The Real Racing series has established itself as the goto for a high quality, realistic racing experience on mobile devices and with the latest instalment of the franchise about to go live, we tripped it along to EA Mobile’s London digs to see the game before it left the starting line.
Naturally the whole game is bigger and better than the two titles which came before it, with more cars, more tracks and more freedom. In fact ‘free’ is a word which is particularly relevant to this third instalment, as it’s the first title in the series to opt for a freemium purchase model. Real Racing 2 is available from the App Store for £2.99, but when RR3 arrives at the month’s end, gamers will be able to pick it up for free, instead having the option to exchange real money for in-game cash or gold, both of which contribute to carrying out or speeding up repairs, buying new cars and tweaking performance and styling.
This time around the car roster has grown with 46 cars available at launch from 12 brands, now including the likes of Porsche, Dodge and Audi. What’s more, the team at Firemonkeys have spent time and care making sure the cars not only handle better than ever before, but look better too. In the first game, an entire car consisted of approximately 600 polygons, this time around that same number of polygons is only enough to account for a single headlight cluster. Baring this in mind, you can imagine just how good the visuals of Real Racing 3 are and at times we had to remind ourselves that we were playing a mobile title and not a fully fledged console game.
As well as new, more realistic cars, we were able to choose from nine real-world tracks including Laguna Seca and Brands Hatch (the first time the series had featured real locations) and as we lined up on the grid we found ourselves idling amongst a massive 22 car strong pack, up from 19 in the previous game. The team have also knocked the number of events on offer out of the park, with the last game’s 70 events dwarfed by some 900 different races this time around.
Of course the biggest selling point of RR3, which the Firemonkeys team previously debuted at Apple’s September 2012 keynote is its time-shifted multiplayer function, which allows gamers to race other players and friends on a specific track without being at their smartphone or tablet at the same time; somewhat like a smart ghost, player may find themselves racing their friends lap set the previous week.
As Firemonkeys Associate Producer – Michael de Graaf took us through what makes Real Racing 3 tick, he explained that the aims of the team behind it were twofold, “From the start wanted to build a game that could utilise future mobile hardware,” going onto say, “the game revolves around three key things: real cars, real tracks, real people. ”
Adrenaline junkies don’t have long to wait to get their fix on realistic racing action. Real Racing 3 launches worldwide on February 28th for both iOS and Android.
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