A speedy racing game that drifts between Mario Kart and Forza - Ace Racer Quick Review

PLAY IT OR SKIP IT?

Play it if you love arcade racing games but prefer (mostly) real cars to the cartoony stuff. Just be warned that this is a full gacha-style free-to-play game, so actually finding your perfect car might be a bit of a process. Thankfully, the gameplay in Ace Racer is fast, tightly designed, and rather unique compared to other mobile titles. It finds a middle ground between the semi-realism of games like Forza and the over-the-top antics of racers like Mario Kart, and presents it in such a way that even casual racing fans should be able to enjoy it.

TIME PLAYED

I played five hours of Ace Racer both prior to and after its official launch. In that time I was able to play through a number of the career race events, engage with the game’s multiple event, battle pass, and monetization systems, and start building my collection of superfast cars.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• Smartly simplified gameplay. Rather than try to build a full, complex racing game and make it work on mobile phones—something I’ve seen attempted and failed many times before—Ace Racer pulls back and creates a simpler formula that just works better on tiny screens. Acceleration is handled automatically, and all I had to worry about was turning, using boosts, and tapping the “drift” button to zoom around corners. Hardcore racing games can be intimidating, but Ace Racer should be approachable for almost anyone.

• Blending arcade and simulation gameplay. On the sim side, Ace Racer has a huge roster of real superfast cars, such as the Aston Martin Vanquish and the Porche 911 GT2 RS. These exist alongside a number of fictional vehicles, but it should be enough to make the gearheads in the audience happy.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Ace Racer embraces the more arcade style of racing with a focus on insane levels of speed and absurd, over-the-top tracks that look like they were pulled right out of Mario Kart. Speed boost strips are spread liberally throughout each track, and cars can get ridiculous air off of hills or bumps. Plus, there’s a mechanic that allows players to boost when coming out of said jumps, so I was rewarded for pulling off stuff that looked crazy.

• Lots to do. Despite just launching, Ace Racer has a ton of content available already: more than a hundred cars to collect, each of which can be leveled up individually and has its own proficiency quests; a scary deep system for upgrading the overall stats of cars; a single-player career mode; ranked multiplayer; team racing to master; and dozens of courses to race already. If you’re into what Ace Racer is offering, it’ll keep you busy for a long time to come.

• Visuals without sacrificing performance. Racing games are traditionally some of the best-looking games on any platform. While Ace Racer may not compare with something like Forza Horizon 5, it absolutely looks better than ninety-nine percent of the games I’ve played on my phone. And best of all, it looks that good while still running smooth. I didn’t experience any noticeable slowdown or lag while playing on my Galaxy S21 Ultra.

WHAT SUCKS

• Gacha. Your mileage may vary based on your stomach for gacha antics. For my part, I’ve been known to get pretty into some gacha games, but I am not a huge fan of it in this particular genre. Part of the joy of a great racing game is setting a goal to get my favorite vehicle and get it tuned up how I want it. Because finding both new vehicles and upgrade parts depends on opening gacha crates in Ace Racer, a lot of those goals are left up to randomness rather than skill, planning, or even just simple grinding.

• All the other normal free-to-play annoyances. Even if you don’t spend a cent in Ace Racer, you can have fun—I certainly did!—but no matter what, the game will inundate you with notifications, live events, special gacha pulls, limited time offers, daily quests, battle passes, etc. etc. etc. The only usual free-to-play monetization path I didn’t encounter was watching ads, and it’s possible I just missed it somehow. All of this is to be expected with a free-to-play title, but just be warned if those tricks annoy you.

💬 Will you be taking Ace Racer for a test drive on your phone, or is this one you’ll be skipping? Share your thoughts in a comment below!