by Gameloft surely hopes that GT Racing 2’s flashy lighting and obsessively modeled licensed cars will make it stand out from — or at least keep pace with — a recent surge of App Store racing sims, notably genre leader Real Racing 3. Lens flares and dust effects are well and good, but GT Racing 2’s visual fidelity threatens to overshadow its real strength: as free-to-play racers go, it’s got great controls.
GT Racing 2 doesn’t reinvent the iOS racing control scheme, but it executes it better than most of its competitors. The tilt controls in particular have a nice sense of weight and nuance that makes rounding the Laguna Seca’s corkscrew turns a pleasure — complimented, no doubt, by the game’s visuals and physics. For those more comfortable with virtual buttons, GT Racing 2 is highly tweakable through a variety of sensitivity options and automated assists. Neophyte drivers can also turn on “Perfect Line,” an overlay that shows the best angles and speeds for each hairpin or switchback. If nothing else, GT Racing 2 mercifully takes some of the guesswork out of a traditionally clinical and rigid genre, freeing you up to thrill at high-speed chases instead of spinning out in the gravel.
Unlike other freemium racers on the App Store, GT Racing 2 does away with repair costs as the primary driver of in-app purchases. There are no penalties for careening into other racers or taking corners a bit too sharply. Instead, timers are put on the game’s upgrade system: your Alfa Romeo’s first set of new brakes may only take three minutes to install, but that time quickly balloons to half an hour once enhanced — unless you’d like to expedite the process with real cash. The kicker is that while a car is being upgraded, it can’t be used in a race.
This becomes less of a problem once you save up for a second ride, but the first few hours of GT Racing 2 involve a lot of annoying downtime. The upshot is that each upgrade feels hefty and significant, and previously difficult races are noticeably more manageable with, say, a new gearbox. It helps that most upgrades are fairly priced, too — free-to-play games are often a grind, but it’s not too egregious here.
The bottom line. While it doesn’t stray far from genre conventions, GT Racing 2 is competently executed and fun to play. There may be higher-profile racers on iOS, but few that nail the controls and upgrades quite as squarely as this does.
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