Mobile games nowadays continue to evolve as phones get more powerful, leading to some interesting titles. Normally I’d be going on about Fate/Grand Order or Honkai Impact 3rd, but today I’d like to take a look at Forza Street, recently released as a free to play mobile game on Android and iOS. I’ve never been one for racing games but the previews have looked impressive enough, so I’d like to hold a bit of a microscope to it.
To begin, Forza Street is pretty aesthetically pleasing. With what I’ve played everything is fluid, and the cars all look solid. The environments get a bit repetitive early on, but I’m a sucker for nighttime and neon lights, so I’m pretty alright with it. For a mobile game, it looks great. I’ve really only seen this level of fidelity with Honkai Impact 3rd, so it’s nice to see that Forza Street has nice graphics. The lighting is great, the cars feel real, and overall it’s just pleasing to look at. Going into the character designs, I can speak a bit differently. Now these in no way impact gameplay and you only see them for snippets of story or dialogue, but it’s really nothing impressive. They’ve got the “street” aesthetic but no real qualities beyond that. They really wanted to nail in the street racing vibe and kind of left it there. Nothing terrible, but nothing stand out either.
As for the gameplay; it is incredibly simplistic. I mean, as far as I’ve gone it’s really just one thumb on and off the screen sometimes. When you race, you’ve got a startup gauge for a bit of bonus turbo meter and a gas pedal. The gas pedal goes down for 90% of the race and you’re only meant to lift when making turns, and that’s it. There are crystal clear indicators for when you’re meant to take your finger off the screen and place it back on, and that’s it. There’s no need to move the car, there’s no steering, just push and let go sometimes. There are ways to change the difficulty of the drivers you’re facing, and the gist of it is that the timing gets tighter. There’s not much to do aside from get a better car and loosen up the timings or use the default car and time everything perfectly. Personally, I was using the default car for a good while without much trouble, even with the difficulty scaled up. There are systems for upgrading cars as well, so you can continue to use a car you like on higher difficulties without the stress of ridiculously tight timings.
Onto the cars and car collection; as the story progresses you’re invited to start getting new cars. Cars are separated into 4 archetypes and 3 rarities. There are Muscle, Sports, Street and Super cars. These are then separated by, you guessed it, the star system. Like any good freemium mobile game, you’re meant to use premium currency to get higher rarity cars. These scale up to 3 stars, deviating from the typical 5 star format. I’m a fan of this personally, as I’ve gotten a few 2 star cars and do not see a crazy amount of performance difference. A smaller max star count would be easier to match with lower rarity cars, allowing for upgrading and getting duplicate cars to essentially bridge that gap if you’d want to stay a free-to-play player. The level up rewards and story rewards are relatively generous with upgrade currency, meaning that it’s not too hard to take a car you like and just continuously upgrade it. Now if you want to find out how to get rare cars in Forza Street, that’s all up to luck. The gacha is essentially a roulette, having you hold and release and pray it lands on something you want. All’s fair in love and mobile games.
All in all, Forza Street is a pretty game with some really simplistic gameplay. It’s easy enough to play with one hand, and entertaining enough to keep your attention for a few minutes, like waiting on a doctor’s appointment or playing on the bus. I think it does what a mobile game is meant to do without much investment necessary. Now that lack of investment means it’s also pretty easy to forget about with all the other mobile games out there, and with how simple it is it can get really repetitive. If you love cars and love racing, I think you should pick this one up and give it a shot. If you just want to stare at cars and collect them, just hop on for the daily rewards. That’s all there is to it, and in this case, it works pretty well.
Score: 6 out of 10
Reviewed on iPhone 11 Pro