EA’s Real Racing 3 released for Android, comes with crazy in-app purchases

Fans of EA’s Real Racing games will be happy to know that Real Racing 3 has been released for Android on the Google Play Store, bringing the newest entry in the beautiful circuit racing series to millions of users around the world.

EA boasts the largest roster of cars yet in the series, with over 45 cars from manufacturers such as Porsche, Bugatti, and Audi to choose from. There are a whopping 900 events available to take part in, on tracks from all around the world accurately adapted for the game, which is another feature players will see for the first time. Real Racing 3 is powered by the MINT 3 engine, which provides some sharp and impressive visuals – they’re not that different from Need for Speed Most Wanted’s graphics, but considering the latter was quite a good-looking game, it’s not actually an issue.

 There’s also an interesting new multiplayer mode – Time Shifted Multiplayer. According to the description, this mode allows you to play against your friends even when they are offline, apparently by providing computer opponents with the names and skills of your friends. I have no idea how this exactly works right now, but from reports it seems to be a half-baked attempt at making players feel like they’re always racing against human opponents.

  

 While the game is free, EA has implemented the most dubious form of in-app purchases (IAP) of any game on the Play Store. To keep cars upgraded and in good condition, players can buy those upgrades with real money, and while that is not a problem in and off itself, EA has also implemented timer-based upgrades. For example, one must wait from two minutes to buy a new car up to three hours to tune their cars, with the only option to skip these wait times being the aforementioned in-app purchases, which will put off a great deal of players in a heartbeat.

 But if you’re willing to look past the IAPs and horrendous wait times, you should have a great time with Real Racing 3. Download the game from the links below or directly from the Play Store on your device, and make sure you have enough space left to accommodate the game’s 1.7GB of data files that you’ll need to download in-game.

Download: North America | Rest of World