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'Forever Drive' Implores Players To Keep On Rolling

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There is a simple appeal in hitting the highway and driving wherever the road take you. Forever Drive, a freemium racer from Supermono Studios, is a game built around that appeal. There are an unlimited number of tracks available in the game, all user-generated in the in-game build mode. Tracks connect seamlessly and randomly to one another, providing an ever-changing virtual highway for the player to traverse.

The game is structured like old arcade racing games, such as Daytona USA, where you have to reach a checkpoint before your time runs out or your game is over. The time limit seems to contradict the game’s title; rather than the player being simply entitled to a “Forever Drive”, he or she has to earn the right to drive forever by turning good corners and avoiding mistakes while maintaining speed. Otherwise, time will run out.

The game handles much like an arcade game. The driving physics are unrealistic and exhilarating, with your car powersliding through every turn as if you’re delivering tofu (wink at fans of the racing anime Initial D). There are four different control setting, three that utilize on screen virtual controls and one that uses the accelerometer to control steering. I found the D-pad option the most comfortable to use, whereas the tilt and analog options were a bit too sensitive for my liking. The control does feel a bit slippery at times, and the player will have to contend with the car’s shifting momentum to avoid collisions with either other vehicles or the track’s boundaries. Still, the sense of speed, along with fun drifting, presents a highly entertaining facsimile of driving. Scoring in Forever Drive is predicated on avoiding collisions. One, building your combo multiplier by passing other vehicles is the way to high scores in the game. Collisions of any sort causes you to lose your combo. Two, collisions slows your car down. Speed is of the utmost importance if you want to reach each checkpoint and keep on driving. Take enough hits on your speed and your run will surely come to an end. Additional points are available via pick-ups on the road in the form of stars and points strips along curves. The player will be constantly bobbing and weaving along the road in the pursuit of high scores. Forever Drive looks great. The cars and backgrounds are rendered with low poly-counts, but the minimalistic future theme fits well with the smooth models. The neon glow accompanying most of the textures brings to mind the movie Tron. The dim lighting gives off the vibe of perpetual night, and the background visuals will have you thinking that you’re driving inside the circuitry of a computer, another hint at Tron. The whole package oozes style, and the upbeat electro-rock soundtrack compliments that style well. Like many other games currently on the App Store, there is a steady progression of upgrades available to the player throughout the game. At the end of each run, points earned are converted into XP, or experience points. Gaining levels unlocks new car models, paint jobs, vanity license plates, and new structures with which to augment your custom tracks. The presence of experience points provides a reliable hook for players to keep driving. Here the freemium aspect of Forever Drive rears its head. Credits are available as in-app purchases, and when activated, it turns your next run into a “Super XP” run in which your points are given a 10x multiplier. Initially, three free credits available to the player. When using these credits, level progression quickens by, well, ten times. There is risk and reward factor though, because you wouldn’t want to blow a credit on a low-scoring run. The flow of progression in the game does hit a wall once the player reaches level 6 or so. From that point on, it could take over a dozen runs in Cruise mode to gain the requisite experience points to reach the next level. As you watch the experience bar grow a millimeter at a time, you can see yourself biting the bullet and resort to buying credits to assuage the gruelling grind. By level 8, I have already given up the hopes of unlocking better cars through merely playing and not paying. The best car models in the game are nigh unreachable for the average iOS gamer. The second-best car model requires you to reach level 30 to unlock. That’s hours upon hours of driving, or at least a few bucks worth of credit. The ultimate car, in the game, the Moebius F-Z, is unlockable from the get-go; you’ll have to pay 99¢ for it. If there’s any purchase I’d recommend in the game, it is this one. By having the best car in the game you can cut down on the future grind, for you will be racking up higher scores that you can ever hope for in your initial feeble P500. We’ve seen in other App Store games where in-app purchases can speed along the player’s progression of the game. In Forever Drive, the utilization of IAP is nearly required if you want to see all the content (namely newer and faster cars) the game has to offer. Be that as it may, the free content offered up in Forever Drive provides a solid pick-up-and-play experience if and when you ever feel the itch to hit the highway. Just know that there are tolls along the way. AppPicker Rating: 3 / 5 Stars Pick It Up in the App Store: Forever Drive Other apply by Supermono Studios 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYCMGa5x5oA&feature=player_detailpage

   

Forever Drive

Free

Forever Drive

Free

Forever Drive

Free
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