Quick Review: Disney Speedstorm

Ready your wallets – I mean, your wheels – because you’re gonna be spending – I mean speeding – through the long, hard cash – I mean tracks – of the Disney universe!

I’m telling right off the bat what my review angle is gonna be, huh.

Mickey Mouse, ready to race! And leave everyone else
in his dust! (Unless you change to another racer!)

Disney Speedstorm is a creation of Gameloft released on April 18th, 2023. This free(mium) game is about Arbee, an A.I. that exists in an arcade and which has grown fond of many Disney properties (including Pixar and the Muppets). It decides to create a racing game of its own to bring all these heroes, villains, and other supporting characters in one place… where they can then put on modern racing gear, no matter which time period they’re from, and then duke it out on the racetracks. At time of writing, the game contains 131 characters from 39 universes, with the most recent additions in Season 21 being from Encanto.

I hadn't thought about it, but then I remembered I should
probably censor the usernames of other racers.

I’m playing on PC and keyboard, where W is to accelerate, A and D to go left and right, the left Shift key to make the car jump, and the Spacebar to drift. Taking a page from Mario Kart (then again, which mascot racer doesn’t?), racers can grab boxes on the track, obtaining items to help against the opponents; item skills can be activated with the Up or Down arrows, with some items having different effects depending on what you press (as an example, a bomb that you can toss forward to hit someone ahead, or drop behind you to hit someone getting too close; or flames that can either form a barrier around the racing car, or leave a fiery trail behind it). Racers can run over speed pads, which gives them a boost and fills a gauge at the top of the screen. When it’s full, you can press Crtl to activate a longer boost.

Race variants, team racing, solo racing, and so many events
going on at any moment. All to keep you lured in, right?

You can customize both the racers’ outfits and the karts. However, the more interesting aspect here is how you can level up the characters and give them stat increases through stars. All characters have their own “Racer Shards” (you need to collect 10 of a racer’s shards to unlock them) and start at 0 stars. When you have enough Shards for a racer and enough Tune Coins collected, you can spend some of both to make that racer gain a star fragment, five of which are needed for a whole star. With each fragment, that racer’s stats get small boosts – these can add up to make that character increasingly fearsome on the racetrack, but they get costly. After you’ve given a character a full star, they go up a rank, and you can give them crew members that give small stat bonuses during races as well. Crew members also have their own shards. Phew!

Look at this, he's in a racing game! He's wearing clothes!

The game plays great, looks amazing, and features high-energy remixes of famous Disney songs. The wide selection of characters is good (though unlocking them is a long, tedious, often luck-based process), and they all have their own special skills to unlock and use. And if you’re struggling to win races in Solo Mode, you can play in Team Mode instead, where you’ll be paired with two other players and your cumulative team score will determine whether you win or lose a race. Then of course there are plenty of season events to take part in, and many more sections, like the World Map and an Adventure Road (though in both cases, some levels require owning and/or using specific characters and being at specific racer levels), as well as a plethora of classic freemium stuff like daily missions, seasonal missions, a bit of free stuff every day, etc. You probably know the drill already.

I don't know about you, but I never expected to see all these
Disney characters in racing gear, which is very frequently
anachronistic to the time periods, or worlds, they come from!

You've got options: Either you pay huge amounts right
away, or spend small amounts multiple times.
That's not even 1/10th of the shop. Yikes.

Here’s the hard swerve. I did say “freemium”, right? Yeah, the game is free, but it’s probably the most egregious example of a freemium game that I’ve ever seen. I feel like I could get lost in that Shop, the one with the helpful reminder that many of its products cost real money and that all you’re buying is a license to play, not ownership of the product. Doesn’t help that the game has something like six different currencies! Season Coins, Tune Coins, Tokens (the main premium currency), Vanity Coins (almost exclusively for cosmetics), Box Credits and their deluxe variants, and, oh, I’m forgetting many more.

For the record, when you level up a character once when it
is at a low level, you receive only five (5) Tokens. See how
many you need for the Inside Out racers. Christ.

The Disney Speedstorm Shop has so many packs that cost real money that one wishing to buy them all would probably need to set aside a whole damn paycheck. To say nothing of all the various lootboxes that can be purchased with one in-game currency or another, and which still don’t guarantee that you’ll get what you want! (I get the rush of joy they give because I’ve had a TCG addiction for a long time, but the combo of high pricing and the unlikely chance of getting what you want… yeah, fuck that.) And then, there’s the packs that guarantee the unlocking of characters… And which, at the moment, can cost anywhere from 1530 to 2880 Tokens – which, in my version of the game, means spending 17 to 33$ to unlock ONE CHARACTER! and the only perk is that it’s a guaranteed unlock instead of having to wait around for all the required Racer Shards! That character will still start at the bottom of the ladder, and you’ll still need coins to upgrade them!

The "Check Content" tab helpfully informs you of the odds
under 1% to get either of the racer shard rewards for Moana
shown here. Have fun trying to unlock her. /s

The game is constantly and shamelessly pushing you to spend on it, to the point where it feels predatory. Is it what it felt like playing multiplayer games back when lootboxes were at their apex? Am I feeling what someone playing Star Wars: Battlefront 2 felt? I mean, like every freemium game out there, you can still get a decent amount of stuff without spending a dime… if you turn this game into your job from home and play several hours a day, that is. And it will take forever to perform as well as those who have sunk cash into this thing. Pay-to-win, right? I think it says a lot that the game’s player base tends to see any major changes Gameloft makes to Speedstorm’s system as just another way to siphon more cash out of them.

A hundred and sixty dollars? Fucking EXCUSE ME??

Alright, I guess my diatribe on Freemium is over. Should you get this game? Uhhhhhhhhh… Look, the racing is really fun, but the constant push towards making you spend all your cash is atrocious. You’ll feel like you can’t get good unless you pull out the wallet. You can enjoy the massive Disney crossover all you want, but I guarantee that the game’s “pay for everything” system will wear you down.

Awesome racing... but at what cost? At what cost???

sigh Disney Speedstorm is available on Steam for (raises hands and makes huge air quotes) “FFFRRREEEEEE”.