I’ve been meaning to write a blog about racing games for YEARS. Plural!... But not this one.
In fact, I’ve been trying NOT to write this particular story. It’s not positive at all, it doesn’t end constructively and, oh look, another rant! But if you ever want to consider yourself a person worth listening to, you have to tell the truth, right? Keep it real, and all that shit, so yeah:
All the racing games on Android are fucking GARBAGE!
Oh! I can pull one decent message out of here-not all the DRIVING games on Android are terrible and predatory. PAKO 2 has taken up residence in my Arcade folder and refuses to leave town-it offers the perfect bite-sized overdose of GTA-style ultraviolence and thievery with simple controls and 80's flair, plus every time I try to delete the app it wings me with a shotgun blast.
The best thing about PAKO, though, is that you never need to see an ad if you really don’t want to. They offer you a continue for an ad, but you don’t have to take it, you can just start over-it’s not an unfair advantage or an involuntary commercial, it’s a brief prison/hospital stint to keep the crime wave going.
None of the racing games are this way. There’s a few games that WERE like this. Red Bull Kart Fighter? AMAZING. SkidStorm? EPIC! These games were amazing not just for the game play(I’m a sucker for isometric drifters, I admit it) but for the fact that you could beat the whole game without spending a single real dime...
... At first.
Cheetah Fucking Mobile was the fourth largest publisher on Android, but they were also committing ad fraud the whole time. Basically, every app they sold was adware. Among these was SkidStorm, which they bought the rights to from Immobile Games and ran somewhat straight, for a while. Then they got greedy, applied the adware AND put an unbeatable car in the game that costs the equivalent of 200 real world dollars!
I didn’t know any of this shit until a day ago, when I tried to start SkidStorm and got locked on the update screen. Same thing happened with both Red Bull games I had. The reason I didn’t notice, was that I was slogging through this mess:
I honestly think I’ve played every racing game there is on Android, and EVERY TIME there’s a paywall or an ad problem.
Maybe it takes a ton of money and parts to upgrade a million different attributes, like Mini Motor Racing. Maybe the energy mechanics keep forcing you to wait to drive your best cars, like Real Racing 3. Maybe the good cars cost too much and the game makes you grind yourself into the pavement to make any headway, like Asphalt 8: Airborne. Maybe it makes you watch ads before and after everything to make any significant money, like Hot Wheels: Infinite Loop. Maybe, like the many games I won’t even mention, it just sucks too bad to put up with ANY of that shit, or even none of it!
No matter what the game, there’s always something to ruin it for me and annoy me into deleting it, and now the two games I actually liked are extinct.. I'm not an Apple fan at all, but there is something to be said for their quality control!
If you can think of a game to prove me wrong, please let me know?! I got nothing to do in the dentist’s lobby now!