After much waiting the Forza Street mobile game was finally released on iOS and Android, and is also available for Windows 10 too where it was released some time ago.
We booted up the Android version for a quick look and, man, there’s no coming back from that shocker of a first impression.
This is because Forza Street, despite being a racing game, is completely on rails. You can’t steer and can only control the accelerator and the boost. Even with that limited control the former is gimped.
When you approach a corner in this game you are presented with a colour-coded pathway. Every corner is the same: lift off the gas as you go into the yellow entry point, don’t touch anything in the red main section, and then get back on the gas when you hit the yellow exit point.
That’s it.
Even with a gussied up trailer trying to make this system look good, you can see the simple nature of the game in the embed below.
Doing this, as well as managing revs off of the start line, builds boost that you can use at your leisure.
The races are very boring because of this and they mostly take under a minute to beat, at least in the first championship we did for this early look. We imagine that short time is because any longer and the tedium would grow immensely.
The real complexity, of course, comes from buying and upgrading cars which is, of course, riddled with lootboxes and premium currency.
We’re not going to claim to have done a massive long-term investigation into this particular business model and the logistics of being a free player, but it’s almost comical how Forza Street nails every single free game monetisation plan.
Daily login rewards? Check. A reward for linking an account? Check. Ludicrous bundles that cost thousands of rands? Check. Arbitrary real world timers? Check.
If there’s an irritating type of way to milk customers of money then you will find it within the first 30 minutes of this game.
All of this is a real shame because the latest game before this, Forza Horizon 4, has a fantastic business model. Not only is the base game free to play for Xbox Game pass subscribers, but things like Wheelspins (this game’s version of lootboxes) can’t be directly bought for real money.
While paid DLC and car packs are on offer in Horizon 4, it’s a fair trade off given the fact that this is a live service game that is still receiving free updates almost two years after launching. The newest free update, 22, is adding six new cars with a focus on fan favourite rally vehicles.
Maybe Forza Street is a competent free title that will get better over time, but when you make driving shockingly uninteresting in a racing game there’s just no reason to ever boot it up again.
All that being said the game is free to download, so all you’re giving up to try it yourself is some time and the data for the download.
Account linking rewards!
Lootboxes!
Login rewards!
Real money currency!
