Current Events > Disney Speedstorm is FREE

(+) Yeah! (+)

Anyone playing this? It finally went free-to-play today after a year or two of delays and early access or whatever.

It's not bad. The physics feel nice enough and while I'm still figuring out some of the finer points, the boost system seems interesting. You build up the boost gauge by drifting, doing stunts, and attacking other racers. When it's full, press the boost button to expend it until it's empty. While you're in boost mode though, you can keep building it up by drifting or whatever, extending the amount of time before returning to regular speed. It reminds me of the turbo reserve system in CTR, which is the GOAT racer, so that's cool.

The tracks and cast are actually pretty charming (despite the playable characters all being locked into racing suits). The music is hilarious. They're all electronic mixes and samples of songs from the movies and I kind of lose it whenever I realize what the song referenced on any given track is.

It seems like you can unlock a fair bit just through normal play and even in single player. It's full of optional microtransactions and seasonal content of course, but from the couple of hours I've played, it doesn't seem like the pressure to pay up is too bad.

Oddly, you hafta unlock multiplayer and online through doing some of the single player. I've unlocked the option, but haven't tried online yet. Supposedly there's cross play and cross saves, which is neat. I was having connection issues earlier. It gave me the option of continuing offline, but single player was locked off and I hadn't unlocked multi yet and that surely requires a connection, so idk wtf you can actually do if you proceed offline. :|

Thanks for the heads up. Downloading now.

Nice, hope you enjoy it.

I tried a few online matches. It's absolutely bonkers in ranked and unranked right from the start. You cross the starting line and everyone immediately tries to smack everyone else, so you have like a 25% chance of actually taking advantage of your starting boost. Then the items are a mess on the track. I shoulda guessed it'd be crazy from how much I was spamming items in single player, but it is a nightmare seeing 5ish other players all doing the same the whole time. Get hit once and you're suddenly down three or five places. And if you happen to get knocked off course and end up facing a wall, you're pretty much stuck there for the next several seconds cuz you can't turn at all at that point. Eventually the game takes pity on you and respawns you back on the track. Usually in last place.

I think I gotta learn to be more discriminating with drifting. Coming off CTR where you either power slide constantly or you immediately lose speed, it's an adjustment playing a game where drifting actually lowers your speed like it logically should. I think it's important to do, but specifically on turns and when you have enough speed to keep it going.

Downloaded last night

Played single player mode for like an hour

It seems to offer quite a bit for free

Not too pushy on paid content

Is it still super grindy? That was all the complaints I saw in the store ratings. It's like a lootbox-filled mobile game. The core gameplay is supposedly decent and fun, but earning racers sucks.

King_Rial posted...

Is it still super grindy? That was all the complaints I saw in the store ratings. It's like a lootbox-filled mobile game. The core gameplay is supposedly decent and fun, but earning racers sucks.

Yes, absolutely. You'll get a few freebies early on (and presumably one early in each season), but after that it's a long process unlocking other characters. Open a loot box, get a few shards for a character, then hope your next box will give you enough shards for the same character to finish unlocking that character. Then pray to RNGsus for enough shards after that to level up your characters. Also go through the same process for support characters (basically equippable buffs) and all cosmetics. To its credit, there are a lot of different ways and places to earn things. But it's still very grindy and slow to unlock. And the menus and systems are as confusing as you'd expect from a free-to-play.

It's true, the core gameplay is actually pretty fun. Driving, drifting, and boosting all feel nice. If they released a version without all the free-to-play hoops to jump through and rebalanced the items a fair bit, it would actually be a pretty nice alternative to Mario Kart.