Two years after its promising early access release, Gameloft’s free-to-play Disney and Pixar-themed kart racer (Disney Speedstorm) has managed to maintain interest and acquire a decent player base.
It’s AAA quality on the track, packed full of content and based around a simple and enjoyable gameplay loop: race, win, collect loot, upgrade and purchase, then race again. Online or solo, it’s fundamentally just as polished as Mario Kart World, just not limited to Nintendo platforms. Let’s be clear, it’s not quite as convincing a package, but considering it’s free to play, it’s a very attractive download. With a few caveats…
The core driving hasn’t changed dramatically over these two years, and it’s mega-easy to pick up. The right trigger accelerates, and there’s no need to brake. Instead, the left trigger makes you drift, earning you boost as you slide.
It feels like these drifts have been nerfed a little since launch, so that the longer you hold a slide, the slower your kart goes. You can’t just slide everywhere and gain near-infinite boost. Then you’ve got a weapon or ‘skill’ button which fires a weapon forward or backwards, just like Mario Kart, and can also be held down for a stronger effect.
Races are short, usually only one or two laps, and no races last longer than five minutes, which makes for a dangerous ‘one more go’ factor, like putting another coin in an old arcade game. And like the best arcade racers, it really does give you everything in that brief race time.
Sound and vision
By ‘everything’, I mean an absolute barrage of sonic and visual chaos. The soundtrack feels like being at a Disney-themed carnival when you’ve had wayyyyy too much candy floss and soda, combining classic Disney tunes and vintage vocal samples with thumping, pulsing, synth-soaked, Ibiza anthem-style dance music.
It sounds like a fever dream looks, but somehow I really like it. But then there’s the visual complexity. On PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2 (docked) or even Steam Deck, the game looks absolutely stunning, with highlights including tracks that dip in and out of idealised seascapes, the dash between pirate ships trading cannonball fire over your head, and emerging from Elsa’s ice palace to look out across the Frozen landscape.
Many tracks feature rollercoaster, Hot Wheels-esque banked curves and huge jumps as you choose between heading for booster pads or weapon pick-ups. It’s bewildering, breathless stuff and will leave you either entranced or just not able to stomach it.
But if the racing action is an assault on your senses, so too is the emphasis on loot. You’ll spend just as much time in the menus and shop as you will on the track, as the game wants you to become not merely ‘engaged with’ but basically saturated by its fetish for loot drops.
The way the game economy is set up is needlessly complex. Character gear, karts, mods, upgrades, perks, new racers and various currencies are all drip-fed to you, with the unlocking greatly accelerated if you pay real money.
Racers and crew cards are unlocked with ‘shards’, which you collect in post-race loot drops or from loot crates, adding up until you get to use them. You can then level up racers to a maximum level of 50, and races all come with a suggested character level, so you’ll know whether you’re in for an easy ride, a decent challenge or a simply impossible task.
Horse Amour
Now, while free-to-play games rely on microtransactions, there’s nothing micro about the prices here, which is the biggest bone of contention among the community. If you want a character like Snow White, you can unlock her and have her maxed out at level 50… for £49.99.
That’s pretty much the price of a full game. You might get a 50 per cent off flash sale and be able to buy Rapunzel at Level 1 for around £15, or you can max out any character you like for £39.99.
It’s all very, very expensive, and there’s no way at present to just buy everything for a one-off fee. You’ve either got to grind, wait for special shop items you can afford, or simply spend loads of money. And some content isn’t even available all the time, even if you can afford it.
And with the shop changing not just daily but hourly too in some sections, as well as daily calendar loot to collect or miss forever, the game insists you pay frequent, close attention. It could consume your life.
Further still, the early access version started off with special coins that unlocked a new season, only now there’s the chance to spend two of these ultra-rare coins at once to unlock a ‘Diamond Pass’. This gives you exclusive unlocks like Lotso from the current Toy Story season. You can also max out one character from a shortlist of about four with the Diamond Pass.
Then there are vault passes where you can reactivate a missed season for £6.49, or get 15 tiers’ worth of loot for £12.99. That’s great if you really love one particular Disney IP like The Nightmare before Christmas, as you may well be able to justify spending £6.49 solely play as Jack Skellington, but considering there are by this point 13 different Disney worlds to peruse (everything from Lilo & Stitch and Wreck-It-Ralph to Pirates of the Caribbean and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit), things have the potential to get get very expensive very quickly.
(Almost) always online
While you can play solo, the game needs to connect to the server for your progression, so you will need an internet connection, unless you want to just play offline multiplayer on the 21 tracks released so far.
The online multiplayer element requires PlayStation Plus or Xbox Live subscriptions etc, but is great fun when you’re up against players of similar skill. However, with the irksome ‘pay to win’ possibilities and many half-full lobbies, even with impressive cross-platform play, it can get unbalanced.
The game will artificially limit character levels to give everyone a fighting chance, but even so you will often see some gamers just vanish into the distance on the first straight because they’ve got a maxed-out character and team sheet of awesome perks. When that happens, it just isn’t as fun. But when you’re winning by a few centimetres? It’s a thrilling and addictive online experience.
One final thing to note is that the game is available on pretty much everything right now, from iOS and Android through PC and Steam Deck, the current Sony and Microsoft consoles and even Switch and Switch 2. There has been a dedicated Switch 2 update, which looks fantastic when docked, but doesn’t look as good as the Steam Deck version in handheld mode. By a long distance, as it happens.
With many of the post-processing effects absent, presumably to keep the battery life up, the result is a cleaner, less flashy game. But it actually looks rather lovely on a Switch Lite, despite running at 30fps. The worst version I’ve played is the 30fps PS4 version on a 55-inch TV, but even that plays just fine.
Let it go
Disney Speedstorm has carved its own rather unique niche in the kart racer market, providing a beautiful and frantic online-enabled racing experience, letting the more flush-feeling fans hoover up everything related to their favourite Disney and Pixar franchises.
Stripped of the loot and sold as a £50 kart racer, it would likely rival Mario Kart in the charts, but it’s just not set up that way. Despite its crazy prices and balancing issues, it’s still incredibly playable. And when everyone gets Mickey Mouse plus another character like Mulan for free, you don’t actually need to pay anything to enjoy it.
And as a barmy, jacked-up ‘Let It Go’ pumps from that crazy soundtrack, I can’t help but think the fun is the winner here. To paraphrase Elsa: The loot never bothered me anyway.
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