Rather tellingly, the Store entry for this game is in the 'Racing and flying' category - there is indeed a flying element, with a huge ramp at some point in each circuit, and you get extra points for 'good flying' - no, really!
Here's City Racing 3D in action:
The basics of any freemium driving game are here - start with a basic car and work your way up to better ones, race by race - though progress is rather dominated by pressure to pay to upgrade in order to improve faster.
The cities modelled are very impressive - plenty of effort from the production department of this cross-platform game....
Racing is strictly arcade style, with only a loose connection between your steering inputs and what happens to your modelled car on the road(!) Think left and right course corrections every now and then and little need to think about racing line or car weight and feel.... The on-screen controls are for 'nitro' acceleration (yes, you have to drive through glowing icons in order to pick these up) and for braking, the latter only really helping you power slide rather than actually needing to brake at any point.
When in 'nitro' mode, you pick up a little acceleration and then extra speed, accompanied by a little blurring of the surroundings as things whizz by faster.... Note, by the way, the oncoming traffic on the right side of the road - an extra hazard!!
I'm not sure that a dangerous pass should be rewarded! But bit by bit you pick up coins...
Like Real Racing, you also get to upgrade your car bit by bit, trying to get to the point where it's competitive...
But everything needs coins or (as here) diamonds. Or both. And each can cost up to $100 if you're not careful. Add in some options 'car gifts' and this is all adding up to a nice little..... earner for the developers. Pop-up ads for new cars and features also infest City Racing 3D and more than once I found myself tapping through accidentally to a big real world purchase and was glad I had a PIN set up to protect myself from err... myself!
Approaching a full width ramp and about to fly! As far as I can tell, there are no 'tricks' requirements - it's err... flying for flying's sake....
A look at the full freemium interface, in terms of collecting coins and diamonds, in order to buy, repair, enhance, and so on.
The combination of 'daily check-ins', rewards, and so on, can be managed in order to play for free, or at least inexpensively, should you feel the core game is worth it. Sadly, the core game is so far down the arcade line that it's easy to get bored, in terms of lack of challenge - skill isn't the way to progress here, time and money are, which is NOT really how a car racing game should play out. Ah well.
You can download City Racing 3D here in the Store. Comments?