Fast And Furious: Legacy - First Impressions

I've been looking forward to the next instalment of Need For Speed which goes by the name of No Limits. Developed by Firemonkeys, the same team behind Real Racing 3, it is set to be released later this year, even though it has already had a soft launch in some territories. As I was browsing the Google Play store, I stumbled upon a new free-to-play game called Fast And Furious: Legacy, launched ahead of the seventh movie in the Fast And Furious franchise which I imagined would be like NFS: No Limits, an arcade street racing game, so I gave it a try to see if it lived up to my expectations.

The first thing that caught my eye was the impressive graphics previewed by the screenshots. The cars shown looked impressive, but I knew the game would be laden with in-app purchases so I didn't take much notice of them. After a lengthy loading screen (you get a number of those), I was placed into the driver's seat of a modified Nissan GT-R. 'Driver's seat' is a relative term at this point because I was disappointed to find out the game has tap-to-steer dynamics for street races so you have almost no control of the car, you just decide which lane it should take. Clearly not a driving game then.

I was then put in some more full-throttle action in a Ford Mustang; the idea of braking doesn't exist in Fast and Furious Legacy. Tearing through the streets, you tap your way to avoid traffic, the police and takedown the AI in some instances. There is more involvement with drag racing where you have to shift your gears and drift mode which I will talk more about a little later on. The former reminds me of the CSR games but there nothing innovative to be found in Fast and Furious Legacy.

Then it was time for me to obtain my first car, which was a red Subaru BRZ. Given the other options were a Dodge Dart and Honda Civic, I personally found this the one to go for. I was put up against Roman in his sixties Camaro and thanks to a 13 point rating advantage, getting a win was light work.

In order to progress with story mode, I had to upgrade my car. The game has three currencies and performance mods use two of them, in-game cash and upgrade tokens. The other currency is the premium gold coins, used for speeding up the game and purchasing visual modifications. Prices for aesthetic mods are pretty high, so if you want to visually enhance your ride early on in the game, you need to hand over real cash. 

Controls for street races and drag events are easy to get used to, same can't be said for drifting. It involves sliding your finger across the screen and I've still yet to get the hang of it. It shouldn't hate on it because it is probably the only part of the game which requires skill but there is a lack of clarity on what exactly should be done to ace this mode.

So after a number of events, the oil in my Subaru needed changing (the limiting element) which takes a couple of hours, so I let my first impressions end there. Of course, you can speed up the process by using the premium currency or one of the 'speed-up' tokens obtained through a gift. I was disappointed to discover Fast And Furious Legacy was not a proper driving game but the game has great visuals and the simplicity of the controls should make this an easy game for any mobile gamer to pick up and play.