This is a soft-launch, as it says in the title. It means it's only available in whatever territories the developers have selected to roll the game out in. The model here is essentially the same as Trials. There are two currencies and lives (very distantly analagous to fuel) - coins and the premium one. So far I've only got gems for leveling up but coins come fairly liberally. I was getting about 1500 per race 4-5 events in and the first vehicle upgrades cost around 3-4,000. There are two other vehicles and the last one costs 90,000. There's also a "bot" for 100k, but there's zero explanation for what that does. The lives are interesting. You lose one for losing a race, so theoretically you could play without needing them. Practically though... You come to the one gripe which was the reason I stopped playing. There are three difficulty modes that you select for quick one-off side events. The first one is too easy. By far. I have smoked every side race by at least 5 seconds. At least. The second one is way out of my league with a basic car with no upgrades. I got left in the dust by at least four seconds each time. Now on its own that's not really the problem - you are expected to play through the easy mode pick up coins, upgrade the cool flying car and then go through them again on the harder mode, then repeat again. Sure, fine. But the main races are just as bad. My very first race, in the first car with the boost ability, I came in first by more than 15 seconds. First game, first time I picked it up. So I kept playing, slightly disappointed. The races got closer and closer and I amassed a sizable amount of credits and to keep winning I decided to upgrade my cool flying car. Bam - timers for upgrades. This was where I put the game down and came here to realize this is a soft launch, which makes me very glad. Obviously soon there's going to come a point where the difficulty curve of the main events (which you can't change the difficulty of) will shift from bronze to silver, where my un-upgraded ship will let down any skill level I might have. And that's a point of balance on the developers' end. I am not there yet, but I can feel it coming. So my final verdict really is this: Just like Trials, the game is fantastic. The money making implementation around it is not. However, the restrictiveness isn't nearly as bad as Trials. If you played Trials and stuck with it for longer than it took to find out about the fuel system, you might enjoy this more. If you're a normal player, you might play a few races, try out the side missions, mess around in the garage and upgrade a few things which you can already afford, play a couple more races, see your upgrades finished, play some more, buy more upgrades and maybe start saving for a car - you should definitely give it a try. If you're like me and a "power player" - race, race, race, race, race, race - you will hit a point where you're loaded, and you buy the first of every type of upgrade, but then you have to wait. You can race while they're going, but there's still a slight sour tinge of disappointment in that. This is where you might put down the game and play something else, or delete it entirely. I mean, in the end - it's not bad. It's not great because it's free, but there's the making of greatness here for sure (minus the lives system). And if the developers ever stumble on this post I'll be more than happy to talk more about this, but it's quite obvious that this is a soft launch, though nothing bothers me nearly as much as I'd have expected. At the very least, you should give it a try for the fantastic experience that your races will be. You might even find that the freemium model isn't as bad as you expected.
Thank you very much for the detailed impressions! Maybe i´ll give it a go after i have cleared some space on my device.
So we ain't getting it then? Thanks a bunch guys the only game I was looking forward to isn't being released here! Great!
Not yet! They will test the game on a small sample, adjust whatever they feel is necessary and then release it everywhere else. Might take a week, might take a month or two, but it's coming.
Hoping when it hits other stores in full release I see a £ by the side of it. Happy to pay a few quid for this - without feeling like the IAP owns my time.
Was hoping it would be global today, well, maybe they can take out alot of the freemium riffraff by release. Comments look pretty bad in this thread, so guess hopefully the dev will change the business model a bit before the global launch.
I totally agree with the majority on this one. This game looks absolutely fantastic but I'll be playing otttd and man at arms instead. I'm a casual gamer and use my iPad to kill time between meetings etc and having a great game like this and not being able to play it when I want to is a deal breaker. It really is a shame because I don't mind IAPs to upgrade my experience or to support a great developer just not IAPs for extra lives. I do applaud them for perhaps taking this business model to keep children from over playing but it's just not for me. Sorry. Hopefully a premium version will come out. Oh, and I would love weapons similar to wipeout either in an update or sequel! It really is a beautifully done game. Take care
That's a shame, because the model here would influence you and players like yourself least of all. I'd recommend you give it a try. I know my post a page back is a handful with a lot of text, but I'd recommend reading it.
Here a video of the game from appspy and james gilmour said that it won't be out soon here link to watch the game and hear him say the game won't be out yet http://www.appspy.com/feature/8667/hands-on-with-very-big-indie-pitch-winner-ag-drive-the-wipeout-style-futuristic-racer
Was just about to share that link. I really hope this goes premium with some casual IAPs if required. Happy to pay a fiver for this. Looks majestic.
Still only available on the NZ App Store. I've been looking forward to this since it was first announced. Apparently it was updated on 10/22 to support iOS 8 and iPhone 6.
