I really want to like GT Racing 2. A racing sim for mobile
devices that’s also free? Sounds great. But Gameloft isn’t so keen on giving
gamers a great experience for nothing. I understand that there is a need to
make money somewhere in this game, but the cost of getting some real enjoyment
out of the game is awfully egregious.
There’s certainly a great deal of events to play through, at
least 8 for each car. But to actually get to play these events require buying
cars, and the credits don’t come quick and easy. Progression is also hindered
by the need of collecting a lot of stars just to unlock certain cars. The quick
way to get around that is to throw some real-world money at the game, but it
certainly isn’t cheap. To get things moving, you need to spend at least $10 to
unlock a few cars, or you’ll spend hours driving a Chevrolet Sonic just trying
to grind enough credit to unlock another car. Grinding just to unlock new
content is actually worse than Gran Turismo 5 and Forza Motorsport 2, COMBINED.
It would have been nice for Gameloft to throw out an introductory offer that
gave players a pack of cars, credits and mechanics for a low cost, but they
didn’t.
The game has a similar look to Asphalt 8, and I wouldn’t be surprised
if Gameloft used the same game engine for GT Racing 2. The game runs fairly
well on my phone (the HTC EVO 3D), and doesn’t look so bad considering it’s not
running on the highest details available. A couple of times the framerate
choked so bad that the game ended up crashing, which forced me to reboot my
phone. It could be worse; I’ve played console games that crash more frequently
than this.
I’m not a huge fan of using tilt controls for racing games,
and it’s barely serviceable in GT Racing 2. Tilt controls just aren’t ideal for
racing sims; I would rather have precise controls than tilt controls. There is
the option to use an external controller, which is nice. There’s just not a lot
of precision with tilt controls and auto acceleration, and you’ll be rubbing
the walls a lot, even with steering assist.
The AI is just too unbalanced, and favors the developer by
forcing the player to spend more money to upgrade vehicles. There’s very little
rubber-banding in the AI (which for a game like this would be welcome), and the
computer controlled racers rarely make mistakes. If you thought the AI in GT5
was too rigid, GT Racing 2 is downright strict in adhering to its own racing
lines.
For a game that’s free, it seems like expectations should be
rather low for a game like this. But since so many gaming blogs are in love
with this game, I think expectations should be ramped up a bit. In all
fairness, the game looks good and there is a lot of content. Unfortunately, a lot
of the game content feels like it’s behind one huge pay wall, shaking down
players who want to expand their playtime further than racing hot hatches for
hours on end. It sounds silly to complain about these issues in a free to play
game, but if there was more value to what Gameloft expects you to pay, I wouldn’t
complain so much. Asking players to spend $30 to unlock a Ferrari is just outrageous,
at that rate; the full game should be unlocked. The cost of accessing
everything in the game shouldn’t exceed the cost of something like Forza
Motorsport 5 or Gran Turismo 6. It’s a mobile game, for cripes sake. If this
were a Vita or a 3DS game, charging $40 would seem pretty fair for full access to
game content. But for a mobile game, the price is just too damn high.
No comments:
Post a Comment