Review - Disney Speedstorm
All the Gacha, none of the Charm
Available on: Nintendo Switch | PC | PlayStation (4/5) | Xbox One/Series X |
Metacritic: Nintendo Switch | PC | PlayStation 5 | Xbox Series X
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When a friend of mine suggested I review the kart racer Disney Speedstorm, I was dragged back to the time I saw a trailer for it at some game presentation (probably the game awards) and all I could remember was this edgy kart racer that looked vaguely Sonic Racing-esque but actually seemed kind of decent. So, feeling particularly churlish, my head was immediately in the zone of "edgy Disney," which calls to mind Kingdom Hearts. That's not a good thing. I don't really like "edgy Disney."
So, I should also be clear for those that don't know me: I really like kart racing games. I'm also pretty damn good at them. I've been playing them since Super Mario Kart came out on the SNES, and I never stopped playing them. So, as you might expect, I know what I'm talking about and what to expect. I'm very well-read on what kind of shenanigans the CPU might try to keep the race interesting - things like rubber banding CPUs, item distribution depending on how far ahead you are, and weird other quirks that usually don't matter too much. Kart racers are seen as both fun and aggravating at the same time. Players aren't meant to win all the time; it's just the nature of the karting beast. Sometimes "item luck" will just screw you. There have always been invisible forces at play that make it feel like you are getting dunked on by the CPU. More often than not, though, you can overcome the debaucherous sadism of the computer just by being consistent and smart with your racing.
Disney Speedstorm is what happens when you let the CPU have a drunk night off, let it dress up as a mobile gacha game, and it stops really caring about what makes kart racing fun. I feel like there is something inherently wrong with this game, and I still can't quite put my finger on it. I'm not sure if the CPU wants me to win or if it wants me to spend more money on rolling gacha items so that I have to level up one of the fixed characters I have to race as. It feels like I'm playing something, but it's a soulless endeavor that's designed to scrape as much money out of its victims as possible. Keep in mind also that I spent the asking price of this game ($30) to play it, so why am I being asked to pay for MORE stuff so that I can upgrade my characters? Well, that's because it's a mobile gacha game!
If you've somehow managed to avoid playing a mobile phone gacha game, allow me to paint a picture for you: you start playing the game and get introduced to a variety of different currencies that allow you to unlock various things in the game. These can range from character outfits and car equipables that have no benefit to pieces that help improve your favorite character. The parts you get are selected at random when you open a gift box that you buy, kind of like opening a pack of collectible Pokemon cards.
Speedstorm treads the familiar ground that I've come to expect from such games: you start off easy and light, crushing through all obstacles and feeling like it's easing you into the water and letting you get comfortable, and then it starts throwing all these things at you to use to upgrade your character as things get tough. Eventually, you hit a brick wall. The game feels suddenly insurmountable unless you patiently wait the day to play again and get the things you need to bust through. Rinse, repeat. The gameplay loop is that you find a wall, and you need the resources to climb that wall. Your skill is not required here.
What is shocking to me is the quantity of different currencies and upgrades for each character. Each character can be upgraded in three different ways. First, you have the "ranks" for each character. You have to get "shards" to unlock higher ranks, and they're pretty hard to come by, it seems. Each character can go up to 5 ranks, and the ranks increase the quality of the items you use on the track.
Second, there's the "level" for each character. You upgrade this by accumulating parts from racing one of the many challenge packs you get. The main issue with accumulating all of these parts is that some items are used for all characters, and some are entirely for specific characters. For example, if I choose to play as Belle, I need checked flags and some of her silk gloves to upgrade her. Each character has an independent item to upgrade their level.
Finally, you have a "pit crew" for each character - a stack of 4 extra upgrades that you assign to a character that are also specific to that character (or the series they come from). These all can be rolled for in a pack, and the only way to get better ones is to spend real money. They also come in different qualities, too, because of course they do.
The problem with tying all of this into a racing game is that you will eventually hit the brick wall because your kart simply does not go fast enough to keep up. It doesn't matter about careful driving or perfect usage of the boosting options; your kart simply does not keep up for one reason or another. If one car is going at a max speed of 100 mph, and the one behind it is going at a max speed of 95 mph, which car do you think is more likely to win? Speedstorm makes it explicitly clear that sometimes you are supposed to win because you simply have a better kart. If your kart is underleveled? Good luck.
It also doesn't really help that some resources used to level your character up are shared between all characters, and the challenge packs will FORCE you to use other characters at times. If you make the wrong choice to allocate those resources, well, now you're screwed until you can find other ways to acquire them. The most messed up thing about the leveling up process is that you can't even pick where to allocate the stats for your upgrade. Along with everything else, unless you spend time looking online for which character is the best, you might just end up with an overpowered potato rank racer.
The rest of the game itself feels surprisingly devoid of energy. It is a Disney product without any of the charm of Disney. It's such a weird thing to say, but the issue is that I find myself struggling to take in anything around me. It's surprisingly lifeless. There's no impact or anything, perhaps because I'm so focused on where I need to go that I only see corners that need to be taken, not any major landmarks that stand out. Even the most boring Mario Kart tracks have something to keep them visually interesting. Part of this problem comes from the fact that there are 12 tracks with four variants of each. I don't know why this was even necessary, but it feels like a cop-out that harms the game further. It feels like I'm driving through Disney-themed biomes rather than Disney worlds. There are a few standout moments, but overall, it just feels like I can't really take them in.
One of the most major problems I noticed, besides those mentioned, was the sheer lack of a time trial mode. I'm not really sure why they would skip out on such a necessary feature of a racing game. I guess it would just get in the way of all the other things you are expected to be using your time for with this game.
With all that said, there are some merits to this game that Gameloft should've capitalized on. Though the game is a bit ugly in its aesthetic, with everything looking surprisingly sharp and chiseled out of wood, the customization options the characters have are quite nice. More emphasis should have been placed on trying to dress the characters and cars up rather than just making the player feed time into navigating through one of the many menus trying to figure out what all the different currencies mean.
Though the levels themselves are pretty boring, there's no use even trying to deny that the music in this game is pretty great. Some entertaining remixes of the classic Disney songs are here, from the various stories they're associated with. The music is probably one of the most enjoyable elements of the game, and it at least draws you into the race a little bit more. Some tunes don't stand out particularly well, to the point that I'm still not sure what they're meant to be. But some of them have been mixed with a rock/techno blend, and they just work fantastically. A lot of love has definitely been put into the music, and it shows. You can easily go listen to it on YouTube if you search for it.
Gameplay-wise, the controls actually feel good. All the character stats do feel interesting, at least, but there's obviously some characters that are better than others. The mechanics of the boost are pretty sensible, and it feels like you have some decent control over things. You fill up your boost meter by drifting, doing tricks, hitting other players, or using certain items. When you fill your boost meter, you gain an increase in speed and can drive over terrain that would normally slow you down with no real speed penalty. This is where it pays to know where to use shortcuts or find places where it would be most advantageous to use them. I found that some characters, like speedsters, could actively burn and hold a boost for a fairly long time while drifting and maintaining longer boosts. Things like this felt like an interesting thing that you could spend time refining and mastering, which shows that there is some decent depth to this game, at least.
Weapons are also fairly interesting. There are only 5 items you can get, and they are completely random, rather than the usual "you only get bananas in first place." Some explanation on how they can be used comes up fairly early in the "starter pack" of missions. You can fire them forward and backward or charge them to modify how they work. The visual screw item you can fire at someone REALLY is a threat beyond anything I've seen in a kart racer, and I welcome it as one of the more interesting items in the game. Getting hit by it felt equal parts entertaining and devastating.
Aside from that, there's really not much else to praise about Disney Speedstorm. It feels like a mobile game shoved onto the PC. Browsing around, it seems that the game I'm playing now is a totally different beast compared to the game that once was. Things apparently changed at some point, and Gameloft just started going heavy with restricting all the things that helped with progression. I found that it quickly started to feel like a mobile gacha game, and I felt deeply repulsed by that. I feel like this game is being propped up as something more like a 30-minute chill game that you could play on a break or when you can find a little downtime. Deep down, at its most basic level, if you approach this game with an almost carefree and casual mindset, then, yes, there is something that can be enjoyed here. Once this game becomes a free-to-play experience, it'll probably have a more active playerbase to go along with it. But I personally, as a karting gaming fan, find this to be an offensive experience as it is now.
If I must recommend Disney Speedstorm to someone, it would be the person just looking for something fun to play with a few friends, grind through the "starter pack", get regulation mode, and play that. It might be fun to someone who just likes to sit and grind away at things and enjoy a kart racer game that lets you build up characters you like.