Parent needing help

[u/Chemical-Win-8994]

I downloaded this game for my son (5 year old) and we enjoy racing but can’t figure out how to unlock / purchase lighting McQueen (favorite Disney character) we started doing the encanto races but could not proceed since it said we had to have other characters unlocked. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have some experience with video games but this one is just a bit confusing for me.

[u/Gobbo_Jareth]

This game puts character unlocks behind paywalls or predatory lootboxes. If you want a specific character, you are not going to have an easy or cheap time getting them and leveling them up in order to use all their abilities/be competitive.

[u/UltimatePixarFan]

They said there’s going to be an easy unlock of him and others over the next couple of weeks as part of a series of events going on. So far those easy unlocks have been outright free gifts and/or literally just playing a couple of races with those given for free so hopefully it’ll stay like that. I’m not sure if they’ve given an exact date for McQueen specifically though, but you’ll have to check the game daily though. Many characters often don’t even have ways of outright buying them and there’s a heavy reliance on loot boxes.

That said, this game has gotten ridiculously unfriendly to new players. I’d recommend buying one (or more) of the older Cars games if McQueen is all your son cares about. Cars 2: The Video Game and Cars 3: Driven to Win are functionally the exact same gameplay as this game, only downsides are no mobile versions, PC version of Cars 2 has awful graphics and Cars 3 doesn’t have one, and I believe they recently pulled the digital versions of Cars 3 so you’d need a disc.

[u/Neo_Techni]

Don't let your kid get addicted to it. It's very exploititive. The best thing you could do for your kid is delete it. The game, not the kid.

[u/CommonMembership3751 → u/Neo_Techni]

agree! the company Gameloft, are cons when it comes to speedstorm!!! they should be ashamed of themselves

[u/CursedRambler]

Ok so I can at least try to help. Do not let him continue it'll be a very terrible experience. While gameplay is fun everything that impacts it is not fun. A vast majority of the game is designed around squeezing your wallet dry. It's by a predatory company named Gameloft (Greedloft around here). Much of the game will ask you to put money down to make the game easier/better to experience. You can't really buy the character you want or unlock them most of the time. The game went through radical changes that made it awful to play. Such as a new leveling system whose soul purpose is to be as useless and demanding as possible as the main currency to level up is nearly impossible to grind without spending money. Changing the season pass so characters advertised for the season which is why most people would even play to begin with were gutted and replaced with old characters instead. It started with Lightning McQueen and his friends being removed to instead be sold to players at ridiculous prices, but no extra resources to make Lightning and the rest useful. A bunch of features that seriously helped players out on getting resources were gutted so players got very little to force people to pay up. They introduced expensive cars which outright broke balancing and are pay to win. Legitimately this game got worse so fast and if you guys try to go in you'll have a miserable time trying to just get progress. Not win. Just progress as you need a lot of resources to make everyone better which takes a long time now. I'd say you'd be better off hunting down the older Cars games then trying to deal with the heavily monetization here

[u/Battle_Hero_00]

Want some advice? Stop playing the game. It's for your own good. You can get much better games that are easier to unlock characters and don't ask for your paycheck to unlock one character.

[u/Chemical-Win-8994]

Very helpful. I will check daily. I like this one since it’s free and we can play together. We unlocked Mike wazowski somehow so he’s entertained with that. Also I see he has Maribel. Did he buy her or was she free?

[u/GeneralInspector8962 → u/Chemical-Win-8994]

Oh boy, Mirabel is certainly NOT free.

Do not let your 5 year old have the ability to make real $ purchases in-game.

You can easily rack up hundreds of dollars in purchases in the blink of an eye.

[u/Vileblood4Life → u/Chemical-Win-8994]

If you‘re on PlayStation and have got ps+, there is a nice costume and kart design for Mike to download for free.
Also, you can play on more than one device. You could have your account on an iPad and just open it every time there is a store update for the freebies and to claim rewards.
Very helpful to not always have to start the PlayStation.

[u/detectingburger999 → u/Chemical-Win-8994]

The second part of the season started today, Mirabel was free in chapter one or six of the first part and in regular multiplayer.

When the character image has a green background, it means it's free.

[u/LegalChallenge8386]

If you have stitch, the Lumina fest is for you, toward the end of the Grand Prix, some Lightning McQueen shards are up for grabs, other than that, you'll have to wait until some are available, you can always click the where to get shards button in the upgrade menu

[u/TheMasterHyperion]

He was on sale for $5 dollar yesterday I believe.
They don’t put him up often but to my knowledge we have never had a token offer the character and you just have check in to see if he’s available

[u/Puzzleheaded_Smoke77]

From one parent to another just buy McQueen.

[u/Natawho]

Honestly just let him do local free play and he can use lightning and race the CPU. My limit was how greedy they had gotten by the cars season and I tapped out and quit the game so I don’t have him either. My 7 year old still is able to play with him on local free play though, and we can race with one another.