Developer: Moon Whale Studio
Publisher: Gammera Nest
Platform: PS4, PS5
Tested on: PS5
Ion Driver – Review
When reviewing many games, it is not uncommon to either encounter diamonds in the rough or games that should never have been made. It’s even rarer to encounter the perfect game or the worst game imaginable. We recently awarded a perfect score to Sony’s latest installment of Ratchet & Clank, and we gave the lowest score possible on our platform to IceTorch Interactive’s Ultra Off-Road 2019: Alaska. After playing Ion Driver we can honestly say that Ultra Off-Road 2019: Alaska might not be the worst game we played anymore. Ion Driver races to the top spot of becoming the worst game on our site, if we can even call it a game. With 6 drivers, two tracks, and a price tag of 10 Euros, we basically beat the game after ten minutes of playing.
Story
The game is void of any story or setting. The drivers have a small bio in the single player mode, but that basically rounds up any notion of a story there is in the game. We could actually appreciate the designs of the different characters, only for the developers to do absolutely nothing with them.
Graphics
Ion Driver is somewhere stuck between the PS1 and PS2 eras when looking at its graphical prowess. The game has a few interesting designs when it comes to the vehicles, but other than that, everything looks bland with barely any details visible. We feel like a few good ideas were in the minds of the developers, but they just didn’t have the people with the proper skills in the team to actually make something nice. Only the static pictures of the drivers in the selection screen showed a bit of skill of the development team.
Sound
When looking at the sound design, this might actually be the game’s (underwhelming) forte. The tracks playing during the races are moderately entertaining, albeit very generic. The sound effects then again feel as if they came from a free online sound library, making them sound very basic and at times even very annoying. There is once again not much more to say about the game in this department either.
Gameplay
Ion Driver is an unkempt litterbox that disguises itself as a high-speed futuristic racing game. This title has you boot it up, to have seen all the content over the course of ten minutes. You’ll have two tracks to race on, and six drivers to choose from. While the tracks may vary in how much they will annoy you, all drivers feel very much the same, and the customization options do absolutely nothing. This game feels like one of those hotlines where you complain about the postal services, as you’re literally getting charged one Euro per minute. We are not exaggerating, as this is a full race game with only two tracks available.
If the game would then provide a highly competitive leaderboard with rankings and polished gameplay, we would have seen some light at the end of the tunnel. Sadly, the little gameplay that is present is also absolute trash. Ion Driver is a high-speed racing game with poor controls, that has not even managed to put down its base mechanics properly. By barely hitting the sides of the track, you’ll find yourself being killed, respawning at points of the map you passed 30 seconds earlier or you might even be going the wrong way without the game even telling you. There’s no point keeping track of your position, as from time to time it will just show a random position, even showing you’re first when you’re clearly guarding the rear of the pack. From start to (early) finish, the game feels like a tech demo, and a poor one at that even.
Conclusion
It’s an absolute disgrace that Ion Driver is released on the PlayStation Store and that it actually costs a whopping 10 Euros to buy. The game literally has no content, is filled to the brim with bugs, has shoddy mechanics, and is just downright awful. Here and there we see hints of something that could have been fun, only for these figments of entertainment to be overshadowed by the pure pile of garbage that is Ion Driver. If you want to experience a fast-paced futuristic racer, we suggest buying a SNES, N64, or PS1 and get one of the iconic racing titles that were released over two decades ago. If you can’t find one of those classic titles for the price of Ion Driver, we reckon you’d still get more fun out of paying someone 10 Euros to kick you in the face.
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