CSR Classics

Hi folks!

Today, I'm going to talk about a different game I've been spending some time on the past days - CSR Classics. Basically, after the somewhat exhausting NFS Lunar New Year event, I wanted have a bit of a break. So let's take a look around in this "free to play" game, and see how we can have fun with it without spending much real world money.

Gameplay

Even for a mobile game, the gameplay is dead simple. My kid is playing "Lego City", which has a section of motorbike drag racing. You press a button to start, and then again to "gear up" when a light goes on. Press the buttons at the right time wins you the game.

This, if we're honest, is exactly how CSR Classics work. Rev the engine so the light goes green. Press "gear up" when the light goes green. Press "nitro" at your leisure. Done. Toddler-grade.

So if it's not the challenging / skilful gameplay, what is interesting about this?

The Good Parts

First thing to note, the graphics. This is, hands down, one of the most beautiful mobile games I've seen. Consistent 50's styling, HD graphics, everything shines and blings. No blocky graphics like we're seeing in NFS these days. Everything is absolutely smooth. Did I mention that the theme is stunning?

The UI integrates well with Android, and doesn't feel like a generic port. Controls are working the usual ways, including the back button. This "native" feel also shows up in resource usage - even on extended play sessions, this game doesn't seem to stress hardware much at all, and in return, doesn't burn much battery or create "the hottest phone on the market", literally.

Loading times between main menu and race are minimal, which is refreshing, especially coming from NFS' minute-long loading screens. Given, the race is extremely simplistic, so there may not be that much to load, but it still feels very quick, compared. Races themselves are usually done in 15s once started, so you can do farming without losing too much time.

Cars

As the name suggests, this is about "classic" cars, and boy are there plenty of them! Collecting and "restoring" is actually the main pull in the game for me.

You can buy cars in two states - "unloved" (rusty and barebones) and "loved" (with nice paint job and some upgrades). Cars also come in different stages / levels, and there's a story mode with some boss characters and a thin narrative - standard stuff. Although I got to say, nicely done to add to the 50's atmosphere.

To give you a bit of an impression, here are the cars I've got so far, after about four days of playing (no real money spent so far). All bought "unloved" (rusty).

The first car, a Chevy Impala. Body fully restored, engine etc. enough to make it to tier 2.

Next up, an old Mercedes. You need a "tiered" car, so once you make it to the next tier, you start with a new one.

For tier 3, which I just started, I chose to go with "The King" - a Plymouth Superbird. It's still pretty rusty, although some body work has been done already.

I got sidetracked by a special event - pickups - so the cash went there for now.

Money Traps

Given the theme of this blog, and the fact that we're talking about free-to-play games here, of course there's the "meta-game" of the developers trying everything in their might to part us from some real-world cash.

For the basics, we've got the "dual currency" trope - we've got cash, which you earn by racing or buy directly, and we've got "gold", which is much harder to come by "naturally". As usual, there are many silly ways how you can spend gold, and only very few that make sense.

There's quite a range of cars that can only be bought with gold. All "loved" cars require gold expense. But there's a decent range of cars through all tiers that can be bought for cash - and we're not talking "two-weeks-of-severe-farming" kind of cash, but very reasonable.

On the high-pressure / psy-ops front, there is a whole range of things I've seen so far.

• "once-in-a-lifetime-offer" : the "agent" character (who we appear to be romantically involved with) regularly pops up with these, giving gold discounts of about 75% on certain cars
• "miss-out" button : The cancel button on all special offers is lovingly called "miss out". Hint, hint.
• "you-need-superpowers-to-get-the-prize" : after you've made it through a free section of a certain race type, you need to start investing gold towards an often vaguely-defined "big prize". Or "miss out".
• "wait-time corruption" : you can speed up delivery of stuff by paying gold.

And a range more. All in all, it's pretty unsubtle, in-your-face-give-me-money. But somehow endearing in its directness, and fair in its limitations so far.

Conclusion

It's a fun little game, with not much of a skill challenge, but very beautiful retro style. Doesn't take much of your time, and has a nice collector trigger. I'll be playing this one for a bit more, and add some strategies etc.

Lunar New Year Event - Aftermath

Hi folks!

The Lunar New Year event has ended. I've been playing quite diligently, making as much use as possible of the free tickets, just to see how far that would get me, and what would be required to complete it.

In the end, I made it quite far, but didn't complete the final run. Here's where I left off.

The Car

From all "red envelopes", I ended up getting blueprints once (that's where the 2 extra come from). Still, I'm 8 short of six stars, and probably another 25 short of a full upgrade.

Since they sell in packs of five, I'd need 35 or seven packs, at a price of 250 gold each, leading to an all-in-all investment of 1750 gold for the blueprints alone (that's more than a monthly gold card would yield).

The remaining races

I actually came pretty close, but would have needed 11 PR points more to even fulfill the requirements for the final race. That's probably 15 tickets worth of farm racing, at 80 gold per 5, adding another 240 gold to the tally of almost 2000 gold. 

The more expensive option would have been to buy out the remaining races, which would have probably cost more than 500 gold in total (guessing here).

All that for a car that is probably at par with the Mercedes AMG, I don't think that's worth it for me at this stage. Note that they're selling the themed AMG for 50 USD real world money at the store, which I think is absolutely outlandish - you can buy whole games for that price.

Anyway, it was a fun event, with challenging races (bloody aura gates, I'm telling ya), but in the end, not worth investing huge amounts of gold in.

I'm back to maxing out my in-game Mercedes AMG, then aiming for the hyper cars in story mode next.

Lunar New Year Event

Hi folks!

A new event started yesterday, in time for the Chinese / Lunar New Year (of the Monkey). I can't quite make out what it's called, but here's what I've seen so far on the event structure.

Prize

The event car we're racing for here is a Jaguar F-Type. It started out as a three-star with uncommon parts and a PR of around 570, if I remember correctly. I'd say that classifies it as a "sports class", around the BMW M4, but below the Nissan GT-R, for example.

Event currencies

Usually, events have their own special currency and "prototype" parts, which convert into regular items afterwards. In this one, the system is a bit more complicated.

While we have an event currency, you don't actually earn it directly from racing. Instead, racing yields "aura", which can be traded for a "red pack" at the price of 60000 aura points. The red pack contains materials, event cash, and (allegedly) blueprints.

The "aura" points accumulate a lot faster than regular cash rewards (I'd say at a 10x rate), so this isn't actually bad value.

There is, of course, the regular event market, where items can be bought for event cash and gold.

Races

The races are surprisingly difficult - I had to re-run some on the first day. This is mainly due to the colour scheme - we've got night races with a dark-red scheme overlayed, so visibility is absolutely minimal. 

In addition to that, there's a new special "obstacle" element - "aura gates". A small section of the track is "open" (about one third), the rest is blocked by a red screen. Hitting the gate gives a nitro refill, hitting the red block screen causes car damage and significant slowdown (similar to a collision).

This makes drifting almost impossible when it occurs, since the gates are on the "ideal" track, so the inner lines in curves, and drifting doesn't give you enough control to keep it tight.

Also, the AI players are obviously on that lane as well, so it gets very crowded very quickly, even on tracks that would normally classify as easy.

Money traps

Here we've got the usual suspects. Car parts and blueprints in the market cost gold, with blueprints trading at a fair 50G per piece (250G for 5). Race skip prices are fair as well so far, but expect them to increase sharply in later levels.

You can get the "red packs" for gold, if you're lacking the aura points, as well.

Strategy

All in all, I'm not overly excited about the Jaguar. There are better cars in the regular game that can be built up without too much effort, like the BMW M4. 

The difficulty seems steep, encouraging buy-outs. As for blueprints, the race series yield 10 (15 for the last). With a requirement of 15 to get to stage 4, I think we'll be ending up at stage 6, short 25 for the full upgrade. I haven't seen any so far in the "red packs", so I wouldn't bet on gold-buying those. If you're after this car, and have the gold stashed, best value is going to be buying in the event market.

Repeat races can give event cash directly, which is valuable, and the aura points add up quickly, so I can definitely recommend doing as many repeats as you can. Tickets have a 30m refill rate, so there should be a fair bit of space, especially in the beginning.