The UFO 50 Diaries: Seaside Drive
Get off the road, asshole!
Seaside Drive is a player-controlled metronome. In a collection where so often rhythm and flow are key to managing the challenges ahead of you, this is the apex of that idea.
A side scrolling shoot-em-up, Seaside Drive has you controlling a convertible with an alarming amount of firepower. One button fires into the air, in an arc from left to right at the player’s control, the other fires directly in front of or behind you.
Your damage dealing capabilities rely on a meter that slowly empties over time, refilling only when you pull off a drift. The drift being the thing that changes the direction of your bullets.
Do you see where I’m going with this?
What impressed me the most about Seaside Drive’s gameplay is how unified it felt to navigate. The metrical drift from right to left and back went in line with where enemies appeared from. Movement was automatic, in that things come at you regardless of whether you are prepared for them or not, but also at the player’s discretion, in that your actions determine your survivability on this hellish road trip.
It's a hard game. That’s no big surprise, some 48 entries into the collection, but I never feel all that despondent about losing out, because the journey back is such a nice drive.
That metronome, with enough familiarity, allows you to enter a zen-like state, understanding implicitly where you need to be to catch your foes before they themselves open fire, and how your vehicle can drift through that hail of bullets should you not quite catch them in time.
The pacing of the game mimics my resting rate of breath. I’m not sure if that is by design, but it meant that playing this game felt intuitive in a way many other entries in the collection did not at first. I never struggled to remember which button did what. I never felt like I didn’t know what was expected of me to survive, and to progress.
Am I good at this game? Absolutely not. I can get to the second level on most attempts, but not without expending my entire stock of lives in the process. There’s room for mastery yet.
I don’t have much else to say about this entry, other than its got a really weird setting. You fight drones and biplanes in that first level, culminating in a boss fight against a spaceship, one that looms in the background throughout.
Then the second level gets immediately abstract, replacing the recognisable vehicles with non-descript cubes in a vaporwave environment. Lord knows where the game will go from there. I don’t know, I haven’t gotten much further than that.
All I know is that with drivers like that on the road, maybe I'm better off not getting my licence just yet.