World Of Speed Preview

Another game coming from the My.com stable of ‘free to play’ titles is World Of Speed, a racing game under development by Slightly Mad Studios, the same developers that are currently developing Project Cars. We have all played racing games through the years and they remain a firm favourite among the gaming community, and ‘free to play’ racing games offer little in the way of satisfaction to the connoisseurs among us. Many of them are just point to point racers with no customisations, little in the way of objectives and even less choice in the way of cars. World Of Speed is looking to change all that, and bring gamers a true racing game that fans of the genre will be drooling over, while newcomers won’t believe it’s free. We were able to get some playtime with World Of Speed recently and were able to test out a number of cars over a track based in Russia. World Of Speed is continually announcing and adding new cars to be featured in the game and as I was told, will continue to evolve the experience for players around the world by bringing them more iconic cars and tracks.

On the day we were introduced to a team based race, with 4 players split up into 2 teams. At the end of each race the system was continually mixing us up, so the teams stayed fresh and no one team continually had the advantage over the other. World Of Speed is different from any racer you may have played previously, it has a very arcade feel to it that makes it fun and exciting, but is not all about coming first over the finish line. At the start of each race the teams are given a number of objectives to complete during the race, for example, spend so many seconds drafting behind an opponent, or perform so many dirty overtakes. These objectives add points to your team score and the team with the highest points wins the race, so for you players out there that like to have the fastest car and speed off ahead of the posse coming first over the line, you may well lose the race for your team in doing so. You have to bide your time, complete the objectives and communicate with your teammate in order to win constantly. Staying on the racing line is another good way of racking up those points for your team, so if you are a good driver this is one way your team will have the advantage, while drifting and pulling off spectacular corners will also see you rewarded. While most racing games will reward you for clean driving, World Of Speed can also have you playing downright dirty, with objectives like running your opponents off the track a number of times, or performing some questionable overtakes and this added some very exciting moments to the game as you all try and ram each other in order to rack up those all important team points. While there were only five cars available to us on the day each one handled differently and required a different play style in order to get the most out of it. An example of this was that the bigger engine cars were much easier to drift with, while the more conventional motors were more stable on the track allowing you to stick to the racing line easier, but with a combination of both on a team, it was not long before the points started to mount up.

All of the cars that will be available in World Of Speed will be customisable to suit your play style, and you will be able to tweak many of the settings such as suspension and so on. While My.com and Slightly Mad Studios are committed to bringing a true racing game to the free to play market, again they stressed how important it is for them not to employ a pay-to-win system and want to keep the experience as open and accessible as possible for everyone to play and enjoy. World Of Speed will also have many other features and game modes for you to enjoy other than the one we were able to play on the day, so don’t be put off if team racing is not your thing. The game will also feature dynamic track conditions where weather and time of day will play a major part in how your car performs on the track. Although we were not able to experience these weather conditions on the day, I was assured that they will affect your handling tremendously with wet tracks making it extremely slippery.

I have to be honest and say that ‘free to play’ games have never been much of an interest to me, mainly because they deliver little in the way of quality and less in the way of proper gameplay, with most of them having little or no depth to them. This opinion I have nurtured towards this market is definitely changing due mainly to the quality My.com is trying to deliver to gamers from various developers. I have played many racing games and continue to play games such as Forza and Grid Autosport, but World Of Speed is the first ‘free to play’ racing title that has shown me another alternative. It has fast fun action coupled with the quality and functions of any AAA title I have played to date. For me World Of Speed was like a fish taking the bait, I didn’t know I was hooked until I tried to get up and walk away from it, slowly reeling me back in for another go. I can’t wait for this title to go into open beta, and if you are interested in finding out more or signing up for the beta you can do that here