration with our sponsor, Poki.
Poki recently took a pretty extensive look at the car games being played on its platform to see which ones were the most popular among its players. For any of you who are unfamiliar with Poki, it's a browser game website that boasts well over 1,500 games to play.
The top 3 games that stood out the most were Drive Mad, Smash Karts and Blacktop Police Chase. So, naturally, we wanted to take these games for a spin (pun intended) to see what made them the best 3 car games on the platform.
We started with Drive Mad because it boasts a lot of impressive figures: over 18 million plays over 12 months in the US alone (which was roughly a quarter of all plays in the category) and over $1 million in global revenue. Its controls barely suggest a game capable of that: accelerate and brake as you try to reach the end of the level.
It’s kind of hard to put your thumb on what Drive Mad actually is. The closest thing we could think of is Trials Rising but even that doesn’t do it justice. It’s sort of a platformer but also a puzzle game that relies on physics to mess up your run. But the real catch is that the vehicle and the problems you face keep changing. The game presents itself as very approachable, that is, until you’re driving a “centipede” car over gaps, or driving over a massive car, or having huge wheels that threaten to tip you over.
Drive Mad will send you on an emotional rollercoaster that one moment will have you celebrating because we thought we were smarter than a level, to being humbled in the next one. There was one level in particular where the car was on stilts with the wheels at the bottom. This one really put us to shame. This 20-second level took us almost 15 painstaking minutes alone to get past.
At its best, Drive Mad makes an awkward crash feel like something you can learn from and use the next time you try, even if it only gets you a couple inches further. The quick restart also helps, but it makes it dangerously easy to spend far longer on one obstacle than you meant to.
Honestly, after playing it for as long as we did, we can see why it’s the best browser car game. The gameplay loop is so addictive. Even when you’ve given up hope, you just need to try one more time. A true Dark Souls of the car games category.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://gamerant.com/poki-played-best-car-games-not-racing-games/
