Real Reacing 3:- A Journalistic review

I'm sure I'm not alone when I say this but since the dawn of iPhones and Android phones we as sim racers have longed for a realistic racing game with licensed cars, tracks and good physics to replace those 2D bike racers which sound like a hedge trimmer on concrete! This is where EA come in with their new FREE title Real Racing 3. Now EA have been making racing games for years, they've had the F1 license in the past and of course their baby Need For Speed is now a household name but could they conquer the phone market?


 CONTENT:- Before we even touch on the gameplay lets just take into account how much content this game has. 45 cars (at the time of release) with more being added, 22 car grids, tracks like Spa, Laguna Seca, Silverstone and Hockenheim with countless variations. The cars feature manufacturers such as Porsche, Audi,Lamborghini, Dodge and Bugatti. For a FREE game that is an incredible list. With cars like the R8 LMS Ultra GT3, if they decided to add a custom mode where you can set the stipulation of a race which doesn't count towards your career, you could potentially make a little endurance GT series!


 GAMEPLAY:- The game represents the kind of career mode that Forza has with multiple different series and progressing your driver level in order to unlock the cars to compete in them. The higher your rank the harder the challenges, the faster the cars and the quicker the AI. It's a rewarding method to say the least. Upgrading your cars and buying new ones with the money you earn in game or money you put into the game (Come on it's EA, there were always going to be micro transactions) does encourage you to play on and unlock even more. Now this is all great but it's been done countless times before except not on a phone and not free to play. So what makes this stand out and why am I so addicted to it?
                 The answer,Time Shifted Multiplayer. Now what's that you all sit there stunned by EA confusing out minds with big words. Essentially what it enables you to do is connect the game to your Facebook account and race your friends. But not in the traditional way, instead your friends take the form of AI opponents that you race against based on their strength. So if your friend completed an event and his best time was a 1:39:00, his AI in your game would represent that pace. This alone makes it SO competitive. There is nothing more rewarding than slamming your best friends time by a good few tenths of a second and then him coming back to beat it by a few hundredths.
                Not only do you get money for every event you do which is handy for these friend wars but the events can be replayed meaning that you and your friend can be battling for the fastest time all night long and earning credits to spend.
        The only downside I could think of whilst playing this is having to repair or service your car after every race, it's nowhere near as damaging as you level up but to start with if you earn $1000, a good $300 will be spent on repairing the windscreen yo
u smashed in by hitting one of the AI cars. Servicing is a bit of a pain but a realistic pain as the parts will wear down the more you use them. Servicing gets them back to peak performance at a cost and a period of time. You can speed this up using some of the tokens (separate to credits) but these are harder to come by and I would much rather wait and spend them on a new car. But the money is easy to earn and you wont be spending hours upon hours trying to earn enough to put new parts on the car.
     The AI do seem to be very basic, not in the fact that they're slow, but in the fact that they will just not move off of their racing line. They do overtake eachother but they have no spacial awareness of you whatsoever. But as the game goes on this does improve and it does feel like a simcade racing game. Another example of the hybrid genre would be the Grid series or the F1 series. Taking the best of both Arcade and Simulation and putting them in a blender.


 CONTROLS:- I was honestly quite surprised by how good the gameplay was. Utilizing the classic tilt motion control you assume it's a beautiful game with an awful control scheme. BUT EA threw a curve ball. By allowing you to remove the braking assists and throttle assists as well as Automatic gears it actually makes the game rather exciting. You could easily buy a specialised pad for your phone and use that with no issue at all. The handling is smooth and the touch pedals are very responsive.
   It also has many different options so you can customise it to your liking. If you want all the assists off then you can do that or you can race with minimal assists. The sort of options menu you would expect to see in a Forza game.


 GRAPHICS:- Possibly the best graphics I have EVER seen on a mobile phone. 3 years ago I would never have thought a game this good could be played on a phone. It looks simply beautiful. It will look a lot better on tablets and iPads but for a Samsung Galaxy S2 it looks great. Crisp, clear and smooth. It does suffer a little from frame loss especially when you go into Eau Rouge at Spa for instance but that's due to having to process so much at one time.


 SCORE:- Overall this is a MUST for any racing fan. If you like F1 or BTCC or even NASCAR you will still find something to love about this. The TSM works fantastically and it's visually stunning. The best part is that this game is free! It's not a pay to win despite the option for micro transactions and it really does take hours out of your social life. Performance will vary depending on your phone but it's free you're not going to lose anything!
 Graphics- 9/10
 Physics- 8/10
 Gameplay- 8/10
Content- 9/10
Sound- 7.5/10
 OVERALL- 8/10